Resolved Recovering data from failed USB thumb drive - any hope?

NASA trusted Kroll Ontrack to recover data from the Space Shuttle Columbia hard drive.

Shuttle Columbia's hard drive data recovered from crash site

When hard drives go bad, users make things worse, experts say

 

Ahh. It's great to know a place good enough to get shuttle data recovered.

Of course whether such services are affordable by mere mortals is another question.

I set the thumb drive aside for now. I was on a trip and now am playing catch-up. I'll call the # provided to see what kind of price they might charge but in the interim I'm seeing what data I can pull together from other sources. Interestingly I was able to recover some sound files from my phone, which I know were on the thumb drive, by recovering deleted files from the phone's SD card. So hopefully, while unfortunate, the loss won't be too hideous, if I can't get the data off the ill-fated drive.

 

<shrug> It's your data.

The most common mistake many users make is not backing up critical data.

 

Well, I set it aside only because it was becoming upsetting and I couldn't afford the distractions at the moment. I need to just handle it the best way possible, and if I can get it recovered somewhere, then I will. I seem to have exhausted most of what I can do, here, aside from some low-level linux apps (which I'll have to research more thoroughly).

I recognize the issue of backups, and usually I do. This is just a matter of timing and a few files I was trying to keep private.