I think there's two issues at work with your comment mikie. The first, which many historians have spoken about, is that the lost habits of letter and diary writing mean that much less material will be available for historical analysis in the future. Email archives aren't as common as boxes stuffed with old letters, and email archives typically have much more worthless stuff in them. The second thing, the changes in storage media over time, I think isn't so much of a problem. There used to be lots of stuff stored on 8 and 5.25 inch floppy disks. They're not lost to the future, that worth keeping was migrated to later generations of storage media. Places like the Library of Congress and National Archives are digitizing many parts of their collections to protect the availability of their contents for the future. All that stuff gets rolled forward as technology changes.

here is what i got from the analysis: Analysed : "D:\" April 12 2010, 22:47.21 Processed in 1 minute 46 seconds =================================================== Number of Files : 94276 Number of Folders : 19066 Size of Files : 23.14GB Size of Files (on disk) : 23.33GB Disk space wasted : 193.25MB Null files : 105 Empty folders : 0 Average File Size : 257.34K Average Files/Folder : 4.94 Largest Folder : \Windows\ (11.43GB, 67% of files) Largest File : D:\pagefile.sys (3.93GB) User with largest share : SYSTEM (9.69GB, 20%) : Quantity Size Programs : 2608 :: 2.54GB (11%) System : 21342 :: 15.21GB (66%) Graphics : 11383 :: 279.95MB (1%) Movie : 202 :: 298.27MB (1%) Audio : 704 :: 66.73MB ( Office : 6406 :: 159.68MB ( Programming : 378 :: 4.78MB ( Compressed : 4159 :: 318.93MB (1%) Other : 47094 :: 4.29GB (19%) Custom1 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom2 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom3 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom4 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom5 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom6 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom7 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom8 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom9 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom10 : 0 :: 0 bytes =================================================== Analysed : "C:\" April 12 2010, 22:51.31 Processed in 1 minute 37 seconds =================================================== Number of Files : 82894 Number of Folders : 15777 Size of Files : 17.37GB Size of Files (on disk) : 17.53GB Disk space wasted : 167.86MB Null files : 1768 Empty folders : 0 Average File Size : 219.67K Average Files/Folder : 5.25 Largest Folder : \Windows\ (10.87GB, 74% of files) Largest File : C:\hiberfil.sys (2.95GB) User with largest share : TrustedInstaller (9.21GB, 66%) : Quantity Size Programs : 2214 :: 797.99MB (4%) System : 17599 :: 10.46GB (60%) Graphics : 7221 :: 481.60MB (3%) Movie : 159 :: 555.87MB (3%) Audio : 669 :: 65.39MB ( Office : 9583 :: 128.44MB ( Programming : 374 :: 4.70MB ( Compressed : 78 :: 356.16MB (2%) Other : 44997 :: 4.57GB (26%) Custom1 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom2 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom3 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom4 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom5 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom6 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom7 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom8 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom9 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom10 : 0 :: 0 bytes ===================================================

If you have access to a design engineering office, see if they have anyone who works with 'strain gages'. Strain gage technicians and engineeres routinely solder tiny conections, sometimes under a low power microscope. A special soldering gun is used. Make sure that the soldering gun is electrically isolated and grounded to preclude imparting a damaging charge to the pins. (I am trained to apply strain gages.) The next source is an engineering college that offers strain gage application courses. There will be experts among the staff. A third source is a solid state chip design group. They may have access to specialized equipment. However, at this writing, I have little hope that you can recover the data. It all depends on the damage and where the breaks are. The damage can extend into the packaging. If I understand thumb drives, I think there is an internal, very small 'keep alive' battery that maintains the state of the memory junctions. If this battery is damaged or the connections to it interrupted, then all data is lost. If the 'die' (chip) has been cracked or over strained, then it is lost. This damage can not be seen as it will under the potting compound. If the leads have been broken flush with the packaging (potting) material, then there is little hope in making a solder connection. Before you give up, examine the thumb drive under a low power (10 to 20x) inspection microscope. Look at the leads. Hopefully, these are not broken, but misshapen.

@anne_ct "That maybe what the book says...but I found the errant G: drive nicely tucked at the bottom of the "My Pictures" folder under "Libraries"." I don't want to get too sidetracked here, but the Libraries are essentially folders full of shortcuts. They are not the actual files, folders, or drives, but references to their real locations only. You could put another computer on the network inside say, Libraries/Pictures, but that computer is not actually in Pictures. As well, if you delete it there, it does not delete the actual file, folder, drive, or computer that's being referenced. To test, see if you can drag a D: drive, or your CD drive into your actual Pictures directory. You can't - indeed it's impossible. But you can drop it as a shortcut into anything that's in Libraries, although it doesn't explicitly say that it's just a shortcut. See : Windows 7 Libraries: Frequently Asked Questions