USB flash Drive no longer is detected by system

[blittle2 at nyc.rr.com]

Hello, I have a Dell inspiron 1501 laptop that dual boots to Ubuntu 9.10 and windows vista. Two nights ago I had my Sony MicroVault 8GB drive in the laptop whilst running Windows because I was running an app that doesn't run in WINE. At some point, the machine went to sleep and I woke it up again while the USB drive was still inserted. The next time I booted into Ubuntu only and noticed that the flash drive would'nt mount. I rebooted to Windows only to get the "USB couldn't be recognized" message. I inserted the disk into another computer running windoqs and another running Mac OS. All could not read the disk. I know I can reformat the disk, but I'd like to know if there is a Linux utility app that could recover or make the disk readable againt without having to reformat. I would like a Linux solution to this issue. 

Btw, I have used other USB devices on my system since so I know the ports are fine.

Thanks in advance.

Bruce
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