USB thumb drive stopped working; data recovery service?

[Jonathan]

I have an Ativa 4GB USB thumb drive with various Word documents on it that I need to recover. The drive mysteriously stopped being recognized as a USB device last week. On a Mac, PC, or Linux machine the USB light fails to engage, the drive does not get mounted, and the OS does not register any drive as having been inserted. The drive is dead.

I do not care the least bit about the drive, as it is a dirt-cheap purchase from Office Depot and easily replaced. I do, however, care about the data on the drive. I have tried googling for USB thumb drive data recovery services, but in contrast to hard disk data recovery services I can't seem to find reputable news sites evaluating the various contenders.

Instead, I find a lot of search engine optimization and astroturfing which makes me extremely leery of trying a given service blind. Does anyone have a line on USB drive data recovery services? Or websites which have reviewed said services? Or, heck, a decent method for determining the "goodness" of businesses discovered through Google?

[VLSmooth]

a decent method for determining the "goodness" of businesses discovered through Google?

I'm a big fan of resellerratings.com (have been since at least high school); however, that requires the place offering recovery services to actually sell products.

[Jonathan]

http://portland.citysearch.com/review/44979267
http://www.datatechlab.com/data-recover ... tland.html

options...

[quantus]

I've heard of software that will give you raw access to the device to recover files from flash drives. It doesn't require that the drive be actually mounted, just connected. Does it show up as an unknown device under windows at least?

The fact that the light isn't going on though could mean that something bad happened to it though.

[Jonathan]

No device is detected. I am assuming the board got bent or something.

[Dave]

Buy the same drive again, then remove the flash chip from the broken drive and put it in the new drive! Presto! Helps if you have really really small hands and tools.