How to Recover Formatted USB Flash Drive on Mac

Data Lost from Formatted USB Flash Drive

Mac users may format a removable disk for various reasons. External storage devices, such as USB flash drives, USB sticks, and memory cards, need to be formatted with a compatible file system so that Mac OS X or macOS can recognize, detect, or read data from them. However, most of the time, disk formatting is done to fix hard drive errors that occur due to filesystem corruption, virus attacks, bad sectors, and other issues.

Mac users generally use the built-in Disk Utility app to format USB flash drive. However, there are also many users who prefer third-party disk formatting utilities. As mentioned earlier, formatting can be intentional or accidental. If we know that this quick format is about to happen, we would create a backup of our important USB drive data. But if done mistakenly or by error, formatting will remove your data, and you do not even have a backup.

"Free Download USB Flash Drive Data Recovery Software"

We love to use USB drives to carry around our favorite documents, images, movies, music, and more. Losing one file can be disastrous, let alone formatting that wipes everything off altogether. When you come across the issue of data loss due to formatting, don't wait for a second. Immediately look for a reliable Mac data recovery software to recover your data.

tools Data Recovery Wizard is available for both Windows and Mac and has been serving globally for over 10 years. It's a popular and powerful data recovery software that can restore over 100 file types from all kinds of storage devices. It works seamlessly on both older versions of Mac OS X and the latest macOS. Plus, it offers a free version that allows users to recover 2 GB of files for free. Prepare your USB flash drive, install the free data recovery software for Mac, and follow the guide to recover data from the formatted USB drive. For Windows users, click this link to recover formatted USB drives.

How to Recover Formatted USB Flash Drive

Step 1: Connect the USB drive to your Mac

Connect the USB flash drive to your Mac correctly. Launch the Data Recovery Wizard for Mac tool. Select the flash drive and click “Search Lost Files” to let the software scan for lost files on it.

Note: Before you proceed with data recovery, it's recommended that you click “Disk Backup” from the left sidebar and create a backup of the USB drive to prevent further data loss. After backing up the USB drive, the software can recover data from the USB drive backup, after which you can safely remove the USB flash drive and use it again.

Step 2: Look for Lost Data on USB Drive

When the scan is over, all the found files will be displayed in the left pane of the scan results.

Search for lost data on the USB device with Filter feature

Step 3. Recover Data from the Flash Drive

Select the files you want to recover, then click the "Recover" button. To prevent overwriting your data, do not save the recovered files back onto the USB drive itself.

When data is lost, data recovery software can be a great helper, whether the information has been formatted, deleted, or is hidden somewhere. However, don't put all your eggs in one basket, as the stakes are too high. To double protect essential digital data on a USB flash drive, pen drive, SD card, or HDD, you need to back up regularly. Nowadays, cloud storage like iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox are great places for Apple users to sync files and save backups. Additionally, it's a good idea to create backups manually with Time Machine and third-party Mac backup and recovery software, such as Todo Backup for Mac.