“Hi, I have a Transcend USB drive of 64GB in which I deleted the partition during Windows XP setup in my computer. I have not formatted the drive, as I believe data is still on the USB drive and it’s just missing a partition table. Is there any way of getting data back or restoring the partition, I need to get the data back since it’s my friend's USB drive and it holds his family photos, videos, and other personal information in it?”
With the wide usage of USB drives, the USB drive partition loss issues will especially need to be noticed now. Even though you take so many precautions to avoid it, you may finally strike with this circumstance on your USB drive.
When Does the Partition Get Lost or Deleted From the USB Drive?
Some of the common causes and symptoms of partition loss from a USB drive are listed below:-
- Accidentally deleting, formatting, or reformatting partitions on the USB drive
- You may lose the partition on the USB drive due to a virus infection
- If the partition header gets corrupted, then the partition on the USB drive will become inaccessible or hidden
- The partition on the USB drive may get damaged due to improper ejection of the drive from the computer
- Frequently changing file systems will corrupt partitions on the USB drive
- If you don’t use the proper procedure while creating a new partition, then you may lose other partitions present on the USB
How to Recover Partitions From a USB Drive
Method 1: Run Attrib Command
Use the attrib command to restore files by following these steps:
- Press Windows+S and the type of command prompt.
- Right-click on ‘Command Prompt’ and choose ‘Run as administrator.’
- Now type the following command followed by the ‘Enter’ key press:
- X:
- attrib *.* -h -s /s /d
- Here letter X is the USB drive partition letter from where files are missing. Replace the X letter with your USB drive partition letter.
- You will notice that shortcuts are gone, and lost files are now accessible. Run a deep antivirus scan on your USB drive to permanently eliminate the pesky virus or malware.
If you still can't read a USB flash drive or experience a data loss disaster. A reliable USB drive recovery software called Yodot Hard Drive Recovery will recover your data from a USB drive successfully. Many users use this excellent drive recovery tool for retrieving lost/deleted partitions from the USB drive on Windows OS.
Method 2: USB Partition Recovery Tool
Yodot Hard Drive Recovery is the partition recovery software that recovers deleted or lost partitions. It Supports all kinds of partitions. This software also provides a complete USB/SD card partition recovery solution to recover your data in a few clicks with simple steps.
Note: With this Hard Drive Recovery tool, you can easily retrieve files from an unreadable USB drive that is corrupted due to severe virus infection, file system corruption, bad sectors, and other reasons.
Steps for Recovering Partitions From a USB Drive:
- Connect your USB drive to the computer through the USB port
- Download and install Yodot Hard Drive Recovery software to your Windows PC
- Choose the lost or deleted USB drive partition from which you need to recover data and press the "Next" button
- Then you will get a display screen with different file types; you can make a selection of file types or simply click on the "Skip" button to choose all types by default
- After completion of scanning, it will display all recovered data from lost or deleted USB drive partition
- View files in two types of view. i.e., "Data View" Or "File Type View."
- Select files that you want to recover from the USB drive partition and save them to your desired destination location
Tips to Avoid Losing Partition From USB Drive:
- Have a good backup before formatting your USB drive
- Use efficient anti-virus applications to remove virus or malware-infected files from partitions of USB drive
- Don’t use third-party applications to create or modify partitions on a USB drive
