Flash Drive Wiped Itself!???

[macx]

I've got a SanDisk MiniCruzer flash (thumb) drive that I've
been using to transfer files from one computer to another.

Last nite I had created a new file on the drive, in Excel,
and got interrupted while writing to the file. I left the
file open on the computer.

An hour later I came back to it, the file was still open,
so I continued to write to the file. When I tried to
save it, it wouldn't let me, and asked if I wanted to
format the flash drive. Knowing that would wipe it
out, I said no.

I tried "removing" the drive the proper way, and
restarted the computer. Still couldn't save
anything to it and every time I tried it asked if
I wanted to reformat the drive, I kept saying no.

I tried the drive in my other computer this AM,
it opens the drive but all the files are gone!

It seems to have started with me leaving the file
in the drive open for an extended period.

Any ideas on what went wrong, or did I do something
wrong, or can I do anything to recover my files?

Thanks!

 

[Adwin]

Using a flash device, files are stored in RAM, then are sync'd in the device after some time.
If you disconnect it manually, without syncing the device first, you will erase all you files, since they are still in the RAM but not physically on the device itself.

You can try recovery software like recover4all and getdataback.