Troubleshooting a Corrupted USB Drive: A Personal Experience and Request for Guidance

Recently, I encountered an unexpected problem with my USB flash drive that left me puzzled and seeking solutions. It was functioning perfectly the day before, but I awoke to discover that it had become corrupted. Instead of my usual file structure, the USB displayed a series of oddly named files, which was quite alarming.

At first, I attempted several conventional methods to remedy the situation. I tried changing the drive letter, reinstalling the driver, and even executing multiple CMD commands, but to no avail. Each effort failed to restore access to my files.

In desperation, I turned to Disk Drill, a data recovery application. I initially created a drive image of the USB, and the software managed to recover some files from that image. Unfortunately, while the recovery process succeeded, the majority of the retrieved files were corrupted and could not be opened.

Upon inspecting a few of the recovered JSON files, I noticed strange content — it appeared that some files had merged during the corruption process. In specific instances, the JSON files contained both code and what looked like PNG data, which added to my confusion.

Currently, the drive now displays only a single file instead of an array of mysterious entries, which leaves me uncertain about its condition.

I would greatly appreciate any guidance or advice from those experienced in data recovery. Is there a method to effectively separate or recover these files? I still possess the drive image, so I hope that can aid in the recovery