Lost Word Document on USB drive, How to Recover?

My friend was typing her notes which was 49 pages long in Word when all of a sudden, Word prompted her that it was going to save the document and close Word afterwards. The only option available was to click "Okay". She clicks okay and then now, the entire 49 pages of notes she typed is now gone.

-She did not save it on the laptop.
-It was saved on the USB drive.

Question is, how do you recover this lost file from the USB drive? I know there are programs you can pay for but are there any FREE programs that will be able to recover this lost document?

 

thumb/flash/usb drives are not too stable. they shouldn't be used for archiving data. they should be used for quick data xfer or very short term storage.

using them as a primary storage medium is a very bad idea as you unfortunately now know.

the only thing you can do is try other computers. i do not know if data recovery works on flash drives, but i'm sure this guy does.

 

Excellent website. Never heard of that before. Thanks for the help! Repped!

 

Yeah, what he said, but I also wanna add that if you loose something or delete something on a flash drive its pretty much unrecoverable. Unlike magnetic disks were the reference to the data is simply removed when it is deleted, thus its really still there until it is over written, with a flash drive its gone.

 

Try Recuva, It may not work though.

 

I second Recuva, the data still being there or not depends on file system, not medium.

 

I tried it. Almost was able to recover it. Close but no cigar. =/ Thanks for the suggestion though.