The alt text for this image in Chinese is: "Recover External Device Step 1".

Steps to recover formatted files on Windows 10 using a USB Format Recovery Tool:

1. Download and launch the Format USB tool. Select the USB drive that you want to scan after formatting.

2. Click “Filter” and select the type of file you want to recover.

3. Format USB Recovery. Preview and recover formatted files.

Accidentally formatted the flash drive

"I accidentally formatted my USB flash drive and all the files are gone. What should I do?"

USB drives are widely used in our daily lives due to their compact size, speed, and reliability. They indeed bring much convenience. However, some people accidentally format their USB drives, resulting in data loss. The question is, can the lost data be recovered? Can formatted data be restored from a USB drive?

Yes, you still have the chance to recover formatted USB drive. After formatting, the files are not permanently removed from the disk, so you can try to recover formatted files from USB. But how to recover formatted USB drive?

Recommended: USB Drive Data Recovery Software

Before formatting, remember: once formatted, stop using the USB drive. Otherwise, new data will overwrite the old, causing data loss.

To format a pen drive or flash drive, you need a professional USB formatting tool. tools Data Recovery Wizard Pro is a powerful USB flash drive formatting recovery software to recover formatted files, photos, pictures, images, audios and videos from USB flash drive.

Learn more about this software:

01

Applicable Scenarios:

Including formatted data recovery, deleted file recovery, lost partition recovery, system crash recovery, virus attack recovery, RAW partition recovery, etc.

02

Supported Devices:

Memory cards, USB flash drives, external hard drives, video players, digital cameras, computers, and more.

 
03

Supported File Systems:

FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32), exFAT, NTFS, NTFS5, ext2/ext3, HFS+, ReFS, and more.

04

Supported Operating Systems:

Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP, as well as Windows Server 2019/2016/2012/2008/2003.

No.

How to Recover a Formatted USB Drive in 3 Steps

If you find yourself in the same situation, download the unformat USB tool, and simply click to start recovering your USB.

Step 1. Connect your USB drive to the computer. Launch the Data Recovery Wizard. Select the formatted SD card, USB flash drive, or Pen Drive from where you want to recover lost files and click “Scan”.

Select the Formatted Memory Card

Step 2: After the scan is completed, all the scan results will be displayed on the screen. Use the "Filter" or "File Type" feature to find the file you are looking for.

Search for Lost Files

Step 3: Select the files you wish to recover from the formatted external drive and click on “Recover”. A new window will appear where you need to choose a new location to save your files. Click on “OK” to confirm.

Recover Data from Formatted Memory Card

Tools Data Recovery Service

Contact our experts for a free assessment.

Get one-on-one manual recovery service with Tools Data Recovery experts. After a free diagnosis, we offer the following services:

  • Repair damaged RAID structures, unbootable Windows OS, and corrupted virtual disk files (e.g., .vmdk, .vhd, .vhdx)
  • Recover/repair lost partitions and repartitioned drives
  • Recover formatted hard drives and fix raw drives (BitLocker encrypted drives)
  • Fix disks turned into GPT protected partitions

Download free USB drive formatting software for Windows 10

If you want to recover formatted USB drive for free, you can use the free data recovery software from tools. It allows you to recover up to 2 GB of files for free. For users who need to recover Word, Excel, PPT, or TXT files from a USB drive or flash drive, this free software can be used to restore formatted files since these files usually do not exceed 2 GB.

Tip: How to Automatically Backup Files, USB Drives, and Disks

To prevent unexpected data loss, it's effective to back up files regularly. If you don't want to or forget to back up manually, you can try using a specialized Windows file backup software – Todo Backup to automatically back up important files.

Step 1: Tap on the Select Backup Content button to begin the backup process.

Create File Backup Step 1
Create File Backup Step 1

Step 2. There are four backup types to choose from: Files, Disk, System, and Mail. Click on Files.

Create File Backup Step 2

Step 3: A list of local and network files will appear on the left. You can expand the directories to select the files you want to back up.

File Backup

Step 4: Follow the on-screen instructions and choose where you want to save your backup.

Step 4: Create Backup

Click on "Options" to set a password for encrypted backups, schedule backups in the "Backup Options" section, and choose to start a backup on specific events. There are many other options you can explore to customize your backup tasks as needed.

Backup Options

Step 5: You can save the backup to a local drive, a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, or a NAS.

Create Backup Step 4

Step 6. Todo Backup also allows users to back up data to third-party cloud drives and its own cloud drive.

If you want to back up to a third-party cloud, choose “Local Disk,” then scroll down and add a “Cloud Device.” Add and log in to your account.

You can also choose tools own cloud drive. Click tools Cloud, sign up and log in with your tools account.

Backup to Tools Cloud

Step 7. Click "Backup Now" to start the backup process. When it's done, the backup will be displayed as a card on the left panel. Right-click on the backup task for further management.

File Backup Step 7

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Recover Formatted USB Drive in UTF-8 Encoding

Below are the most relevant issues on how to recover formatted USB drive and restore formatted files. If you have these problems, you can find the solutions here.

Can you undo the formatting?

When you format a USB drive, the data is lost, and you can't undo the formatting manually. However, you can unformat a USB and recover formatted files with the help of third-party software. We recommend trying the reputable tool Data Recovery Wizard to restore formatted, deleted, lost, and RAW files from USB flash drives, pen drives, SD cards, and more.

How to recover files after formatting USB?

First, stop using the USB drive to prevent overwriting the data.

Step 1: Download and launch the USB Disk Format Tool. Select your USB drive to begin scanning.

Step 2. Select the files you want to recover. Preview the found files.

Step 3: Recover files from the formatted USB drive and save them to another location.

How to recover formatted USB drive for free?

You can use the free version of the tools Data Recovery Wizard to recover a formatted USB drive for free, up to 2GB of files.

Step 1: Download the tool – Data Recovery Wizard Free and select the formatted USB drive for scanning.

Step 2: Wait for the scan to complete. Then, select the files and preview them.

Step 3: Format the USB drive and restore the files.

How to recover files from USB FAT32?

Download the tool to recover data from USB with FAT32 file system:

Step 1. Launch tools Data Recovery Wizard. Select the FAT32 USB drive from where you want to recover data and click "Scan".

Step 2: Preview the recovered files from FAT32 USB after the scanning process is complete.

Step 3: Click on the “Recover” button to retrieve the files.

How do I fix a corrupted USB flash drive?

Usually, you can fix a corrupted USB drive by formatting it. But before you do that, you need to recover data from the corrupted USB drive.

Steps to reformat the USB drive:

Step 1: On Windows, right-click the "Start" icon and select "Disk Management" to open it.

Step 2: Right-click on the USB drive and select "Format."

Step 3: Provide the required information, then click OK.