[Leica] OT: File recovery from a Sandisk USB flash drive

[pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)]

Off topic, but would appreciate an assist:

A colleague just returned from Africa with a bunch of files on her flash 
drive.  Or so she thought.  She plugged it into her computer.  Nothing 
there.  The drive shows up, but it appears to have zero total space, zero 
bytes free, zero files.

I've looked at the flash drive on several computers.  Same story.  In My 
Computer/Explorer, it acts like a Zip drive with no disk inserted.  It 
shows up as a drive letter E:.  If you double click on it, Windows prompts 
you to insert a disk.  This worries me.  It's not that the drive has been 
erased, so we see empty memory. It's like there's no memory at all.  Almost 
like the memory is physically damaged.

In her email, she mentioned that she had some difficulty copying files to 
the drive in Africa, so it could be that she's corrupted the structure to 
the point that Windows sees nothing.   I don't have any more information 
yet--I didn't see her, as she's still on Africa time and went home early.

The problem device is a Sandisk "Cruzer" mini 2 gig USB 2.0 flash 
drive.  Any suggestions on a file recovery utility that has the best chance 
of recovering anything would be appreciated.  Sandisk has their own 
utility, and I recall Tina mentioning a couple a while back, Photo Rescue 
and Restorer 2000, I think.  Are these still my best bet, or have others 
gotten better?

Thanks!
--Peter