How To Recover Files From a USB Drive That Needs To Be Formatted

What To Do if USB Says It Needs To Be Formatted

A mention that you have to “format a USB drive before use” might not alarm you if we’re talking about a brand-new pen drive lacking a file system. However, it’s a different story if you’ve been using that storage device and have stored important data on it.

Usually, such a prompt indicates file system corruption. Fortunately, you can usually avoid formatting your USB flash drive to fix it. And even when that’s impossible, there are methods to save the files you’ve stored there.

Usually, the optimal way to deal with a USB that says it needs to be formatted consists of the following steps:

Step 1: Stop Using the USB Drive and Check Its Condition

Before you try to fix anything, stop using the USB drive. Don’t save, delete, or move files on it, and don’t accept Windows’ offer to format it. Any new writes can overwrite recoverable data or modify already damaged file system structures.

Next, check how Windows sees the drive. Right-click Start and choose Disk Management, then find your USB and check:

• Does the USB appear there at all?
• Does Windows show its correct capacity?
• Does its partition show as RAW, NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, or Unallocated?
• Does the partition have a drive letter?

It’s also worth ruling out a simpler connection problem. Try another USB port and, if possible, connect the drive to another computer. If you’re dealing with an external USB drive that uses a cable, try another compatible cable as well. This can help rule out a faulty port, adapter, cable, or USB controller.

If Windows assigns the USB a drive letter, you can also open Windows Terminal and run chkdsk X:, replacing X with the correct letter. Without /f or /r, CHKDSK checks the file system and reports what it finds without explicitly requesting repairs. Don’t use its repair options yet, since they modify the file system and may make some files harder to recover. CHKDSK also generally won’t work if the volume is RAW.

If the drive is detected with the correct capacity and remains stable, the next step is to use one of the best USB data recovery apps to get your files out before attempting repairs. Recovery software can scan accessible sectors even when Windows can’t mount the file system normally. Your files may still be recoverable even if they appear corrupted or have outright disappeared. We’ll see how you can do that in the next section.

Save anything you recover to your computer’s internal disk or another healthy external drive, never back to the affected USB. Once you’ve checked that the important recovered files open correctly, you can move on to repairing or formatting the USB.

Step 2: Find the Cause of the Problem

Windows usually shows the format prompt when it can detect your USB drive but can’t correctly read or mount its file system. The actual reason can range from relatively simple file system corruption to a failing flash drive.

Step 3: Fix the Problem

Once your important files have been recovered and you’ve checked that they open correctly, you can deal with the problem itself. What you should do next depends on what you found in the previous step.

For an otherwise healthy USB with logical damage, start with the least destructive option and move on only if it doesn’t work: CHKDSK repair > recreate the partition if necessary > format the USB. Formatting should be the final logical fix, not your first response when Windows asks you to format the drive.

How To Recover Data From the USB Flash Drive That Needs To Be Formatted

There are dozens of data recovery solutions, each with its own advantages and limitations, and no single tool is ideal for every recovery scenario. We know this firsthand because we’ve tested the major data recovery applications.

When a USB flash drive says it needs to be formatted, its file system might be corrupted or unsupported by the current OS. The drive might have bad blocks or be rapidly failing. Thus, the best app to deal with such problems should:

• 💽 Be able to read data from corrupted file systems.
• 📁 Support file systems commonly used on USB drives and recover files by signature when file system metadata is unavailable.
• 👓 Recognize and save files from storage devices that appear unformatted or RAW.
• 🎯 Estimate recovery chances for individual files and allow you to preview important files before recovery.
• 🔍 Be able to create a byte-to-byte image, so you can scan the copy instead of repeatedly accessing a failing USB drive.

That’s how we can safely suggest Disk Drill as the best tool for recovering data from a USB flash drive that needs to be formatted on Windows 11, Windows 10, or macOS. The current Disk Drill 6 requires Windows 10 or 11, while older versions remain available for earlier Windows releases, including Windows XP.

To recover your files from your USB that needs to be formatted with Disk Drill:

1. Visit Disk Drill’s official site and download and install the app. Then, run it.
2. Select the USB drive that Windows says needs to be formatted from Disk Drill’s device list, then click Search for lost data.
3. Disk Drill will ask you to choose between Universal Scan and Advanced Camera Recovery. The latter is intended for recovering fragmented video files from SD cards used in cameras and drones, so for a USB flash drive that needs to be formatted, choose Universal Scan.
4. Allow Disk Drill to complete the scan to maximize the number of files it can find. When done, click Review found items.
5. Use Disk Drill’s filters to narrow the results by criteria such as file type, size, and modification date.
6. Disk Drill lets you preview many types of files (like TXT documents, JPG images, and more) to ensure they’re the ones you want to recover. Click on a file to see a preview on the right of Disk Drill’s window. If the preview pane isn’t visible, click the little eye icon hovering next to the selected file’s name, or right-click on it and select Preview.
7. Select the checkbox next to each file you want to recover, then click Recover.
8. Choose where you want to store the recovered files. If the destination you want isn’t listed, click Choose destination, select another healthy drive, and click Next.
9. When recovery is complete, click Show recovered data in Explorer to open the folder where the recovered files were saved.

If you’ve followed the prompt’s suggestion and have already formatted your USB flash drive, you might still be able to get back the files you’d stored on it. Check our guide on how to recover data from a formatted USB drive.

How To Fix a USB Drive That Needs To Be Formatted

With your precious files safely recovered, you can try one of the following solutions to fix a USB drive that’s asking you to format it. However, as we already stated, it’s best to perform USB flash drive recovery before doing that.

Method 1: Check the USB for File-System Errors and Bad Sectors With CHKDSK

If your USB drive has file system errors or bad sectors, you can check it with Windows’ built-in CHKDSK tool. CHKDSK can fix certain logical file system errors, mark problematic clusters so they’re no longer used, and attempt to recover readable information from bad sectors. However, it can’t physically repair damaged or worn flash memory. Although it’s a command-line tool, you only need a couple of commands to use it.

To check your USB flash drive for bad blocks with CHKDSK and fix them:

1. Open Windows Terminal or Command Prompt as administrator. Then, use the command chkdsk DRIVE_LETTER: /r with the letter assigned to your USB drive. For example, in our case, we used chkdsk e: /r. The /r option locates bad sectors and attempts to recover readable information from them. It also includes the functionality of /f, so CHKDSK will attempt to fix file system errors it finds.
2. CHKDSK requires complete access to a storage device to scan it. If it can’t pull it off with the above command, add the “/x” flag like: chkdsk DRIVE_LETTER: /r /x. The /x option forces the volume to dismount if necessary and invalidates any open handles to it. It also includes the functionality of /f, so make sure you’ve closed any apps or files using the USB before running the command.
3. One of CHKDSK’s shortcomings is that although it can work with corrupted file systems (and try to fix them), it cannot scan storage devices showing up as RAW. If that’s your case, skip CHKDSK and move to one of the following solutions.

Method 2: Reinstall or Update the USB Driver

If your USB drive works normally on another computer but Windows keeps asking you to format it on yours, the problem might be with the USB or storage device driver rather than the drive itself. In this case, it makes sense to deal with the driver before making any further changes to the USB.

To reinstall or update the driver in Windows:

1. Press Windows key + X and select Device Manager.
2. Expand Disk drives, find your USB flash drive, right-click on it, and select Update driver.
3. Select Search automatically for drivers and allow Windows to check for an available driver. If Windows finds one, install it and reconnect your USB drive.
4. If updating the driver doesn’t help, right-click the USB drive in Device Manager again and select Uninstall device. Confirm the removal when prompted.
5. Disconnect the USB drive and restart your computer. Then, reconnect the drive. Windows should detect it and install the required driver again.
6. Check whether you can now open the USB normally without the format prompt.

If the same USB still asks to be formatted on multiple computers after the driver has been reinstalled, the problem probably isn’t limited to Windows on your PC. In that case, move on to the other fixes below rather than repeatedly reinstalling the driver.

Method 3: Format USB Drive

Did you get all the files you need from your USB drive that says it needs to be formatted? Then, you can safely try what your OS suggests and format the device.

You can format a storage device like a USB flash drive under Windows in many ways, but one of the most thorough is using Disk Management.

To format your USB flash drive with Disk Management:

1. Press the Windows key + X and choose Disk Management from the menu that shows up.
2. Locate your flash drive that needs to be formatted, and if it already contains an unusable volume with a file system Windows can’t recognize, right-click on it and choose Delete Volume. Answer positively that you want to delete it. Otherwise, move directly to the next step.
3. Right-click on your flash drive and select that you want to create a New Simple Volume.
4. Go through the steps of the New Simple Volume Wizard and customize the format process’s options. You can safely go with the defaults. Still, it’s best to define a volume label and drive letter you’d prefer to use. Also, since you’re dealing with a potentially problematic storage device, turn off the option to Perform a quick format to have the wizard perform a complete format instead, which will also scan your USB flash drive for errors.
5. After you configure the New Simple Volume Wizard’s settings and reach its final step, click Finish to format your USB flash drive with those settings. Allow the process some time to complete. If the format completes successfully, the new volume should appear in Disk Management and become accessible through its assigned drive letter. Note that a complete format can identify unusable areas and recreate the file system, but it can’t repair physical damage to the flash memory, controller, connector, or other hardware. Unlike a quick format, it also makes subsequent data recovery much less likely.

Method 4: Check the USB for Fake Capacity

Sometimes, a USB flash drive reports much more storage than it actually contains. Everything may seem normal at first, but once you write past its real capacity, files can become corrupted or disappear. A defective flash drive can produce similar results.

Only run a capacity test after you’ve recovered all important files from the USB. Tools designed to verify capacity have to write test data to the drive, which is exactly what you want to avoid while there’s still data to recover.

One option on Windows is H2testw, which writes test files across the available space and then reads them back to check whether the advertised capacity can actually store data.

1. Download H2testw, extract the archive, and run h2testw.exe.
2. Select English, then click Select target and choose your USB flash drive. Double-check the drive letter before continuing.
3. Select all available space so H2testw can check the entire available capacity of the USB.
4. Click Write + Verify and wait for the test to finish. Depending on the capacity and speed of the drive, this can take quite a while.
5. Check the report when the test is complete. If H2testw can write and verify data across the available space without errors, the reported capacity is usable. If only part of the data can be verified or large portions are reported as corrupted, the USB may have fake capacity or defective flash memory.

Don’t confuse a small difference between the advertised and displayed capacity with a fake drive. Some difference is normal because storage manufacturers and operating systems calculate capacity differently. A supposedly 128 GB USB that can actually store only a small fraction of that amount is a different matter.

Method 5: Contact Data Recovery Service

If your USB flash drive is physically damaged, keeps disconnecting, is detected inconsistently, or shows other signs of hardware failure, further DIY attempts may do more harm than good. The same applies if the files on the drive are irreplaceable and you don’t want to risk making their condition worse. In such cases, it’s better to contact a professional data recovery service.

If you’re unsure which one to choose, check our in-depth comparison of the best hard drive recovery services. Although the article focuses primarily on mechanical hard drives, many professional data recovery services also work with USB flash drives and other flash-based storage devices. Before sending your drive in, check that the particular provider explicitly supports USB flash-memory recovery.