USB Drive problems. Any chance of saving it?

[Corrderio]

So tonight while I was transferring some files from my PC over to my USB Drive to finish up on my work laptop tomorrow when my USB drive has crapped out on me or something. I tried to scan for errors but I keep getting a "This disk is write protected" error when this happens and my PC says there is nothing on the drive. I also get the write protection error when I try to move anything on the drive.

I tried to check through cmd.exe to see if any of my folders were there, but sadly it looks like everything is gone so I thought I'd do a format on the drive in hopes I could at least use it. However, when I try to format the drive I'm told it's missing a parameter.

Anyone have experience with problems like this with storage devices? Is there a way to fix it? Or is this thing pretty much trash?

[Mici]

If you want to save the data you can use TestDisk to try and recover it, might be able to after you format it. For formatting, HDD low level format tool can usually do it.
Be careful with anything you put on the drive in the future though. In my experience they just fuck up again shortly after.

[Corrderio]

I'll give that a go and hope for the best. I'm going to sign up for a cloud service for backup as well to avoid this crap again.

[Corrderio]

Well it salvaged a few things, but only a small handful of the files I was transferring when this happened. So I think this thing is kaput.

[xerodok]

Try using Recuvva.

[Mayareira]

For future reference, always back up important back ups. Use cloud, or another external hdd.
Also, most of the time the the connectors fuck up before the hdd's. Meaning try another USB cable, or could take the case off and connect to a laptop/pc/another external case.