The unreadable USB flash drive or pen drive is usually with a corruption issue. When a flash drive becomes unreadable, you need to determine first whether it results from a logical corruption or physical corruption. This page has answers to how to fix unreadable USB drive and how to recover data from an unreadable flash drive. The data recovery program you're going to use is EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.
USB flash drive corruption would result in inaccessibility and unreadability issues. When your USB flash drive becomes unreadable, first of all, you need to understand the causes of the damage and take different actions to fix the corrupted and unreadable USB flash drive.
You can try to determine how seriously your storage device has been corrupted by observing symptoms and using disk check tools to run for errors. Usually, it's about Master Boot Record (MBR), Partition Boot Record (PBR), or directory structure corruption that comes with error messages. In this case:
While some common physical corruption issues are from broken stems and connectors, dead drives, broken circuits or NAND gates, etc. In this case:
One of the most common causes of USB corruption is not properly disconnecting the device from the computer. When your device is removed from your computer or laptop, there is no safe eject of the device first. So, you should plug and unplug your device correctly every time. In addition, there are many useful measures in the table below.
| Scenarios | Solutions |
| 🔃USB corrupted | Recover data from unreadable USB flash drive |
| 👨💻USB data recovery failed | Use data recovery services to recover data and fix corrupted USB |
| 💿USB not readable | Check disk errors and repair the corrupted file system |
| 💾RAW USB | Format the USB drive or pen drive |
| 🚩USB device not showing | Create a new volume on the USB flash drive |
| 🙁Virus attack | Install genuine antivirus software to remove viruses from your USB flash drive |
Before you start to repair the corrupted, unreadable, or unresponsive USB flash drive, it's highly recommended that you back up all your present data on the USB drive first. However, most people did not create a regular backup until it's not accessible at the moment.
Since you're not allowed to open an unreadable flash drive, the only way to fetch data is to find some professional USB file recovery software to help. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard supports data recovery in most commonplace scenarios. For example, it supports RAW drive recovery, lost partition recovery, and formatted recovery.
Download it for free, install and run it like a breeze, and follow the guide below to recover data from USB when Windows cannot read it.
Step 1. Run USB Data Recovery Software
Connect the USB drive or pen drive to your computer and launch EaseUS USB data recovery software on your PC. Select the drive which is labeled as a External drives, and click "Scan" to start looking for lost files.
Step 2. Scan and Search Lost Files on a USB Drive
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard will thoroughly scan your USB flash drive/pen drive and find all your lost data on it. When the scan process completes, use the Filter feature to find wanted files.
Step 3. Restore All Lost Files from USB
A double-click will allow you to preview the files. Select the target files to restore and click "Recover" to save them to a secure location on your PC or other external storage devices.
Video Tutorial: Restoring Files from a Corrupted USB Flash Drive
Be a part of the tutorial! Share this useful file recovery software on your social media and let others know your thoughts.
Sometimes, you will encounter situations where you cannot recover data with software. Don't worry. You can still ask the experts for help. EaseUS data recovery services help you quickly recover data from inaccessible USB drives and fix the RAW drive.
Consult with EaseUS data recovery experts for one-on-one manual recovery service. We could offer the following services after a FREE diagnosis.
Windows has an in-built repair tool, and it's able to scan common error issues on a disk drive and hopefully repair the found errors.
Step 1. Connect the flash drive to your computer system. Open My Computer/This PC.
Step 2. Right-click the Removable Disk representing your flash drive, then choose "Properties".
Step 3. Navigate to the "Tools" tab, and click "Check". Select the "Scan drive" option.
Step 4. Wait for the Error Checking tool to scan and repair your USB drive. If any error is found, you can proceed with the wizard to fix it.
Step 5. Safely eject the flash drive. Re-connect it again. See if it's now readable.
Another way to make a corrupted or unreadable USB drive work again is to format it:
Step 1. Press Windows + R keys to bring up the Run box. Type: diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
Step 2. In Disk Management, locate the unreadable flash drive, and check its disk information. If it's shown as a RAW file system, right-click on it and choose "Format".
Step 3. Choose a file system like NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT and perform a quick format checkbox.
No luck with the former methods? Take it easy. Proceed with this method. The Disk Management tool will help you delete and create a new partition on the corrupted USB drive and restore it to normal.
Step 1. In Disk Management, locate the corrupted USB drive, and right-click on it, select "Delete Volume".
Step 2. Confirm to delete the volume on the USB drive by following the onscreen guide.
Step 3. After the USB drive has become the unallocated space, right-click the unallocated space and select "New Simple Volume".
Step 4. Then Rename the drive, set the file system to NTFS or FAT32 on the USB drive, and follow onscreen guidelines to create a new partition on the USB drive. After this, you will be able to use the USB drive normally again.
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When a USB flash drive is infected with a virus, its file system will receive corruption, and it becomes corrupted and unreadable. What's worse, if you link a virus-infected USB stick to your computer, it will also be infected, causing more serious data security problems.
Therefore, be sure to install genuine anti-virus software for your external disk and computer daily anti-virus.
Why is your USB suddenly unreadable and corrupted? Get additional help here.
1. What causes a USB to be corrupted?
2. Can a corrupt USB Be Fixed?
Yes, you can repair a USB drive with simple solutions:
3. How do I recover a corrupted USB?
You can recover corrupted files from USB with these steps:
4. How do I uncorrupt my USB?
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