💡 This article is written by humans, with all solutions and steps verified.
Though USB flash drives are known for their durability, they can sometimes become corrupted without warning, leaving you baffled. If you’re facing the same issue and looking for a solution, then this article is exactly what you need. Here, we will introduce various types of logical failures and guide you on how to repair the USB drive without losing data.
If your USB drive shows any of the following symptoms, the issue probably stems from its circuit board or flash memory chip. If it contains important files, you should skip this guide and contact a professional repair or data recovery service.
Sometimes the problem isn't the flash drive itself, but the USB port. Therefore, before trying the repair methods below, insert it into different ports. Your USB drive may already work again.
When your flash drive is corrupted, your main concern is whether the important data stored on it might be lost, right? Although this prevents you from accessing these files, you can still recover them to a safe location using recovery software.
Here, we will use iBeesoft Free Data Recovery as an example to show the full process. As the name suggests, it can recover up to 2GB of files for free.
Tip: The above steps can also help you recover deleted files from the USB drive.
Flash drive corruption can happen for many reasons, and symptoms and solutions vary. Among them, over 90% of problems involve the file system or index structure. Fortunately, you can resolve these issues yourself in most cases. Here, our technical experts have sorted them out to help you repair the flash drive quickly.
This error means your flash drive can't communicate with the operating system. This is typically caused by corrupted or outdated drivers, insufficient power supply, or the enabled "USB selective suspend" feature. In this case, you can try the following method to fix the issue.
Sudden interruptions during data transfer, improper removal, virus attacks, critical sector damage, logic errors in the controller chip, accidental deletion in disk management tools, etc., can corrupt or make your USB drive's partition table unreadable, causing it to be displayed as "unallocated".
To make your USB drive work normally again is very simple. You just need to go to Disk Management, right-click it, then select "New Simple Volume" and follow the instructions.
It should be noted that this will erase the existing files. So, first use the software above to restore them. In addition, there are more methods on how to recover data from an unpartitioned drive.
These issues occur because the Master File Table or the file system structure of your USB drive has been altered or corrupted, causing the operating system to fail to locate the start and end locations of files or folders. The causes are the same as described for Symptom 2. Fortunately, CHKDSK can check file system integrity and repair inconsistencies. Here are the steps:
Note: If you do not want to use the command line, you can also try to fix the error by right-clicking the flash drive in File Explorer, selecting "Properties" > "Tools" > "Check" > "Scan and repair drive."
If the USB port isn't the issue, these errors usually occur because of bad sectors or file system corruption on the flash drive. Generally, you just need to run CHKDSK as described in Symptom 3, then type the following commands to continue.
It is the most common symptom of flash drive corruption. Usually, for the reasons mentioned in Symptom 2, the OS fails to recognize the file system and treats it as an uninitialized drive.
You may have been told by forums or articles that CHKDSK can fix this error. However, in our tests, you only get a prompt saying "CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives". In this case, a professional disk tool, such as iBeesoft Disk Partition Wizard, is a better choice.
A physical lock (e.g., a toggled write-protect switch), access permission settings, messy registry parameters, etc., can make your USB drive read-only. Removing this restriction is simple. Here are the steps.
Note: If there is a physical write-protection lock on your USB flash drive, please first check whether it is enabled. Toggling the switch may be all it takes to restore normal functionality.
When you see the message "Disk attributes cleared successfully", it means the write protection has been removed. If it still doesn’t work, please check the complete guide on how to unlock a flash drive.
Have you found that the USB drive capacity has decreased after being used as a bootable drive for Windows? This is because the bootable creation tool partitioned the USB drive into several sections, and only one section is displayed by the operating system by default.
If you plan to use it as a bootable disk long term, you can ignore the issue. Otherwise, please type the following command in DiskPart to restore its capacity to its original size.
Based on our experience, the methods above are usually enough to troubleshoot USB drive issues. However, sometimes formatting is the only way to make it work properly again. If you have already successfully recovered your data, please follow these steps:
In most cases, flash drive failure stems from your usage habits. Therefore, follow these suggestions to reduce the likelihood of corruption.
When you suddenly discover that your USB drive is corrupted, you might panic, especially if important files are saved there. With this guide, we believe you can handle the situation calmly in most cases. However, if the problem keeps happening after trying these solutions, it is best to seek help from professional technicians to avoid greater losses. After all, software solutions have their limitations.
Yes, but this will erase all the data on it. Therefore, please use a tool like iBeesoft Data Recovery to rescue the data before attempting the repair.
Yes. Here are some common ones, but their purposes are different.
Usually, there is no definite price for this. It depends on the condition of the damage to your USB drive and the amount of data that needs to be recovered.
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