How to Recover Files from a Corrupt or Unresponsive USB Flash Drive

Written By Oliver Powell
Approved By Tanushree Chatterjee
Updated on 23 Jan, 2024
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Summary: A USB flash drive may corrupt due to many possible reasons and put your data at risk. However, you don’t need to stress yourself out. You can recover files and folders from a corrupt or unresponsive USB flash drive by understanding the causes and applying the right solutions. To prevent unsuccessful or partial data recovery, use data recovery software.

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A USB flash drives stores all the data in its memory similar to a hard drive. The operating system can, later on, fetch this data when required to be accessed. There can be various issues that may turn your USB drive data inaccessible such as if the drive is unmounted improperly from the port then it can lead to data corruption. Another reason for the stored data corruption can be invalid data in the Master Boot Record (MBR) or Partition Boot Record (PBR) or directory structure on the USB drive.

There can be various other reasons also that may make your USB corrupt or unresponsive. This may happen either due to logical corruption or physical corruption. Some common physical corruption issues are broken stems and connectors, dead drives (no power supply), broken circuit or NAND gate, not recognized, RAW, need to format, not accessible, and Dead Drives, etc.

How to Recover Data from an Inaccessible USB Drive?

To recover data from an inaccessible USB or Flash drive, first, you must be able to identify the exact reason leading to the problem while reading the USB drive.

Reasons of USB corruption or inaccessibility can be because of:

Logical Issues
Physical Issues

Recovering Files from Logical Issues

If there are some logical/ software errors with the USB drive, you can easily fix it. You need to repair the file structure so that the USB flash drive can be used again.

This is how you can scan for logical issues using Windows:

Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your system.
Go to This PC or My Computer>Removable Disk icon.
Right click the Removable Disk Icon and open its Properties.
Click on the Tools tab.
Click Check Now button.
You will be given two check disk options “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”.
Check both checkboxes.
Click Start. This will initiate the scanning process.
Click Close after the scan process is completed.

If you are using Windows 10 or a lower version then carry out the following steps to repair the USB Flash Drive:

Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your system
Go to This PC or My Computer>Removable Disk icon.
Right click the Removable Disk Icon and open its Properties.
Click on the Tools tab.
Click “Rebuild” button
Let the scan process get completed. Close the scan window once it’s completed.
Right-click the icon of the USB flash drive and “Eject”. Then remove the drive from the USB port.

Hopefully, this would help you solve the problem else you can try recovering your USB data using a professional usb drive data recovery tool.

Most data loss issues can be solved by using a professional USB flash drive data recovery software. You can free download such program and install it on your PC to begin scanning the device and recover data. Try Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows that supports scanning of large capacity USB drives and traces inaccessible or formatted files with their attributes and size intact.

How to Recover Files From a Corrupt USB Flash Drive using Stellar Data Recovery Professional?

You may restore your important files, documents, pictures, and more from a corrupt USB flash drive easily with the help of the professional data recovery software i.e. Stellar Data Recovery Professional. This DIY software can retrieve all types of files from a corrupt, inaccessible, or formatted USB drives.

You just need to follow the given steps to get back your data:

1. Download & install Stellar Data Recovery Professional on your Windows PC.

2. From the ‘Select What to Recover’ screen, click Everything or select specified data, and click Next. [See Image 1]

Stellar — *Image 1: Software Home screen displaying “What to Recover” options to allow selection of specific data*

3. On Recover From screen, choose the drive and click Scan. [See Image 2]

4. The scanned results will show on the screen. You may preview the files before recovering them.

5. Select the files you want to restore and click Recover. [See Image 3]

6. Browse and choose the desired location to store your retrieved data. [See Image 4]

[Caution: Do not save the recovered data in the same USB drive. Always use another drive or storage media to save this data to avoid data overwriting.]

7. Click Start-saving and wait till the process is complete. [See Image 5]

Now that you have safely recovered the files from the corrupt USB flash drive, proceed further to fix USB drive corrupt due to logical reasons with the following methods:

Recovering Files from Physical Issues.

If you have a physical error such as a broken connector, circuit board, NAND memory chip of the drive, then the hardware needs to be replaced or repaired. Doing-it-yourself can lead to even worse situations. Better you get help from the experts in this area. You can hire any trusted data recovery company like Stellar Data Recovery which is specialized in recovering data from a physically damaged USB drive.

Below we have mentioned solutions to some common causes of physical issues with your USB drive.

a. Broken Stems and Connectors, & Dead Drives (no power to the USB):

A common indication of the physical errors is some kind of error messages or troubles that you see after connecting the USB. Common error messages are “Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk” or “USB Device Not Recognized or Malfunctioned”, “you need to format the disk before using it”, RAW partition, dead or unresponsive drives, and damaged controller chips and/or circuit boards.

If the silver USB connector is broken or the circuit board is damaged it leads to power supply cut-off to the USB. In such case, soldering and circuit repair is required. It’s not advised to do it yourself as if anything goes wrong, you may permanently lose access to your USB and also it’ll reduce the chances of getting your data successfully recovered or sometimes impossible. To deal with above physical errors, specialized equipment and expertise are required. So better you hand over it to some professional and let them deal with the scenario.

b. Error: “Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk”:

This error occurs when the flash drive controller software becomes corrupt. It can also happen if there are some issues with the NAND memory. The above error can be caused by low grade or generic NAND memory chips. With a frequent number of reads and writes, the state of the drive turns worse.

The error indicates that there is some issue with the NAND memory chips. Most probably the metadata stored in the NAND memory is corrupted or wiped and it can’t be mounted then, thus turning the drive unreadable. Whenever you try to read the drive, you will get the error message “Please insert a disk into Removable Disk”. Also, if you try to check the drive size, it usually shows its capacity as 0 MB. As the device cannot be mounted on windows, if you check Device Manager under Disk drives, a different name for the USB drive will be listed. Also, the Disk Management shows a drive letter with No Media.

In such case, you need to search for manufacturers that perform USB data recovery or flash drive data recovery.

c. Undetectable USB Flash Drive:

You may not be able to use your USB drive because of some problems with the USB port, not with the USB drive. So, before performing any repair of the USB drive also make sure that the USB port is working fine.

To test the USB Port remove the USB drive, reboot your computer, and test the USB drive again. See if it works. It is possible that one port may not be working but all others are working fine. So try each port of your computer. If this doesn’t help, try the USB drive on some other computer.

Sometimes, the Installed copy of Windows OS may not be able to recognize your USB drive due to some USB version limitations.

You can fix an undetectable USB Flash Drive by drive recognition:

Go to Start> Control Panel> Device Manager.
Expand the list next to “Disk Drives” option.
You can see a down facing arrow over your USB drive. Double click it and choose the option to “Enable Device“.
Click Next.
Click ‘Next’ again.
Finally, click Finish.

After this, you need to assign the drive letter. To do so follow given steps:

Go to Start>Control Panel>System and Security>Administrative Tools then choose “Computer Management”.
Right, click the USB drive. Select the option to “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.
Click ADD and then click OK.
Now, assign any available drive letter to the USB drive by clicking it.
Right, click the USB to designate it as “Online”.

If this fails, Windows automated “Fix it For Me” service can resolve the issue. If this also doesn’t help, then modifying the system registry will help you tackle the issue. We wouldn’t suggest you go for this option as it may harm your OS.

Conclusion

A USB Drive can become corrupt or unresponsive by any way of Logical or Physical issues. However, you can always securely use a professional USB data recovery tool like Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to recover files after your USB Drive becomes Corrupt or Unresponsive.

In case of any query, do let us know in the comment section below!

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About The Author

Oliver Powell

Oliver Powell is a Data Recovery Expert at Stellar®. He is a passionate technology blogger & content creator, He explores new applications and has deep understanding of data recovery. He has experience in Windows & Mac data recovery domain.

246 comments

Arijit Bhadra says:

October 14, 2017 at 6:51 pm

Actually Sir I have I have tried to connect my usb storage drive via OTG cable to my phone. It took 3 min to detect that an usb drive has been connected I guess, but the other usb drive r working fine with it. After 3 mins notification shows that “Damaged USB storage..try reformatting it”
Bt neither in my file explorer nor in smart manager(Samsung mob) there was any tresses of USB storage.
Will u help me to fix it? And before that, I was getting dumb speed in my Pendrive.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  November 6, 2017 at 10:00 am
  
  Hello Arijit,
  
  Please try these two common fixes
  
  1) Try to change the OTG Cable.
  2) Also, try to connect with the working PC Machine.
  
  Reply
amit kumar pandey says:

October 2, 2017 at 5:21 pm

Can anyone help me…i had lost my all photos from my 32 gb pendrive.. How can i recover it…when i plugged the drive in computer it works better but when i plugged out this then it shows empty second time… How can i recover my all photos..please help me

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  October 4, 2017 at 11:23 am
  
  It seems a case of unsafe ejection of pen drive and as a result, the pen drive might have gone corrupt. You can use our Stellar Photo Recovery software to recover your lost photos.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Reply
Harsha says:

September 26, 2017 at 2:04 am

Hey there,, my issue is I have half formated my external hard disk (directly unplugged external hard disk in formatting process).
If I reconnect my external hard disk it’s showing a pop to format external hard disk which has all my data ,, can someone help me out.

The scenario was I wanted to format my pen drive instead I did it for my external hard disk which is connected to lappy.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  September 26, 2017 at 3:43 am
  
  Hello Harsha,
  
  Unplugging a working hard disk is seriously a “NO”, as it will impact the health of hard drive and may reduce its lifespan.
  
  Please try to connect your infected hard disk in some other working desktop/laptop and check its visibility.If it was visible then you are lucky.
  
  Otherwise, We recommend to download the below-mentioned software and try to see the lost files in the preview section.
  
  As you wish to recover the files so we recommend you to try the demo version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional from the below-mentioned link:
  
  Download Link
  
  After installing the software, please follow the below mentioned steps to create an image of the drive as your drive contains bad sectors:
  
  1. Run Stellar Windows Data Recovery software.
  2. From Select What to Recover screen, select the type of data i.e. Everything, Documents, Folders & Emails or Multimedia Files, you want to recover. Click on Next.
  3. On Select Location screen, select Recover from Disk Images from Other Locations and click on Scan button.
  4. Now select Create Image option and click Next.
  5. From Create Image screen, select the drive or partition for which you wish to create an image.
  6. To create an image of the entire drive or partition click on Start Imaging.
  7. In ‘Create Media Image to Save’ dialog box, locate the destination where image file should be saved. In the File Name text box, type name. Click on Save.
  8. Click on Scan to start the recovery process.
  
  Reply
Rupesh says:

September 20, 2017 at 9:23 am

My pen drive is not opening. Message which I received shows to format before use… Sir, it contains important data… It sudden stopped in Internet cafe while pasting the document and suddenly removed by the individual before properly ejecting..

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  September 21, 2017 at 3:07 am
  
  Hello Rupesh,
  
  Sorry to hear about your pen drive.
  
  As you wish to recover the files so we recommend you to try the demo version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional from the below-mentioned link:
  
  If the desired files are available in the preview section of the software, then you need to purchase the software to save the file.
  
  Download Link
  
  After installing the software, please follow the below-mentioned steps to create an image of the drive as your drive contains bad sectors:
  
  1. Run Stellar Windows Data Recovery software.
  2. From Select What to Recover screen, select the type of data i.e. Everything, Documents, Folders & Emails or Multimedia Files, you want to recover. Click on Next.
  3. On Select Location screen, select Recover from Disk Images from Other Locations and click on Scan button.
  4. Now select Create Image option and click Next.
  5. From Create Image screen, select the drive or partition for which you wish to create an image.
  6. To create an image of the entire drive or partition click on Start Imaging.
  7. In ‘Create Media Image to Save’ dialog box, locate the destination where image file should be saved. In the File Name text box, type name. Click on Save.
  8. Click on Scan to start the recovery process.
  
  Reply
varun says:

September 19, 2017 at 3:35 pm

hello sir I recently broke my usb case in two parts by istake and te chip is intact and I wanted to retrieve data from it but I cant put it in my computer because the usb case has gone
would like som help on that

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  September 21, 2017 at 2:49 am
  
  Hello Varun
  
  Since it clearly seems to be a physical damage case of your pen drive.
  
  If you consider your data as important and want to recover it securely, I recommend connecting with our support team by dropping a mail at support[@]stellarinfo.com
  
  Reply
Maseri says:

September 17, 2017 at 11:25 am

Hello Jyoti Parakash
My usb has fulled storage and there will 15 songs shown. But other 7gb cannot be shown.
If I delete these file it will delete but if i format this usb then here shows an error and these 15 songs were recoverd
So what can i do.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  September 19, 2017 at 3:25 am
  
  Hello Maseri,
  
  We recommend to download the below-mentioned software and try to see the lost files in the preview section.
  
  If you wish to recover the files so we recommend you to try the demo version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional from the below-mentioned link:
  
  Download Link
  
  After installing the software, please follow the below-mentioned steps to create an image of the drive as your drive contains bad sectors:
  
  1. Run Stellar Windows Data Recovery software.
  2. From Select What to Recover screen, select the type of data i.e. Everything, Documents, Folders & Emails or Multimedia Files, you want to recover. Click on Next.
  3. On Select Location screen, select Recover from Disk Images from Other Locations and click on Scan button.
  4. Now select Create Image option and click Next.
  5. From Create Image screen, select the drive or partition for which you wish to create an image.
  6. To create an image of the entire drive or partition click on Start Imaging.
  7. In ‘Create Media Image to Save’ dialog box, locate the destination where image file should be saved. In the File Name text box, type name. Click on Save.
  8. Click on Scan to start the recovery process.
  
  Reply
Jack says:

August 29, 2017 at 8:34 pm

I have a dilemma I believe my thumb drive is physically damaged. I plug it in and it is not seen by windows at all…even in the administrative device manager which can locate drives that are not partitioned. The device is not physically broken as per a visual inspection. When I plug it in it gets hot to the touch but no flashing light comes on. Is there any diagnostic than can be done if it is a physical damage issue like a broken circuit?

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  September 5, 2017 at 10:31 am
  
  Hi Jack,
  
  Kindly refer this link Read More
  
  Reply
Adnan says:

August 24, 2017 at 12:58 am

Steller Data Recovery is also not detecting the flash drive.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  August 28, 2017 at 3:30 am
  
  Hello Adnan,
  
  Please try these common fixes once.
  
  1) Try plugging in the flash drive into another USB port. If it works that means the problem is with your system’s USB port.
  2) Try connecting the flash drive to another computer.
  
  Reply
Rostislav says:

August 16, 2017 at 10:58 am

Hey, unfortunately, none of your suggestments is working in my case.I have USB flash drive.I forgot to eject it and afterward, when I put it back into the computer it says that the file in the flash drive is corrupted.After I tried all of the methods you suggested I end up with a bunch of files with strange names like w6╛ф;┌.╡юО.Then I try with your program that u suggest downloading and after I done all the scans (including the deep one, or whatever its name was) it turns out that all of it was just a waste of time cause in order to recover the files I have to pay almost a hundred.
However, all I want to do is just to delete the files so my flash gets empty and I would be able to use its full space capacity.
Please help me out with this issue.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  August 21, 2017 at 6:32 am
  
  Hello Rostislav,
  
  You can scan your drive and check the possibility of recovery by checking the preview of the files. If no preview is available then files are corrupted and they cannot be recovered.
  
  If you do not want to recover the data and wish to delete you files and folders then we have BitRaser for File software which can wipe the data from the drive.
  
  You may check the details of BitRaser for File from the below-mentioned link:
  
  Read More
  
  You may write to our support team on support@stellarinfo.com for any further query.
  
  Regards
  Team Stellar Data Recovery
  
  Reply
Dave says:

August 15, 2017 at 4:00 pm

Will your software uninstall cleanly? Or will it run in a VM? I don’t want to install anything on my machine that will be a legacy. I am recovering files for a friend from their hard drive but once recovered I wnat to make sure your software is cleanly uninstalled including all registry keys and hidden settings. Or will “Revo” uninstaller cleanly uninstall it?
Gratefull for a fast reply as I am using someone elses computer for an hour or so,

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  August 21, 2017 at 6:33 am
  
  Hello Dave,
  
  We would like to inform you that our software is a read only application and it cannot make any changes to your hard drive or system. This software can be uninstalled easily however it doesn’t support VM. You may use any uninstaller to remove the registry entries. You may take assistance from our support team for software related queries by writing on support@stellarinfo.com.
  
  Reply