How to Repair a USB Flash Drive
Do you have a USB flash drive that just won’t work anymore? Assuming the hardware is undamaged, and you don’t mind losing all your files, you could try formatting the USB drive. Note: The steps below will NOT actually repair physical or internal damage/corruption associated with a flash drive; this guide simply resets your device.
Steps
These steps are for Windows. Steps for other OSs should be similar.
- Insert the flash drive into a USB port on your computer. If it is detected, it should show up in your “My Computer” after a couple of seconds.
- Try right clicking on the USB drive icon and then left click on format. Select fat32 for windows operating systems beyond 98. Click “start” and formatting should begin. Note: Formatting will erase everything on the device.
- Try using the USB drive again as before.
- Backup all data from your hard drive to another hard drive or CDs or DVDs.
- Turn off your computer.
- Insert the USB drive to a USB port.
- Turn on your computer.
- Hit the F8 key when prompted to get to your system bios. Some computers required the Delete key or F2 instead of F8. There should be a note on the screen that specifies the key.
- Navigate your bios (usually using your cursor keys) to boot from CD drive first. Save and exit.
- Insert your operating system disc aka Operating System Restore disc. Your computer should restart. If not, restart it yourself.
- Follow the instructions for installing your operating system. When the option to select which drives to format comes, you should be able to see your USB disk in the list.
- Format the disk with FAT32 for Win98 or previous. Format with NTFS for anything after e.g. NT, 2000, XP etc.
- Depending on your options, you may be able to opt out of the operating system install at this point. If it was running well beforehand and you can, leave your other drives alone and quit the re-installation.
- Reset the computer to boot from the disc drive the operating system is on instead of the CD drive as before. You should have your working flash drive detecting and usable now in windows.
- If you didn’t get the option to opt out of the re-installation, continue to follow the instructions onscreen and complete the re-installation, formatting whatever drives are required. Note: Do not try to install your operating system onto your USB disk drive. Also be cautious when formatting to keep in mind all data will be lost.
Tips
- Search around for a formatting tool to reformat your drive beforehand. Re-installing an operating system is not a task to be taken lightly.
- If all else fails and your data is NOT important contact the flash drive manufacture via email or forum. They may have a utility to reload the drives firmware and perform a low-level format of the damaged drive.
- If your USB flash drive DOES contain important data you would like to retrieve, do NOT re-format the device. While there may be no sign of obvious damage, one or more of the internal components may have gone bad. While it generally requires advanced and specialized equipment to diagnose the exact cause of failure, one thing to try is to check for burnt fuses. To do this, remove the outer casing/shell of the device and with a magnifying glass, locate any of the tiny clear cube-shaped components on the circuit board. If any of these fuses are black instead of clear/translucent, it has burnt out and requires professional data recovery.
- If you choose to seek the services of a professional data recovery company, be sure to describe your problems to the best of your abilities to ensure they have the tools and experience for the job.
Warnings
- Backing up data and drivers, formatting drives and re-installing operating systems is a lengthy and involved process and should only be done by someone who knows what they are doing.
- Formatting will erase all data on a drive.
- USB drives are cheap and widely available. Consider replacing one over installing operating systems as it will probably cost you much less in time and headaches.
- Avoid the confusion between a low-level format (LLF) and reinitialization (reset drive to factory configuration). LFF was common in the 80s due to MFM and other drive formats which were not setup with its geometric configuration during the manufacturing process. It has no place for modern storage devices, as they are nearly impossible to LFF by consumers.
Things You’ll Need
- Your operating system (restore) disk.
- Your operating system serial key.
- A USB flash drive that is working properly for testing/comparing purposes.
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