I encountered a drive that someone wanted their "lost" pictures recovered from.
Maxell 2 GB flash drive.
Unit was showing a tiny fraction of the original size, & all format utilities & options I tried failed to recover anything, until I found out about Maxell Mode Convertor.
Problem is, the drive had not suffered a corrupted partition, but rather, the partitions had become flipped & the normally smaller hidden partition had become the visible & default partition, while the pictures partition had become the hidden partition & invisible to Windows.
Thus, nothing I did was having an affect because all they were reading or writing to was the smaller partition.
After running the Mode Convertor utility, I was able to successfully recover all files back.
After flipping the partition back, you should avoid long format, & wiping the drive until you have recovered your files.