Corrupted doc file from memory stick displays only squares

[samiizz]

My girlfriend saved a doc file directly to a memory stick,then deleted it.Now
she needs it back.I recovered the file but when i open it it displays only
squares.I've tried recover text from any file,open and repair, and manually
choosing every type of format in word(2002).I have read that saving directly
to removable storage corrupts files and they cant be recovered but surely
there must be a way??

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

 

[macropod]

Hi samiizz,

Saving to a USB drive is unlikely to result in file corruption, though it can happen if there isn't much space left.

As for your current problem, if anything else has been written to the USB drive since the file was deleted (eg if you opened Word
and accessed a folder on the drive, a series of tmp files would be created), then there's every likelihood that the space used by
the former file has been over-written.

Some file recovery software will let you look for text strings on the drive. You may be able to use that approach to locate the
file's text and recover at least some of the file that way.