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Recover a USB drive that is displaying as needing formatting
Some of us may have been asked to format the USB drive before we can use it when tried to access files stored on it at the previous time. Do you have any idea what the proper action is at that moment? Should we format the problematic USB drive? As a matter of fact, it is better not to format the USB drive at once, because we can try to perform data recovery on the unformatted USB drive to restore its original files if they were useful or important.
Case of USB drive needing to be formatted
I was told that disk is not formatted when connected my USB drive to the computer. It seems that I have to format the USB drive if I wanted to open it. But there would be nothing on the formatted USB drive though I can open it. In other words, I can not access any information saved on that USB drive at the original time. Urgently, I need to view some previous files on the USB drive. Is it possible to recover data from a USB drive need to be formatted? -Mo from New York
How to retrieve data from the not formatted USB drive with data recovery software
It is possible to recover data from the USB drive which is in not formatted error, actually. So we should not format the questionable USB drive immediately when asked to do but to perform unformatted USB drive recovery at first with data recovery software. Here are the steps as follows to recover files from unformatted USB drive:
Recover data from usb drive
Preparation: Connect the usb drive and download the data recovery software. Then, you can install and run the data recovery software and select a recovery module.
Scenarios that we can not access data on the USB drive like unformatted problem
It is terrible to be asked to format the USB drive when need to read information stored on it at the previous time. For example, you need to format the disk in drive R before you can use it, and do you want to format it now? We could not access any data either format the drive or do not format it if we did not know how to perform the unformatted USB drive data recovery. Actually, there are some other situations that we can not access data on the USB drive like unformatted case. Here are some of them below:
1. The USB drive raw file system error. Just as the USB drive not formatted case, we can not use the external drive normally until format it if it was raw file system. We need to format the raw USB drive at first and then convert it to file system normal such as rat32, and so on. But we can try to perform files recovery on the raw USB drive to retrieve its previous information with data recovery tool, too. And then we can format the raw drive.
2. The USB drive accidental format problem. We may format the USB drive by mistake sometimes. As we all know, there would be no files or folder on the USB drive after the accidental format. As a result, we could not access any data stored on that USB drive at the original time. But do not worry, as we can also try to restore those previous contents from the formatted USB drive with data recovery program.
3. Power failure. It is dangerous that the computer closed suddenly due to power outage or other reasons when we are reading or writing files stored on the USB drive previously. We may not be able to access those original files after opening the computer again. We can ask the data recovery tool for help to get the lost information back from the exact USB drive in that case.
4. Other situations that we could not view data saved on the USB drive originally.
Storage devices which are supported by data recovery tool
We may meet storage devices not formatted error no matter which kind of memory devices we use. But no matter what they are, we can perform not formatted recovery on those storage devices with data restoration program, such as external hard disk drive, USB flash drive, memory card, hard disk drive, and so on.
Sources and Citations
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