You can easily recover data from USB that needs formatting if you get a professional data recovery software. This article will show you such software and how fix flash drive. Get them right now!
Sometimes when you connect a USB drive to your Windows PC, you may receive an error message like “ You need to format the disk before you can use it. Do you want to format it?”
Format it or not? Why? And what to do with my data? You may be curious about these questions. Get the answer below.
USB drive says it needs to be formatted, should I format it or not? No! The formatting process will delete all of your data on this USB drive, if any. Except for this, you still can try other methods to fix the USB drive. However, some methods may result in data loss. To protect your data, you’d better recover data from USB that needs formatting before fixing it.
If you need to format it eventually, you need to know the formatting methods: quick format and full format. The quick format method only deletes files on the disk and mark its used space as “free”. Your data will remain there if you don’t add new data to it. The full format method will overwrite data on the disk and erase it completely.
You must be curious about why your flash drive needs to be formatted. It may provide you with some clues to repair it or take care of your data. Here are some possible reasons in the following:
It’s a wise choice to recover files from USB drive that needs formatting before fixing, since your data are still on the USB drive. MyRecover is a reliable and easy-to-use data recovery software for Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, etc and Windows Server.
Thanks to its two advanced scanning methods and high success rate, you can easily find out and recover data from unformatted flash drive in a short time. It is able to:
To get started, download the Windows data recovery software- MyRecover and install it on your Windows PC.
Step 1. Launch Windows data recovery software- MyRecover. Hover the mouse over the drive saved deleted files before, and click Scan.
Step 2. The software will automatically scan the unformatted drive and display all the deleted or lost files. You can also filter specific files you want to recover (eg: recover files from a specific folder, flash drive, etc).
Here are two ways in the following:
Directly type its file name in the Search for files or folders box.
Use the Filter feature. You need to select file type (eg: Word documents), date modified or size.
Step 3. Select the files you want to recover and click Recover xxx files. You don’t need to wait for the final scanning result if you find the files need to recover.
Note: MyRecover displays the number of files to be recovered and their full size. You can use this to determine if you have selected all the Shift Deleted files.
Step 4. Select a folder to store files on this unformatted drive and click Select Folder. Then, it will automatically recover files on this drive. Don’t save them to their original location as it may cause data corruption or permanent data loss.
Notes:
After recovering files from USB that needs to be formatted, you can feel free to fix it without losing data. Here are two effective methods below you can try.
Step 1. Press Win + R to open the Run window. Then, type cmd and click OK to access command prompt with administrator priority.
Step 2. Type chkdsk G: /f /r or chkdsk G: /f /r /x and press Enter.
Notes:
You may be able to access your flash drive and data in it. But if it becomes RAW, you may receive error message like “The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.”. If you are experiencing this error, try next method.
Step 1. Press Win + R and type diskpart in the Run window. Then, click OK to open it.
Step 2. Enter the following commands and press Enter after each line.
Your flash drive is now accessible and you can use it to do what you want. But sometimes you may receive “The disk is write protected” error. It's not posing a big threat. Simply add the “attributes disk clear readonly” command after selecting disk.
Dealing with unformatted USB drive is a little tricky if there are important data. To prevent this error from happening again, you can choose to take some precautions. Here are some useful tips you can use:
✍ How to fix a corrupted USB without formatting
You may need to get the possible reasons for a corrupted USB. If it contains bad sectors, you can right-click it and select Properties, then start the error-checking tool. It will attempt to recover bad sectors on this drive.
✍ How to fix external hard drive not formatted error
This error may be caused by abrupt removal, power outage, virus or malware infection, etc. You can force the external hard drive to be formatted with the Diskpart utility.
✍ How do I recover files from a formatted USB drive?
By default, Windows uses the quick format option, which will not erase data on the USB drive completely. You are still able to access it from professional data recovery software like MyRecover and recover all of your data on it.