Fixing corrupt files or corrupt file table on a USB drive?

Question

I was doing a virus scan on an external USB drive while copying data over to it. While AVG was scanning my system got locked up I think due to the USB drive running out of space and it required a reboot. Since that time all data on the external drive is no longer accessible. I can see all the files in the root and directories but I cannot browse into any of them as Windows 7 gives an error stating they are corrupt.

I think the file table or whatever it uses to store the index of what exists on the drive has been corrupted since it still shows the the drive as being almost full but everything I do a properties check on says it is 0 bytes.

Does anyone know how to 'unlock' or recover this data? Is there a way to rebuild the file table somehow? Luckily I can recover this data from other sources as a last resort but I would like to fix this if possible.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

get to a command line and run chkdsk on the usb drive with /f /r options.

Answer 2

If chkdsk doesn't work, then try Photorec, which will be able to recover the data files, assuming that they are still there. However, you'll lose the filenames and folder structure, so this is a bit of a last resort.