Windows 10: Corrupt thumb drive - files with special characters can't be removed

I have a work thumb drive with a ton of data on it. Unfortunately between using several computers I think I picked up a virus, although no viruses have been detected. I have tried using my CMD controls to delete these files. I can the actual / real files are there, but don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on an "open source" recovery program that only recovers a couple of hundred MBs.


Any suggestions?


Here is what the thumb drive looks like at present:





Any recommendations? I have yet to find anything on forums to help and recover (without the risk of deleting hidden files).

S

:)

 

ALT Key Codes for Special Characters List


Thanks for this PDF file list of special characters! It will come in very handy, *Thumbs

 

Can a thumb drive be disabled by malware?

There are quite a few possibilities to what happened to your thumb drive:

1. It might be a simple issue where the partition got corrupted: In this case you can go to Computer Management > Disk Management> and check out what partition your thumb drive currently has. If it currently is in RAW format or is just unallocated, I suggest you unallocate the entire drive and make a new partition. It's possible that you can recover upto 99% of your files with a tool like EaseUS DataRecovery Wizard Pro.
   
2. The malware corrupted your thumb drive's firmware: The malware that your thumb drive may have encountered may be similar to something like BadUSB. It may or may not have modified your drive's firmware to transmit malware, but in any case your thumb drive's pretty dead, and there's not much you can do about it.
   

 

Corrupted file RAR

If the archive has been created using WinRAR, why don't you try WinRAR itself? It has a built-in repair feature for repairing corrupted archive (ZIP as well as RAR). Follow the steps given below:

• Open WinRAR application in your system.
• Now click on File tab > Open or simply press Ctrl+O.
• A small window "Find Archive" will pop up. Locate the corrupt RAR archive from your system directory and select it.
• Now click Open button.
• Click Tools tab > Repair archive or simply press Alt+R.
• Again a small window "Repairing File name.rar" will pop up.
• Now click Browse to select a location to save the repaired archive.
• Check the box "Treat the corrupt archive as RAR" and click OK.
• WinRAR will start repairing of corrupt RAR archive. Once it gets completed click Close.

I hope the above steps will help you repair the corrupted RAR archive.

Thanks.