Word Cannot Open File (Corrupt)

[rste11]

So my friend wrote an essay and saved it on a thumb drive but ONLY the thumb drive. Now it's corrupted and there's no backup file.

-Trying to open it in word does not work (file unreadable).
-Trying to open it in notepad++ does not work (file unreadable).
-Trying to use open and repair in word does not work (file unreadable).
-Trying to open it using the recover text from any file function in word does not work (file is larger than 512 MB [it's like three pages]).
-Trying to create a backup copy of the corrupted file does not work (file unreadable).

A friend recommended using a hex editor to fix the file and I know next to nothing on the subject so I'm kind of stuck. Any help would be amazing.

Edit: I found a program online that is supposed to be able to fix word documents and that was not successful either.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

If Windows thinks the file is larger than 512 MB, then it is not the file that is corrupt, it is the file system on the flash drive that is corrupt. Try using a tool to recover deleted files and see if it can recover anything.

 

[rste11]

I ran Free Undelete on it and it didn't pull anything up.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

If you haven't already, run 'chkdsk /f /v' on the thumb drive.

 

[rste11]

Ran it, tried to open the file, and it opened, but then I found out he saved the new (rewritten) version of the essay over the old one, so it looks like that's gone. Bummer, I wanted to know how to do this.

 

[rste11]

Best answer selected by rste11.