Retrieving data from a USB before reformatting

I know what it implies, but windows is a retard and sometimes has read errors, for example the flash drive i had problems with didn't work on my xp machine, with the same error(unknown file system), my laptop running vista could read it fine and after the file system error scan it worked on xp again, if it's not physically broken the error might be machine specific, inserting it in another PC/OS might fix the problem or at least provide a way to back up the files