Flashdrive recovery of files?

I save everything, pictures and all of my schol documents, onto my Toshiba 16GB flashdrive. Thursday my Gateway laptop crashed but luckily I had my flashdrive. Friday I went to the library at school to prin a paper off of my flashdrive, the school computers I believe are Windows Vista. All of the documents on the flashdrive came up in symbols with saved dates 80 years into the past and future. It wouldn't allow me to open any of the documents, so I safely remmoved the flashdrive and put it back in and then it said it was empty, however when you go under computer it still shows there is space taken up on it but those documents don't show up. It will allow me to save new documents to the flashdrive and open them but none of the old ones will show up. I know I probably need to restore it but I don't have the money to pay someone to do it for me and my school's IT help desk is closed today so I would prefer to get it done as soon as possible if it can even be done. I hope someone can help
Thank you!

PS: My laptop that died was Windows Vista, the current netbook I'm on is an hp with windows 7

 

how do you show hidden and systems files and folders?

 

Well it kind of worked, there are recovered files on it now but I can't open them. Thank you though for your help

 

When they showed up they said they were recovered files and it said I couldn't open them because there was no program to open them

 

I don't know if this helps much, but I'm a graphic design student, and I've had this happen a few times before. I had to redo the same assignment over 4 times because of it. I finally just stopped using flash drives altogether and started using a portable hard drive.

Just remember, flash drives are just portable storage. You want to drag your files to the desktop before you do any changes.

 

Remember that external hard drives are also portable storage. Although external drives don't get corrupted as often as flash drives they can also have problems from rough handling and defective enclosure adapters.

Never depend on an external hard drive as a single backup solution.

 

That is what I was getting at. However, the thread is about a flash drive.

I personally keep a portable hard drive and drag files to the desktop. I also have a folder on our school's data drive where I keep things. So I have things backed up to 2-3 places at all times.

 

I realize the thread was about flash drives, however you were the one who brought up the subject of external hard drives.

 

That is true. That was my choice to go to from a flash drive. Just offering suggestions.