
How to Repair a USB Flash Drive
- Plug your flash drive into your computer. The flash drive should fit into one of the rectangular ports on your PC's housing. If you're encountering ...
- Press ⊞ Win + E to open File Explorer . This opens File Explorer on Windows. You can use File Explorer to navigate to your flash drive.
- Right-click your flash drive's icon. This displays a menu to the right of the drive.
- Click Properties. It's at the bottom of the menu that appears when you right-click a drive.
- Click the Tools tab. This option is at the top of the Properties window.
How to fix a corrupted USB drive on Windows 10?
To fix corrupted USB, follow the steps below:
- Connect USB drive to PC.
- Open the property of USB drive. Open Computer or This PC, right-click Removable Disk and open its Properties.
- Check and recover corrupted USB drive. Click on Tools, tick the Check Now option and check Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of ...
- Click Start to begin the scan process. ...
How do I fix a broken USB?
In Windows, follow these steps:
- Insert the USB device into the PC or laptop.
- Open the file manager.
- Right-click the entry for the RAW drive.
- Click Format.
- Select either FAT32 or NTFS from the File system drop-down.
- Give the device a name (label).
- Click Start.
How to repair a broken USB stick or flash drive?
If the PCB is fine, you could do this:
- Take an old USB cable, cut the B end off, and strip the newly exposed wires.
- Take a soldering iron and carefully solder the wires on. ...
- Make sure all the connections are not dry joints and that they do not bridge.
- After all the wires are soldered, add a ton of hot glue over it. ...
- Plug it into your friend’s computer and cross your fingers.
How do you fix an USB flash drive?
How to repair the USB flash drive on Windows 10
- Click on the “My Computer- Removable Disk” icon. Then right-click the “Properties” tab to the Removable Disk icon.
- Scan; let the computer do the task of scanning and restoring previously corrupt files.
- Finally, right-click the USB pen drive and click on eject to safely disconnect the drive from the computer system.

Can a damaged flash drive be repaired?
Finally, if the flash drive won't work because of physical damage, you should take it into a tech department or data recovery professional; if that's not possible, you may be able to fix it yourself by soldering the broken USB drive's circuitry to a working USB cable.
How do I fix an unreadable USB?
Another way to make a corrupted or unreadable USB drive work again is to format it:Press Windows + R keys to bring up the Run box. Type: diskmgmt. ... In Disk Management, locate the unreadable flash drive, check its disk information. ... Choose a file system like NTFS, FAT32 or exFAT and the Perform a quick format checkbox.
How do I fix a corrupted USB?
4. How do I recover files from a corrupted flash drive?Insert the USB stick into the computer's system port.Launch EaseUS USB data recovery software on your PC.Click the USB and click Scan.After the scan, choose the target files and click "Recover" to save them to a secure location on your PC.
How does a USB become corrupted?
A USB drive can get corrupted due to varied reasons, from sudden power failure, improper operation, unplugged directly without ejecting to USB failures like file catalog corruption, etc. Usually, you will be told to re-format that USB drive in order to make it usable again.
How do you reset a USB drive?
Find and select your USB flash drive. Click the "Erase" tab in the window to show options for erasing the flash drive. You'll have to choose a file system (such as FAT32 or HFS+) to format on the new USB drive, as well as choosing a name for the drive. Click Erase to erase the drive's contents and reformat it.
How to Fix Corrupted USB Flash/Pen Drive Using Cmd
CMD is your first choice for damaged USB flash drive, and pen drive recovery. Requiring no formatting, it allows you to fix a corrupted USB drive w...
How to Repair Corrupted USB Pen Drive/Flash Drive Without Formatting
If the above method is not workable, just carry out the following steps to repair the damaged USB flash drive without formatting and rescue your da...
Fix Corrupted USB Pen Drive Or Flash Drive Using EaseUS USB Repair Tool
If all the above solutions are failing to help, you can try this last way to repair corrupted USB flash drive without losing data using EaseUS file...
Can you recover files from a broken flash drive?
Yes, broken USB flash drive data recovery is possible using either the built-in Windows or macOS tools or a third-party solution. To do this with D...
Can a damaged flash drive be repaired?
That depends on how badly it’s broken. If it’s just a case or port issue, it’s possible. If the circuit board is broken, the likelihood of repair i...
How do you fix a physically broken flash drive?
How to fix a broken USB flash drive will depend on how badly it’s damaged. If necessary, follow these steps: Find an old USB cable Strip the newly-...
How much does it cost to repair a broken flash drive?
That depends on the extent of the damage. This can cost you anywhere from $150.00 to reattach broken pads to a connector to $300-$500 for “chip-off...
Why is my USB stick not working?
Your USB stick might not be working because of a damaged file system, missing device drivers, malware or virus, or a broken circuit board.
How do you fix a USB that won't open?
You can set the RAW partition as active with the following steps: Press the WIN+R key combination. When prompted, type diskmgmt.msc. Right-click on...
Why can't I see my USB drive in Windows 10?
Most likely the device has been physically damaged, the partition table is corrupt, or the drive has become RAW.
What to do if your USB is broken?
Or, you can try and fix the broken USB drive by yourself.
How to fix USB error?
If your USB can still be detected or recognized by your computer, you can try to fix the logical error by using the native Windows tool, CMD or third-party fixing tool. Then you will be able to access your USB.
How to find files on USB flash drive?
Step 1. Connect USB flash drive to your computer. Open EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and hover on USB device. Click "Scan" button to start looking for lost files on PC. Step 2. When the scan completes, you can apply the "Filter" feature or the click the search box to quickly find the lost files from USB. Step 3.
How to fix a corrupted file system?
Step 1. DOWNLOAD EaseUS CleanGenius on your computer and complete the installation. Step 2. Run the software. Click "Optimization", and then choose "File Showing" . Step 3. Select the drive with a corrupted file system. Tick the "Check and fix file system error" option and click "Execute".
How to fix chkdsk?
So, perform data recovery in advance, and then continue with the CMD method. Step 1: Plug in your USB flash drive or pen drive to your computer. Step 2: Go to the Start menu and type cmd in the search box.
Why is my USB flashing weird?
Many strange USB issues usually results from a corrupted driver. You need to reinstall a new driver by following the steps.
What to do if you have a logical error on a pen drive?
After you have checked and fixed the logical error on the pen drive, you can scan your device to see if any data was lost in the process. EaseUS file recovery software can search for any lost files on the device and, if there are any, recover them.
How do USB sticks get damaged?
One of the most common paths to an unreadable card is when it’s been removed from a computer or laptop, without first safely ejecting the device. Do this once or twice, and you might be lucky.
How to recover data from a broken flash drive?
To recover data from a RAW USB device, you have options. One of the best options for broken flash drive data recovery is to make use of third-party software. One such tool is Disk Drill. Let’s find out how to get files off a broken flash drive with this tool.
What to do if USB isn't showing up?
If your USB device isn’t showing up, you can fix this by inserting the USB device and creating a new volume on the device. Do by following these steps:
Why is my USB drive unreadable?
Your USB drive might be unreadable, because of the assigned letter drive. To remedy this, insert the SD/USB device and change the drive letter by following these steps: Press the Windows key + X key combination. Click Disk Management.
Why is my USB stick not working?
Your USB stick might not be working because of a damaged file system, missing device drivers, malware or virus, or a broken circuit board.
What is a data recovery specialist?
Data recovery specialists are remarkably adept at salvaging data, even from disks and devices that might seem too far gone for recovery. If you don’t have anyone in your city who specializes in data recovery, you can also take the task to an online service. There are quite a few such services, such as the CleverFiles Data Recovery Center, that can help you recover data from a seemingly impossible situation.
What happens if your USB port is bent?
If your USB port is bent or broken and you cannot manually repair it, you’ll probably have to buy a new PC (if it’s the PC port) or USB device (if it’s the USB device that’s bent or broken).
How to fix a chip in a sock?
Take a soldering iron and carefully solder the wires on. If you have an old sock or something similar, I suggest putting that over the main chip in case the iron slips so the chip is not damaged. It is not foolproof, but it is better than nothing.
Can you let your friend near a USB drive?
First of all, do not let your friend near a USB drive ever again! Apart from that, soldering it is about your only option.
Is the USB connector fixable?
All the answers so far that have said it was fixable have focused on re-soldering the USB connector. While this could work, the connector is likely broken, finding a replacement is hard, and soldering a connector like that is not so easy for beginners.
How to repair a thumb drive?
In cases where the connectors have been damaged, it takes an experienced electrical engineer to repair a thumb drive. Engineers use a soldering iron to carefully resolder the damaged connection between a flash drive and its USB connectors. If done wrong, the data files on your drive can become even harder to recover.
How to recover data from a bent USB drive?
To recover the data from a bent USB flash drive, our flash drive repair experts focus on fixing the tip of the USB drive. In other words, we need to repair the damaged USB plug connection. This is difficult and delicate work in itself, and can easily be done wrong by an inexperienced data recovery novice, making data recovery more difficult. But we don’t have data recovery novices tackling these cases—we have data recovery experts with tens of thousands of hours of experience between them.
How many pins are in thumb drive?
Thumb drives removed from their casing for USB flash drive recovery Top: The 48-pin NAND flash memory chip mounted to the thumb drive’s PCB. Bottom: The controller chip mounted to the underside of the PCB
What happens if you can't access thumb drive?
When you can’t access the data files on your thumb drive through its broken USB connector, there is a “Plan B.”. However, Plan B just happens to involve removing the heat pads, then the NAND chip itself, and piecing its data files together. It’s hard work, requires specialized tools and knowledge, the file recovery process is slow, ...
Why is my USB drive bent?
A bent USB drive is another very common occurrence, often caused by people sitting down and bending the drive in their pocket. The next time the customer goes to use the drive with their PC or Mac, they discover the media is damaged.
Is there a moving part in a USB flash drive?
There are no moving parts in your USB flash drive, which is a massive point in its favor for resilience, as it doesn’t have to worry about things like read/write head crashes and platter scratches. All of the data lives on a NAND chip soldered onto the device’s PCB. The flash memory equivalent to platter damage and rotational scoring would be if the NAND chip became cracked or shattered by a heavy impact or crushing force, which is very rare.
Can Gillware repair a broken USB flash drive?
We approach this fix a little differently; instead, Gillware can repair the physically broken USB flash connector, repairing the physical damage between the USB connection and the circuit board connector on the PCB. It’s painstaking work to repair USB drives, but it’s something we do to make sure our customers are happy.
How to Fix Corrupted USB Flash Drive using CMD?
Follow the next steps to fix the corrupted USB drive with CMD. On this solution, you need to enter the CMD commands and Windows will format the corrupted USB flash drive.
Why is my USB drive corrupted?
There can be many reasons that make the USB flash drive got corrupt or unreadable, and the data on the drive can not be accessed. Improperly plug out the drive from the USB port, it can lead to data corruption, the directory structure on the USB drive, MBR or PBR can because of the data corruption. The common logical and physical corruption issues ...
What Cause the Flash Drive Become Unreadable/Corrupted?
The USB flash drive is like the hard drive to store all data files on it. There can be many reasons that make the USB flash drive got corrupt or unreadable, and the data on the drive can not be accessed. Improperly plug out the drive from the USB port, it can lead to data corruption, the directory structure on the USB drive, MBR or PBR can because of the data corruption.
How to Recover Data from a Corrupted Flash Drive?
Recoverit Data Recovery software is a powerful flash drive recovery program, it helps you access the corrupted drive and retrieve your data back. It can easily and effectively recover lost data from corrupted or damaged USB flash drive, download and install the USB drive data recovery on the computer and follow the next steps to retrieve your data back.
How to connect a corrupted USB drive to a computer?
Step 2. Right-click on the Start button, and click Command Prompt (Admin), then go to the CMD window. Step 3. Type the code diskpart and press Enter. All your device connected to your computer will be displayed. Step 4.
What happens if a USB flash drive is corrupted?
When the USB flash drive becomes corrupted or inaccessible in Windows computer, it shows the drive is not accessible, the files or directory is corrupted and unreadable. But no worry, you can follow this page and fix the USB drive using CMD and recover your data with Recoverit Data Recovery software.
Why is my flash drive unreadable?
What Cause the Flash Drive Become Unreadable/Corrupted. The USB flash drive is like the hard drive to store all data files on it. There can be many reasons that make the USB flash drive got corrupt or unreadable, and the data on the drive can not be accessed. Improperly plug out the drive from the USB port, it can lead to data corruption, ...
How to repair a USB drive?
Step 1: find your usb drive in the file explorer, right click it, and select “properties”. Check bad sectors step 1. Step 2: choose “tools” module, and click error-checking option, then choose “scan and repair drive” to repair the corrupted usb. Check bad sectors step2. And then confirm the repairing.
How much does it cost to repair a USB drive?
The price is usually vary from $20-$400, it depends on the extend of damage.
How to replace a flash drive with a USB?
Step 1: Run CMD. Step 2: Type “chkdsk /X /f USB drive letter”, for example ' chkdsk /x/f h ' (when h is the drive letter of your flash drive that you need to replace h with your flash stick drive letter in your computer) and press enter. Run cmd instruction.
How to change the letter of a USB drive?
Instructions of changing the drive letter: Step1: connect your usb pen drive to the computer, right click “my computer”, click “manage “option. Change drive letter step 1. Step 2: you can see an unknown device in the drive list, right click it and choose to update drive software. Change drive letter step2.
Why is my USB port unreadable?
When an usb pen drive is used for a long time, the usb interface may be unreadable for computer, it is probably because the usb port get loose, or there are some dusts in the usb port, you can use a swab to clean or go to the store to do some adjustment or try more times.
What to do if USB is not recognized?
If your usb drive is not recognized by windows, you can also try to update your drive.
Why is my USB drive blank?
Sometimes usb can be unrecognized due to virus infection or system crash , or your usb drive can be detected but the computer says it is blank. Then you need to recover your data first and format the usb to repair it.
What Are USB Repair Tools?
Multiple solutions fall under the somewhat vague term “USB repair tools”. The term covers:
How to protect a USB flash drive?
To ensure the safety of the data in your USB flash drive, you should first take a complete backup of its contents, even if it’s unusable in its current state. That’s because if the problem’s source is your USB flash drive’s hardware (for example, its memory chips), more use translates to more wear and intensifies the problem. Having a backup will ensure that even if the situation gets any worse, you will still have options to recover your precious data.
How to check for errors on USB flash drive?
Use chkdsk DRIVE LETTER /r /f , where DRIVELETTER is the one of your USB flash drive, to check for and try to repair any errors on it.
How to scan a USB drive for lost files?
Select your USB flash drive from Disk Drill’s device list. Ensure “All recovery methods” is selected from the pulldown menu on the right. Click on “Search for lost data” to scan your device for files.
What is disk drill?
Disk Drill is a powerful but straightforward file recovery application worth adding to your USB stick repair utilities collection. We’ll zip through it and use it solely for recovering files from a non-accessible USB stick. Still, you can find out more about Disk Drill in our comprehensive review of this fantastic app.
Why is my USB stick write protected?
Is your USB stick the official media where software like Microsoft’s Windows 10 came on? Then, it might be write-protected on purpose to avoid accidental deletion of the operating system’s installation files.
Where is my USB drive in Ubuntu?
If your USB flash drive is accessible under Ubuntu, you’ll see it listed on the left, under a list of popular locations. Click on it to “Mount and open” it.
How to fix a corrupted USB?
If not, you can try the following methods. But before that, you had better connect your SD card or pen drive to another computer to check if it is the computer itself that causes the issue. Or it could be possible that the port is damaged, so try another different USB port. If no problem is found, then check out the 4 technical methods.
How to check if a pen drive is corrupted?
1. Download the freeware. Install and run it. Right click a partition of the corrupted disk and choose “Check Partition” under “Advanced” tab. 2. For RAW pen drive and SD card, you can only choose the last method to check whether there are bad sectors on the selected partition. 3.
Why pen drive or SD card get corrupted?
Before we discuss how to repair a corrupted pen drive or SD card in Windows 11/10/8/7, you might want to know what causes their damages.
How to check a pen drive for disk errors?
To do so, double click “My Computer/This PC” to open File Explorer, then right-click the damaged pen drive or SD card, click “Properties” and go to “Tools”, finally hit on “Check” to scan this drive for file system errors.
How to remove SD card from PC?
And hit on “Device Manager” on the left side. 2. Double-click “Disk Drives” in the given list. Right-click on your pen drive or SD card. 3. Click “Uninstall” and click “OK”. 4. Remove your pen drive/SD card and restart your PC. Then connect them back again and your computer will detect it.
What happens if you plug in a pen drive?
If you violently and frequently plug in/out the SD card or pen drive on many different platforms, they will be more likely to get damaged. ▸ Virus or malware infection. If you download any malware onto your computer accidentally, it will contract your data stored in the SD card/pen drive.
How to reinstall SD card?
In this case, you can reinstall it by some simple steps. 1. Right-click “My Computer/This PC”. Click “Manage”. And hit on “Device Manager” on the left side. 2. Double-click “Disk Drives” in the given list.
