How to recover a USB flash drive

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If your USB drive stops responding, or you get an error when you try to open it, you can use the tips in this article.

To restore a USB flash drive, follow these steps one by one. If one of them does not help, move on to the next.

1. First, follow the basic steps to eliminate common problems on the computer side. Connect your device via a different USB port. If it doesn't help, restart your computer.

2. If the system does not respond at all when the USB stick is connected, read our guide on how to make the computer recognize the USB device.

3. If the system was able to connect a USB flash drive and even open it, but the data on the drive is missing or unreadable, try to restore them using special programs. Sometimes they help even after formatting the flash drive (if a "quick format" has been performed).

Windows users can recommend Recuva, macOS - Disc Drill. There are even more such utilities in our collection.

Following the further instructions, you can restore only the operability of the flash drive itself, but not the information on it. If your USB device does not store important data, then feel free to continue.

4. Format the USB device.

5. Perform USB flash drive recovery. Windows users need to do the following. Open File Explorer, right-click on the drive and select Properties → Tools → Check → Check and Repair Disk.

On macOS, you can do the same with Disk Utility. Click Launchpad → Others → Disk Utility, select your device in the panel on the right, and click First Aid.

6. Use the program for repairing a USB flash drive from the manufacturer. For example, one of these:

• Transcend JetFlash Online Recovery →
• Kingston Format Utility →
• Silicon Power Flash Drive Recovery Software →
• Apacer USB Flash Drive Repair Tool →
• SD Association (SDA) SD Memory Card Formatter →

If your flash drive has a different manufacturer, take a look at its official website. You should find the necessary software there, download it to your computer and use it according to the attached instructions. Note that most of these programs only run on Windows, so macOS users will need Boot Camp.

7. If the manufacturer of your drive does not provide auxiliary software or it does not help, use a third-party flash drive repair program. You will hardly find such a utility for macOS either, the version is designed for Windows users.

This method can both help and harm the drive. If you are not sure, do not risk it.

The essence of the method is as follows: you need to find out the VID and PID parameters of your drive, find a program compatible with the USB flash drive and use it for recovery.

To find out the VID and PID, connect the drive to your computer, install the Flash Drive Information Extractor program. Run the application, select the drive you want, and define the values for the options you want.

Now open the FlashBoot website, copy the VID and PID values into the corresponding fields and click on the Search button. If the data on the model of your flash drive is in the catalog, then among the search results you will see a link to download the program to repair it.

If instead of a link, the site displays only the name of the utility, you can find it yourself using a search on the same site or through Google.

8. Perform low-level formatting of the flash drive using the HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool. It can help, too, but you should use this method if nothing else works. This program is also available only for Windows.

Launch the program, click Continue and go to the Low-Level Format tab, then click Format This Device.

Please note that after such formatting, all data will be permanently lost.

If none of the above helps and the drive refuses to work on other computers, then try returning it under warranty or contact a service center for help.