“I have lost a very important document from my USB drive; I was working on some Word files in my notebook a few days ago. I used to open Word documents directly from my USB and save them on itself without copying those Word files to my notebook. I’m on Microsoft Vista, is there any way that I can get back those lost Word files from the flash drive?”
- Word files mistakenly deleted from USB drive do not get stored in Windows Recycle Bin
- Formatting the USB device containing your Microsoft Word documents.
- Corruption of USB drive due to virus/malware infections or drive errors.
- Antivirus utility scanning USB drives for viruses may erase certain Word files without your knowledge.
- Abnormal system shutdown while transferring Word documents from USB to computer.
How To Recover Lost/ Deleted Word Documents From USB?
Here are a few tried and tested methods to recover lost or deleted Word documents from USB:
- Recover Word Document from Flash Drive using CMD
- Recover Deleted Word Files From USB Using The Previous Version
- Recover Lost Word Documents From Pendrive Using GUI
- Recover Lost/Deleted Word Documents Using Auto Recover
- Restore Word Documents From USB Using Yodot File Recovery Software [Most Preferred]
Method 1: Recover Word Document From Flash Drive Using CMD
Command Prompt, known as CMD, is part of every Windows installation, and it provides you with all the necessary commands, including those in the instructions below.
- Connect the USB flash 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.
Provided the method was successful, you should see all deleted word documents on a newly created folder on your USB drive.
Method 2: Recover Deleted Word Files From USB Using The Previous Version
Windows provides an efficient way to recover deleted files from the USB drive using previous versions.
Step 1: Connect your USB flash drive to the computer where you have backed up your files in the flash drive with File History.
Step 2: Right-click the folder where your files were saved before deletion. Select Restore previous versions from the menu.
Step 3: Select the previous version according to the time, and then click Restore.
Method 3: Recover Lost Word Documents From Pendrive Using GUI
Microsoft released Windows File Recovery in 2020. This is a free app that uses command lines without graphical user interfaces. The user can input commands for different Windows File Systems and scenarios. The format of Windows File Recovery is as follows:
winfr source-drive: destination-drive: [/mode] [/switches]
There are two basic modes to help you recover deleted files. There are switches to specify which files to recover and what locations and file types to recover. Follow the steps below to see examples of commands. You can go to Microsoft support for more detailed information.
Step 1: Check the file system of your hard drive. Right-click the partition and select Properties.
Step 2: There are some common switches to use.
- - /n: Scans for a specific file by using a file name, file path, file type, or wildcards.
- - /segment: Segment mode, recovery option for NTFS drives using file record segments.
- /signature: Signature mode, recovery option for all file system types using file headers.
- /u: Recover the undeleted files, like from the Recycle bin.
Method 4: Using Auto Recover
Microsoft Office provides a useful tool like “Auto Recover”, which sometimes helps you retrieve your missing / erased document files. Auto Recover is a feature that constantly saves the contents of a working Word file; this feature is very helpful for those users who lost their documents due to improper system termination while working on their Word document.
The default Auto Recovery file location is:
“c:\users\username\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\”
Note: To use this feature you need to change settings in MS Word Application.
Go to start > Microsoft Word > File > Options > Save > Tick the “save auto-recovery information every 10 minutes” and tick also the “keep the last AutoSaved version if I close without saving”
If your Word document is lost and your Auto Recover option is disabled, then using reliable software such as Yodot File Recovery software to restore Word files from a USB drive may be more suitable.
Method 5: How to Restore Word Documents From USB Using Yodot File Recovery Software?
Yodot File Recovery software functions as a handy tool for recovering all types of documents from the USB drives and other removable storage devices such as memory cards, portable hard drives, etc. This tool supports recovering numerous MS Office and other documents including doc, ppt, pptx, xls, xlsx, pst, dbx, pdf, mdb, zip, rar, and so on, from various storage devices.
Steps To Recover Word Document From USB:
- Connect your USB drive to a healthy Windows computer.
- Download and install the Yodot File Recovery tool.
- Run the software and click on the Deleted File Recovery option to retrieve your deleted Word file from the USB or the Lost File Recovery option to retrieve your missing document file from the USB.
- Choose your USB drive from where you lost Word files.
- The software starts the scanning process and shows all recovered Word documents from the USB drive.
- Select the Word files which you would like to recover back.
- Finally, Preview and Save the recovered Word file to your desired location; not to the same USB drive.
Tips To Avoid Losing Word File From USB:
- Save the important file in Google Drive or Cloud storage.
- Don’t use your USB storage drive to store any data after losing vital data.
- Backup all important contents from USB drive before formatting it.
- Use a quality antivirus program to remove deadly viruses from your USB as well as your system.
