Partition Recovery™

An expert tool for recovering lost partitions

TRY IT FREEVer 8.16, Win BUY NOWFrom $39.95 ~~139.95~~

Last updated: Aug 26, 2021

Recover a Formatted USB Drive

Your USB drive(pen drive) can be formatted accidentally or intentionally like any other device.

But what if you need to undo format?

How to restore formatted USB disk? What can you do to recover data from formatted pen drive?

In this article, you will find out all about that problem.

Are you ready? Let's read!

Formatting: what happened to my USB drive?

Formatting a USB drive and its data is essentially a cleaning of the visible file space with loss of access to the files.

But do not worry; this does not mean that the data has disappeared forever, as many users used to think.

First, it all depends on which formatting mode was selected: fast or full. So, let's look at this in more detail and discuss the problem. Most often, quick formatting is recommended. It takes much less time than a full one, but the result is the same. During quick formatting of a pen drive, a boot sector and an empty file system table are written to the drive. All the space of the drive is marked as unused.

Moreover, with this formatting, recovering data from the formatted pen drive is not difficult.

Full formatting means that not only are a boot sector and an empty file system table written to the drive, but all sectors of the disk are overwritten with zeros. It also checks the pen drive for bad sectors and marks it to not use them in the future. Accordingly, it will take much more time and, unfortunately, it will become much more difficult to restore files on a formatted USB drive. Nevertheless, by all means, it worth a try.

The main piece of advice for restoring a formatted USB drive

Do not create, and do not add any data to the drive. And generally, be careful with any action on a randomly formatted USB. If this advice is not followed, sooner or later data will be overwritten, which means that your files (photos, videos, email, and other documents) will be lost forever.

Recover data from a formatted pen drive right now!

Based on the above, the longer you wait to do data recovery from a formatted flash drive, the less likely it is the data will be restored. Therefore, use DiskInternals Partition Recovery as soon as possible.

This is the best professional application for recovering files, with very few competitors. You can download the free trial version of DiskInternals Partition Recovery right now, see it in action and then buy a license and license key for this product. This utility works with all versions of Windows. In addition, you can recover files of absolutely any type and size.

DiskInternals Partition Recovery supports the following file systems: FAT12, NTFS, HFS, ReFS, UFS, Reiser4, etc.

The recovery wizard makes working with the application a pleasure. It does not require any expertise, even if you are recovering a formatted pen drive for the first time. For even more convenience, you can use the detailed guide below.

Guide: how to recover files from a formatted USB drive

1. Download and run the trial version of DiskInternals Partition Recovery to restore your formatted USB drive’s files.

2. The recovery wizard will start automatically.

3. Select a formatted USB drive from the list of disks. Next, select the recovery mode: Reader, Fast Recovery (Uneraser) or Full Recovery (the latter is recommended).

4. The scanning may take some time.

5. Preview. For this action, right-click on the desired file and select "Preview in a new window." This feature is completely free for you. Recovery will occur automatically.

6. Preservation. Buy a license and enter the license key. No rescan and no reinstall required! Choose a new place to save the recovered files; it’s recommended that this not be the formatted USB drive. This is to prevent data rewriting.

What about backup?

Are you like those enterprising users who periodically back up important data? If so, now is the time to find your copies and get the necessary information from there! Regular backups are very useful; it is especially good at protecting against sudden virus attacks, system errors, and of course the human factor.

An even better option is a disk image that will allow you to restore the system in a specific saved form. And you can create a disk image for free and very quickly using DiskInternals Partition Recovery! The application does not require you to do anything other than installing it on a computer. Therefore, do not even doubt that this is the best tool to protect not only data but also the entire contents of your system!

In this case, you will no longer need to worry about recovering a formatted USB drive!

“I accidentally formatted my USB!” — overview of these situations

Most often this is the result of the most common following situations:

You accidentally formatted your USB drive
A virus attack occurred forced you to format the disk
For some reason, you changed the USB drive file system. In this case, formatting is required.
System errors will also inevitably lead to formatting

If you do not have a saved backup of your data, a randomly formatted USB becomes a problem. But, if you read this article, it won’t be a problem for you. And the statement “I accidentally formatted my flash drive“ is already a problem that can be solved!

Good luck!

FREE DOWNLOADVer 8.16, Win BUY NOWFrom $39.95 ~~139.95~~

Please rate this article.

4.725 reviews