Last updated on October 30th, 2023 at 07:17 am
In today’s mobile world, USB flash drives are the most popular detachable storage medium. It has been commonly deployed to transport data due to its mobility, longevity, and better read and write rates.
There might be a number of additional factors that cause your USB to become faulty or unresponsive. This can occur as a result of either logical or physical corruption. Some of the most common physical corruption problems include fractured connections, lifeless drives with no power source, faulty circuits, not detectable, RAW, need to reformat, not readable, etc.
What Causes Flash Drives to Become Corrupt or Unresponsive?
Related Software: Recover Permanently Deleted or Lost Files from any Storage Device
A flash drive, like a hard disk, saves all of the data in its memory. The system software can subsequently retrieve this data if it is needed. There are a variety of difficulties that might render your USB drive data unavailable, such as if the drive is improperly unmounted from the port, which can result in data corruption. Invalid data in the Master Boot Record, Partition Boot Record, or database structure on the USB drive can also cause stored data corruption.
As we have mentioned before, there are two types of issues. One is logical and the other is physical, which causes the flash drive to corrupt. So, there are multiple reasons why the issues are created and the corruption occurs.
Generally, dead drives (which have no power supply), broken connections, damaged circuits, the need to format, USB flash drives not accessible, etc. are the physical issues.
Before starting the process of recovering data from a corrupted or unresponsive USB flash drive, you need to know the issue that has corrupted your USB flash drive. Is it logical or physical? If somehow (by seeing the symptoms) you detected the issue, then you can follow the below solving methods.
Recover data from corrupt USB flash drive with logical problems
Generally, logical issues are software-related issues in a USB flash drive. If you have detected that issue, then you can easily fix it. Don’t know how to detect logical issues on your USB flash drive? Keep reading the below process step by step.
How to scan for logical issues on your USB flash drive?
- Put the flash drive into your system’s USB port.
- Navigate to this PC or My Computer > Removable Disk.
- Start the Properties window by right-clicking on the Removable Disk Icon.
- Navigate to the Tools menu.
- Select the “Check Now” option.
- There are two check disk methods: “Automatically resolve file system faults” and “Scan for and try recovery of damaged segments.”
- Select both checks.
- Press the Start button. The scanning procedure will begin as a result of this.
- When the scan is finished, click Close.
This will provide you with some information about the logical issues on your USB flash drive.After doing that, if you are using any version of Windows, you must follow the step-by-step process given below to repair USB flash drive.
- Integrate a USB flash drive into your computer.
- Then, right-click on the inserted removable disk (USB Flash Drive) and then click on Properties.
- Select Rebuild on the Tools tab.
- When the repair process is finished, just select the “Eject” option.
In this way, you can easily repair a corrupted or unresponsive USB flash drive. But you need a data recovery tool to recover your necessary files and data from that flash drive.
Recovery from Physical Issues
As we have mentioned earlier, physical issues can be a faulty connection, a circuit board, a need to format, etc. Sometimes these problems are too critical to cure for an inexperienced person. In this situation, it is best to get help from local hardware experts.
We’ve included fixes for some of the most prevalent reasons for physical problems with your USB drive below.
The USB flash drive was not detected
You can sometimes be unable to use your USB drive due to issues with the USB port rather than the USB drive itself. As a result, before doing any repairs on the flash drive, ensure that the USB port is functioning well.
To test the USB drive, if it is functioning well or not, you need to restart your computer and re-insert the USB drive. Then you can also try to insert the drive into other USB ports.
Due to USB version constraints, your installed copy of Windows OS may fail to identify your USB device at times. You can use drive recognition to repair an undetectable USB flash drive by following the steps below.
- From the start menu, go to your PC’s Device Manager.
- Widen the reach next to the option “Disk Drives.”
- A downward-pointing arrow might be seen over your USB device.
- Press on it and then specify the “Enable Device” feature.
- Then click the Next button two times.
- Finally, press the Finish button.
After finishing the above steps, you need to just assign the drive letter. Keep reading the steps.
- First go to your PC’s control panel and from there navigate to System and Security > Administrative Tools > Computer Management.
- Then press on the USB drive and choose “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.
- Click “ADD” and then “OK.”
- Now, by clicking it, you may give any accessible drive letter to the USB drive.
- Right-click the USB to mark it as “online.”
If you follow the complete process, then there is a chance to get the fixes. But if it fails, the Windows automatic “Fix it for Me” service may be able to address the problem. If this does not solve the problem, you might try altering the system registry. You must try to perform this process with the help of an expert.
Broken USB Connections
The power supply to the USB is turned off if the silver USB connection breaks or the circuit panel is disrupted in any way.Soldering and circuit repair are necessary in this instance.
It is not recommended that you do it yourself since if something goes wrong, you may lose access to your USB permanently and your chances of successfully recovering your data would be reduced, if not impossible. Specialized tools and skills are necessary to cope with the aforementioned physical faults. So it’s best if you give it over to an expert and let them handle the situation.