cant read files in usb stick

Hello fellow geeks

First of all i want to say that i had a look through the forum using the search function and i did not find what i was after. My little problem goes like this. I have a usb drive which winxp sp2 can detect no problem (assign letter H) no conflict of drives by the way. But when i try to double click on it says that i have to format the drive. The file was working fine till this morning. Ihave back up of most of the files but i have not a back up of the latest (spent 3 hours) report i was doing. So far i have used getdataback FAT and it has found every single file (even 6 month old ones deleted) yet it has not found two files that i was after. I am thinking that it has something to do with the boot section of the drive so i think that i if i copy the boot section from a working usb stick that should do it. does anyone has any ideas how to do that?...i have trouble finding in using google. Thank you in advnace for all your help

P.S: any other suggestion would be appreciated.

 

Flash drives are a bit sensitive to 'static' discharge. Even if you don't feel a snap through your fingers there can be a large enough 'field' to cause corruption of the drive's file addressing table. This is sometimes repairable by utilities that use 'low level' access of file system services and that can use USB transfer protocols. So a standard utility that works A-OK on a hard drive might not be useful on a flash drive. I don't recall any freeware utilities at the moment but a 'free trial' program can be obtained at this link.