Will a quick format delete files on a flash drive?

I have been tasked with recovering data from a drive that says that Windows needs to format it to use it. If I do the quick format, will it delete or damage any files? I'm trying to use Recuva to recover the files, but it still says I must format first...

Why would you format if you are trying to recover files? Formatting wipes the disk; that’s the whole point. It doesn’t matter whether you do a quick or full format, the purpose of formatting is to erase the drive and mark it as empty.

A quick format may only wipe the FAT instead of the clusters containing the actual files, but any recovery attempt will be infinitely more likely to succeed with an intact FAT than with just directory entries alone.

If you are having trouble mounting the file-system on the drive, then before trying anything else, check if it works in another port or computer. Then try cleaning the contacts on the drive since a patina usually forms on metal surfaces and dirty contacts lead to a bad connection, and what you described is a common symptom of this problem with flash-drives. After that, use a cloning tool like DriveImageXML to make a raw backup copy of the drive so that you don’t permanently lose anything during your recovery experiments. Finally, use a tool that can see and examine the drive at a low level instead of requiring access through the file-system (most recovery tools can do this; PhotoRec’s disk-list comes to mind).

Yes, it will "delete or damage" files... Recuva may be fairly decent on getting them back, however, there is an inherent risk in doing that.

A better approach would be to boot a Linux Live CD and mount it to try and recover the data. (Live CD List). The simplest one is probably Ubuntu, which you can go through it with the GUI (rather than command line).

The only difference between format and quick format is that quick format doesn't search for bad sectors (source).

I don't know about other file systems, but with NTFS, I can tell you from my own experience that formatting the drive does not affect your chances of recovering your files (although it will destroy the directory structure).

Either way, it's probably a good idea to save a bit-by-bit copy of the flash drive before attempting to alter anything on it. This can be achieved with dd under Linux or dd for Windows.

The tool PhotoRec that Journeyman Geek suggested in another answer's comments works great for small files, since it doesn't take the missing/damaged file system into account. However, it generally fails for larger files for the exact same reason (see: Recovered video files won't play).

You are not going to want to work within windows. If you format it you MIGHT be able to recover data, but chances are quite low. You're breaking the first law of recovery - not to change anything. I'd start with a linux livedisk - probably something like xubuntu, and use tools from that.

There are quite a few good tools for recovery (and backup) and you'll want to try several different onees to get the best chance of recovering your files.

I would start with gnu ddrescue its a nice little rescue oriented dd varient that does a good job making images of damaged disks. The package name is gddrescue on ubuntu varients, since there's another program called ddrescue.

I'd then try testdisk (which recovers whole filesystems), and photorec (which recovers some files)

If those fail, try using formost and scalpel on copies of the disk image - these do 'carving' or file recovery based on headers, footers and metadata.

YES, Do not format the drive, it will erase the data. Not to the point of being unable to recover it, but there are better ways of getting at your data. First and foremost, try the drive in different USB ports, and then try to right-click on the disk in My Computer and run a disk check on it.

If that doesn't work, boot into a live disk of Ubuntu or GParted and check to see how Ubuntu reads the drive. More often than not, Ubuntu can read it, and using the file manager, you can recover the files and then cleanly format it.

Flash drives can get corrupted for a myriad of reasons, but doing a nuke and then seeing what Recuva can get back is a bad way of going about it.