how to recover my files from a USB flash drive that is asking to be formatted?

[mwagoner312]

Windows 7 with a 32 GB flash drive. When I plug it in, it ask to format the drive. But this will lose my data.

 

[BlackSwan1977]

Windows 7 with a 32 GB flash drive. When I plug it in, it ask to format the drive. But this will lose my data.

Sometimes the answer on this one is as simple as cleaning the contact points on the USB itself, and/or the computer. Before taking any drastic measures, or spending any money on recovery tools, I'd give that a try. And if that doesn't work, before giving up, try plugging it into a different USB port on the same machine. Especially if you are using an older laptop, you may find that one of the ports gets finicky and funny after years of use. I had this problem, and doing the above solved it.

 

[livoniaz]

What did you do to this USB flash drive last time? Did you extract it without using “safely remove hardware”? Did you use it without antivirus scanning? Or did you drop or fall it to the ground?

In short, I hope you can learn a lesson to use your USB flash drive safely and rightly all the time.

But, now, in order to rescue your stored data, do not format or overwrite this USB flash drive. Just plunge it to your computer and try to restore them all back by using some data recovery software like 4Card Recovery, Recuva, Power Data Recovery and more.

NO matter which one you use, just scan your USB flash drive more times to get back your files as many as possible.

Make data backups all the time in the future.

I tried Recuva and it could not recover not a single file! I don't know what happened to USB flash drive. It was lost for some time and when I finally found it. it would just ask to be formatted. I don't know if someone erased my files or what else could have happened. What can I do if Recuva doesn't work?

 

[benstuart2519]

Hello
Try to use your flash drive in other mechine may it works on the some other mechine.

 

[Jp33]

Well, first of all, don't format the drive. Just press 'no' when this message comes up.
If the drive is not physically damaged it could be be that the partition has been corrupted by a virus.
I scanned the USB stick with Malwarebytes, then removed the virus.
After that I used EaseUS to scan and recover the original deleted partition and checked to see if all files/folders were there.
This reinstalled the partition without formatting and erasing all files.
I used recovery software before and yes this worked out fine BUT the file names and folders were not there, so I had a list of jumbled documents. Hope this helps.

 

[2safer]

Windows 7 with a 32 GB flash drive. When I plug it in, it ask to format the drive. But this will lose my data.

Use these 1,2,3 easy pz app... Depending on the size of your files it will get them for you lickity split... It's just a trial so it will get you through this struggle just once, but hopefully thats all you'll need... Just backup everything from now on to be safe here ya go...
http://www.easeus.com/resource/USB-drive-format-recovery.htm