3 Easy Ways To Recover Deleted Data From Pen Drive

Read time 6 minutes

Losing essential data from external drives could be frustrating, especially when there are no backups available for them. Also, we cannot avoid losing data due to silly mistakes, while transferring files from a pen drive to computer, and suddenly unplugging it from the system just to discover that we have lost all the data in our flash drive.

Pen drives might be the most flexible equipment to store your data, whether they are documents, mp3 files, images, or videos. But, we cannot deny the fact that these flash drives are also prone to several corruption errors and malware, which makes the data inaccessible. Several reasons behind USB data loss include:

• Accidental data deletion
• Malware/virus infection
• Hardware failure (Driver failure)
• USB connector is worn out
• Connecting USB flash drive to computers having different operating systems
• Physical damages to the USB drives in unfavorable conditions like moisture, heat, breaking etc.
• Making mistake(s) while partitioning a USB flash drive
• Bugs in software applications
• Problems with the power supply to USB ports
• Power surge or interruption of power supply during data transfer

When such situations occur, recovering data from pen drive or flash drive becomes complicated as well as challenging. Thus, you need to be prepared with a healthy backup of your external drive’s data, or methods to recover deleted data from pen drive.

In this article, we tried to cover some effective methods that can be used to recover deleted data from pen drive.

Before we start discussing different methods to recover deleted data from the pen drive, we recommend some precautions before you start with any recovery process irrespective of the reasons for the loss of data in your pen drive:

1. Once you have realized that you have lost data on your pen drive, immediately stop further use of it least you lose your data forever.
2. Remove your pen drive from your computer and keep it in safest environment till you start the data recovery process.
3. Do not try to copy data from your pen drive to another place on your computer.

Methods to Recover Data from Pen Drive

Knowing the reasons behind USB drive data corruption, you might be curious to know how deleted data can be recovered from flash drives. So, have a look at the below methods.

Method 1: Using Command Prompt

The reason behind giving priority to this method is that you don’t have to download any third-party tool to use it. Also, it is the most effective as well as the easiest way to recover data from flash drive. Still it has a small limitation that not every user is comfortable with command prompt process.

CMD, formally known as Command Prompt, is an internal function of Windows that allows you perform multiple tasks with simple commands. Here’s how you can use CMD to recover deleted data from pen drive.

1. Connect your flash drive to the computer.
2. Now, press Window + R and type “cmd,” and then hit Enter.
3. The command prompt window will appear on your screen, type “chkdsk A: /f” and hit Enter button. Doing so will start scanning the flash drive.

Note: Here A is used to define the name given to your flash drive in your system.

4. Once the flash drive is scanned, type “ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D A:*.*” and hit Enter.

Wait until the process completes. Once the entire process is complete, you’ll find your deleted data available within the flash drive.

Method 2: Use restore previous version technique

Another useful method to restore deleted files from USB pen drive is using the “Restore previous version” technique. This method also allows you to restore deleted files without using third-party software. But this technique is only ideal if the feature is already enabled before losing the data. Here’s how you can execute this method.

1. Connect your USB to the computer.
2. Now, go to “This PC” and right-click on the USB flash drive, click Properties from here.
3. In the menu tab, click “Previous Version” and check for the available recovery options.
4. Select the specified previous version and click Restore.

If there are no previous versions available, then you cannot restore your data with this method. In this case, you should move to a third-party tool that can quickly restore your flash drive deleted data.

Method 3: Kernel Free Windows Data Recovery

Kernel Free Windows Data Recovery software is a specialized tool designed to recover deleted file free (up to 2GB) or deleted data from system hard drive as well as external drives. It is integrated with smart algorithms that allow it to recover every data file ever stored on your computer. Below is a scenario of its working process to understand the tool better.

1. Download and install the software on your computer.
2. Launching the software will display three different scanning methods, as shown below, select the specific scanning method.Note: Make sure your pen drive is connected with the system.
3. Now, the tool will display all the connected drives to the system, select the external drive and click Next.
4. It will start scanning the pen drive for deleted data restoration. The process might take some time based on the external drive size.
5. After the scanning is complete, the tool will display all the recovered folders in the left pane. Select any folder to view its items, and then click the item to display its content.
6. Now, to save the recovered data, select the specific file or folder, and click Recover.

   Note: You can also choose to save the entire data.

7. Choose a location to save the recovered file and click OK.
8. The tool will start saving the recovered files. Once it is finished, a notification will appear on your screen displaying Files saved. Click OK to end the process.And that’s how you can quickly restore deleted data from your pen drive with Kernel Free Windows Data Recovery software. Using this utility, you can also recover deleted files from windows 10.

Conclusion

We do store some files in external drives, especially when we want to carry critical data to other places, and USB flash drives are the best equipment for that as they fit into your pocket easily. But, when data is deleted from pen drives, it’s very challenging to retrieve it. Therefore, we have mentioned some effective methods in this article to recover deleted data from USB pen drive. Also, we have mentioned a third-party tool that can be used to recover deleted windows files.