Could be an electrical issue, might be some cracked solder points at the USB plug. Open it up if you can to have a look inside. Heating the connection up or a dab more solder might fix any cracks.

Good point, I'll find out if it's covered by any guarantee or warranty first.

So I happened to see a later post first; I second the electrical/controller problem ideas. Sometimes if the drive is left in they get clipped by hands or other objects depending on where it is used. At work we had one we used for daily register backups that would only work if one held it in whilst holding one's mouth right.  :-/ Stopped using that one.

I've got a 4G I put through a machine wash & dry about 5-years ago. Still works great.

But how's the USB stick?

Ba dum dum tssh...

years ago my daughter smashed the connector right off her homework USB stick - I soldered an old bit of ribbon cable between the two broken parts and managed to get the files off before it was officially declared dead.

Thankfully they're cheap enough these days to only be worth repairing to recover the data, then it should go in the bin because it can no longer be trusted.

I've had a go with Knoppix. Looks like it does what Ant said initially, combined with testdisk/photorec which is what I've been trying already. Had some success though, the wife's found an older USB stick that had most of what was on the encrypted drive, she'd cut and paste the stuff from it to the new one, so I've managed to recover a fair bit. The task's still going and is constantly jumping between 45mins to 2 and half hours to finish, but finger's crossed. :)

Let's hope. How in the bloody hell did it get encrypted?

Encrypted + no back up = boner move.

The data was intact, it didn't need to be reformatted or anything. If you're asking about the coin- op laundry, they have a lifespan of like two years and have more horrendous shit to deal with than the odd USB key.

"have more horrendous shit to deal"

Presumably, quite literally.

The memory sticks were given out to all teachers 'cos they had an encryption facility built in. The teacher's set their password on the stick's data vault and it's less of an issue if they've got sensitive info about the kids on there if they ever lose it.

She was going to back it up. Honest.

It's only a week or two old, so as people have said, probably something fundamentally wrong with the hardware. She's taking it back to work today to see if they can claim the cost back.

That's why I don't encrypt anything. I am boner; I don't back up anything.  (pyfitg)

Cost? You didn't buy Knoppix, did you?

By the way, I should have warned you to turn the speakers down before you ran Knoppix. Did the girl announcing, "Initiating Startup sequence" startle you?  :-P

No, cost for the stick itself, it's still under warranty, so they should be able to claim it back.

I've not used Knoppix before and the voices did unnerve me a tad. The woman's voice at the start was ok, nice and reassuring, it's when Stephen Hawking took over in the OS itself and started describing everything I was doing. I quite liked the exploding animation when closing down a window. The first time. After that I just wanted it to close down the window and not take 3 seconds over it.  :-&
 

My enthusiasm for backups is inversely proportional to time elapsed since disk failure.

You can turn that off, but alas - it starts again when rebooted Live.

I wouldn't bother installing it if you were thinking of it; it really isn't meant to be installed.

I like the exploding Windows. I just engaged that on Mint, though it doesn't take 3 seconds, less than 1 actually.

Good luck.

Unfortunately, my sentiments are the same.  (fail) Why perform a backup if I can have another pint and not?  (bounce)

Same thing but hard drive recovery. I'm not sure it's going to be possible though. My daughter pulled my parents' laptop off the cabinet and it looks like it damaged the HDD. She said it was wroking fine for a bit but after a while it rebooted, then said drive error at post.

My usual GetDataBack can't do anything with it. It recognises the drive but just hangs while Windows is trying to make its mind up.

So, anything else I can try?