Pen Drive Recovery: How to Recover Lost Files from Pen Drive[2023]

Sue Wayne

Apr 10, 2023 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions

Small enough to be put into your pocket, the USB flash drive, also known as a pen drive, has been developed to make sure that the life of the user is simplified to a great extent. However, they are vulnerable to many issues and problems that cause sensitive data loss. Many would wonder: "How do I recover lost data from pen drive?" In this article, we will go through the common causes for pen drive data loss, and how to recover lost files on thumb drive.

Part 1. What Causes Pen Drive Data Loss?
Part 2. How Do I Recover Lost Files on My Flash Drive?
Part 3. Recover Lost Files from Pen drive with Recoverit

What Causes Pen Drive Data Loss?

Due to aged hardware, accessive usage, and genuine wear and tear, there is a high probability of data inside the pen drive getting lost or erased. Here are some of the common scenarios that may cause USB drive data loss.

Accidental deletion: Probably, the number one cause of data deletion is human error or If you have accidentally formatted the pen drive.
Bad sectors: If you eject your pen drive without following the required protocols or remove it from the device when it is in use, then the pen drive might get damaged. It usually happens due to the development of bad sectors in the storage device, which will prevent you from accessing it.
Partition corruption: Creating a partition within a pen drive may get technical, and it may lead to some error if you do not assign it a letter or the proper space. An error message will appear and lead to USB flash drive data loss. You will not be able to access the data, nor retrieve data from USB stick.
Computer Virus: We use our pen drives and other USBs on several computers, and there’s always a chance of shifting an infected file into the drive. It will infect the drive and lead to the deletion of data.
Physical damage: A severe impact can permanently erase and make the pen drive useless if you are not careful.

How Do I Recover Lost Files on Flash Drive?

When your important data get lost from Pen drive, you should keep your pen drive storage device safe and do not save any new data on it. Or your lost data will be overwritten by new data and cannot get them back, preventing lost data recovery from succeed.

If you feel that you need the lost data back due to its importance or your urgency to use it, you will need to get a powerful pen drive recovery software to help you perform pen drive lost data recovery. We recommend Recoverit data recovery software, it is an effective and reliable pen drive data recovery. It can easily help you recover deleted data from pen drive.

Recoverit - Your Safe & Reliable Pen Drive Recovery Software

Recover lost or deleted files, photos, audio, music, emails from pen drive effectively, safely and completely.
Supports data recovery from recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera, and camcorders.
Supports to recover data for sudden deletion, formatting, lost partition, virus attack, system crash under different situations.

Download | Win Download | Mac

Solution 1. Recover Lost Files from Pen Drive with Recoverit

Download and install Recoverit Pen Drive Recovery software on your computer. On this tutorial, we will start with Recoverit Windows version to perform Pen Drive Recovery. Please connect your pen drive to the computer and detected.

Step 1 Launch Recoverit data recovery on your computer.

Step 2Select your pen drive to scan lost data. Make sure your pen drive detected to your computer, select it, and click the "Start" button to scanning lost data.

scan data from pen drive

Step 3Scan data from the pen drive. Recoverit will start the scan to search for your data.

deep scan data from pen drive

Step 4 After the scanning, all recoverable data will display on the scan results. You can preview some recoverable files like images (JPG, PNG, GIF). Select your data and click the "Recover" button to get them back.

pen drive data recovery

Note: please do not save any recovered files to the pen drive where your data lost before.

Solution 2. Recover Deleted Files from USB Drive Using CMD

By using Window's built-in Command Prompt tool, you can also recover deleted documents from USB flash drive, without downloading any third-party software. To do this, follow the instructions below:

Connect the USB pen drive to your computer.
Open the Start menu, type "cmd", and hit Enter on your keyboard.
Type "chkdsk X: /f" in the Command Prompt window and hit Enter. Just make sure to replace “X” with the letter assigned to your USB flash drive.
Finally, type "ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D X:*.*" and hit the Enter key (Again, replace “X” with the drive letter of the USB drive).
Wait for the process to be completed.

If everything goes well, you will find that the deleted documents show up in a new folder on your USB drive.

Conclusion:

Even though human errors are the leading cause for loss of data inside any storage device such as a pen drive, but we learn from our mistakes. Fortunately, there are tools like Recoverit recovery application that allows us to recover lost files on flash drive. Now you know the leading causes behind the deletion of files and understand what you need to do to avoid them. The main thing is to perform the recovery operation immediately!

Download | Win Download | Mac