How to Unformat a USB Flash Drive: Recover Data or Reformat for a New Use

If you are in search for the way to unformat your USB flash drive, you are facing one of these two circumstances. Either you accidentally formatted your USB flash drive and looking for the way to recover data, or you looking for the way to format your flash drive properly so you will be able to maintain it’s functionality.

How to Choose the Right Way to Unformat a USB Drive?

As we said in the introduction, when users talk about “unformat”, they often mean different problems and solutions. Some need urgent intervention and recovery of lost data. Others try to assess the consequences in advance and correctly approach the issue of formatting a flash drive. With this in mind, we have put together a table that offers short recommendations on the main actions and answers to the most common questions. All detailed step-by-step instructions you will see later in the article.

How to Unformat a Flash Drive Using Data Recovery Tools

As we stated earlier, if you’ve accidentally formatted your pen drive and lost important data during the process, you can unformat it to recover your data back. And the easiest way of unformatting your flash drive is to use data recovery software like Disk Drill.

Such tools do not technically ‘reverse the formatting action’ but rather provide an opportunity to recover from the mistake. Although the files on the formatted flash drive disappeared at first glance, they actually still remain. However, the system no longer has pointers to their locations, and the memory sectors are marked as free for writing. As long as you do not write new data to the flash drive, your chances of recovery are still quite high.

Your data recovery chances also depend on the type of formatting option you used while formatting your pen drive. A quick format deletes the files on your pen drive and recreates the file system without altering the files on your pen drive.

However, when you perform a full format of your pen drive, your OS not only deletes your files but also overwrites them with zeroes. This completely removes your files from your pen drive and makes it impossible to recover files without a backup.

Moreover, if you formatted your flash drive to the same file system it had before (e.g., FAT32 to FAT32), the chances of perfect recovery will be lower than if you had formatted it from one file system to another, such as FAT32 to exFAT. This highlights the importance of using reliable data recovery software, like Disk Drill, with robust algorithms capable of handling damaged file systems or recovering data based on file signatures.

Here’s how to recover data from your pen drive using Disk Drill:

1. Download Disk Drill from the official website. Once the download is complete, install and launch the program.
2. On the home screen, you’ll notice your primary as well as all other storage drives connected to your PC. Select the USB drive you want to perform recovery on and click Search for lost data to scan your storage for lost files.
3. Disk Drill will scan the storage for all lost files. You don’t need to wait for the scan to finish, as you can click Review found items at any time and let the scan run in the background. Files will pop up in the list as Disk Drill finds them.
4. To make the recovery job easy, Disk Drill comes packed with a bunch of features that can sort through files and filter them on the basis of type, size, and date of deletion, and you can even directly search for the file by name.
5. Find and select the files you want to recover. Then, click the Recover button to continue.
6. Lastly, select a destination for your recovered files and click Next to finish the data recovery process. It can be any drive with sufficient space, but not the USB drive you recover data from.

All your files from your unformatted USB flash drive have now been safely stored on your PC in your provided folder.

How To Unformat (Reformat) a USB Pen Drive Using CMD (Diskpart)

If you’ve formatted your USB drive to a wrong file system, it appears as RAW becase you previously used it on Mac, or if your USB drive has corrupted due to improperly formatting or hindering the formatting process, most likely, it won’t function properly. You might see the drive listed in File Explorer, but when you open it to see its contents, you may get errors like:

• USB drive appear as RAW in File Explorer or Disk Management.
• The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
• You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it.
• The drive is not accessible.
• Please insert a disk into drive.

The worst part is that you might not be able to format the drive again using the traditional Windows formatting utility. Luckily, there are other ways to undo the improper formatting and also reformat the drive correctly using the Diskpart command in Command Prompt.

Here’s how to reformat your pen drive using CMD:

1. Connect your USB flash drive to your PC.
2. Go to your Windows Explorer search bar and type “cmd,” and run the tool as administrator.
3. Now, type “diskpart” on the cmd interface.
4. Type “list disk” and hit Enter.
5. Then, enter “Select disk X” (where “X” represents the volume number your USB has been assigned).
6. Command Prompt will print a message saying, “Disk X now the selected disk.“
7.  Now, type “Clean” and hit enter.
8. Next, you need to repartition it by typing “create partition primary.”
9. Finally, end the process by typing “format fs=fat32” and hitting Enter. You can choose any supported system file type other than fat32 if you want.
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   It can take up to a few minutes to format your drive using CMD.

   

10. You have successfully formatted your USB drive.

Can Formatting End Up Damaging My Flash Drive?

Ideally, formatting your flash drive should not damage it. Most pen drives can be erased and rewritten between 10,000 and 100,000 times. However, it’s also not uncommon to run into errors while formatting your thumb drive and accidentally end up damaging it.

For example, if you cancel the formatting process midway, or your PC unexpectedly shuts down while you’re formatting your drive, you’re most likely going to end up with a corrupt pen drive. Not to mention, messing around with the command prompt can also damage your pen drive if you make the slightest mistake.

In most cases, these damaged pen drives either throw up an error saying, “You need to format USB drive X before using it” or “USB X:/ is not accessible.” Worst of all, your pen drive is not recognized on your computer when you plug it in.

Luckily, there are data recovery software like Disk Drill that can not only recover data from a corrupt pen drive but can also recover data from a physically damaged pen drive that does not even show up in the file explorer.

However, if the pen drive is severely damaged, either logically or physically, your best option is to send it to a data recovery service. That’s because they use advanced machines and tools to recover data that is beyond the scope of being recovered by a data recovery freeware. Naturally, you have a higher chance of getting your important data back.

Let’s take a look at a few commonly asked questions related to unformating a pen drive:

FAQ

Wrap Up

Throughout this article, we’ve explored several ways to unformat a flash drive based on your specific situation. If you need to recover data from a formatted flash drive, your first step should be to use reliable data recovery software. These tools can help you retrieve lost files before they’re overwritten. But if by ‘unformatting’ you mean a scenario where you’re encountering technical issues or the flash drive isn’t functioning properly and you want to roll back the process and try again, reformatting it using methods like CMD can effectively address the problem.