USB-Drive Format Frustration

Hey, fellow sufferers in out-of-control technology that apparently doesn't work if it doesn't feel like it. (Sorry. There was a Hello here already; I assume this requires a greeting.) I'll try to narrow my overwhelming USB connection problems of late down to one for right now: I need to recover WAV files from a little flashdrive recorder that was kind of suspect in the first place, as the date of every voice recording it made was August something, 2008, and I bought it in 2011. Other than that, it did work OK right up until I got the dreaded Disk not formatted, would you like to format it now? error message. There are some recordings on it that I had not yet transferred elsewhere, and I need them. I've been attempting to rescue them for days -- tried every fix I've found suggested on the Web and downloaded every software tool I can find that doesn't cost a lot of money. Nothing has made a dent in this problem.

I guess I'm asking whether anyone else has had similar not formatted trouble and come out of it alive by means of something other than the fixes suggested in the first couple of pages of your Google search hits ... or something like that. Pretty vague, I know, but I'm desperate. Thanks --