Summary
When USB flash drive becomes corrupted, inaccessible and even RAW, you can format the device to make it usable again. Here, EaseUS software will guide you to format corrupted/damaged/RAW USB drive without losing data. If you lost all saved data on the USB drive by formatting, apply EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for instant help.
How to create a bootable USB to format hard drive. Windows itself has default tool: disk management, or you can just right-click on the USB in file explorer and choose Format to complete the mission when new USB is connected, but sometimes when USB drive is write protected or shows format error, the snap in disk managing utility cannot format any disk.
PAGE CONTENT:
- If I format a USB, will it erase data
- Is it possible to format USB flash drive without losing data
- How to format USB flash drive without erasing or losing data
- Bonus tip to protect USB data from formatting
Like SD card, USB flash drive is widely used to store personal files including pictures, videos files, documents, etc. But sometimes, the USB drive can be get corrupted and become raw or inaccessible due to certain reason. In some special cases, you have to format your USB to repair corrupted or RAW USB, SD or external hard drive and fix some issue.
If I format a USB, will it erase data
Have you ever asked yourself this question: if I format a USB, will it erase the save data? The formatting operation is a process of preparing a storage device like USB available for initial use, creating new file systems. Normally, formatting has three stages:
Stage 1. Low-level formatting: performing basic medium preparation - reset the device to the factory settings.
Stage 2. Partitioning: making storage devices visible to an operating system by dividing a disk into regions and writing data structures.
Stage 3. High-level formatting: generating a new file system for a storage device, making it recognizable and reusable again.
Based on the above information, we can figure out that both Low-level formatting and Partitioning process will erase all data. And High-level formatting also removes the saved data on a hard drive, USB or memory card. Then, finding a safe way to protect data before or after fixing a damaged USB flash drive by formatting become quite important.
Is it possible to format USB flash drive without losing data
When you encounter USB not formatted error, USB not accessible nor readable and some other problems, the best way to fix the issue is to format the USB flash drive. But most people can not do it, as formatting will cause all files lost on the device.
So, is it possible to format a USB flash drive without losing data? Of course.
If you have created a backup of USB files, you can directly format the device. You won't lose anything. If you didn't have a backup, read on to get the solution about how to format USB drive without losing data.
Here, we recommended you to perform fast data recovery on USB before formatting it if you want to keep all your files. EaseUS file recovery software - Data Recovery Wizard is capable of resolving all data loss cases, for example, to recover files from flash drive not recognized, recover data from a raw drive, etc.
Download and install this software on your Windows or Mac computer, and follow guidelines in the next part to learn how to do the format without losing data.
How to format USB flash drive without erasing or losing data
To format USB flash drive without erasing or losing data, you'll have to go through the below two stages with the USB drive which you want to format. Here we'll take how to format USB on Windows PC without losing data as an example.
# 1. Recover data from inaccessible or RAW USB flash drive before formatting
Apply EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and follow through the below steps, it will fully restore files from your USB flash drive.
Step 1. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. See if the USB drive appears in the drive list. Select the USB and click 'Scan'.
Step 2. During the scan process, more and more data will appear in the scan results. When the scan is over, you can click 'Filter' to quickly filter a specific type of file.
Step 3. Preview the files by double-clicking them one by one. Select the wanted files and click 'Recover'.
Note: While restoring the file, navigate a secure new location on your PC or another external storage device to save the restored data.
And then you can try the Windows disk management tool to format USB flash drive without worrying about data loss problem. Now, just try it by yourself!
You may need further help for tough data loss situations like format errors, RAW disk, partition loss, repartition failures and system boot error. Consult with EaseUS Data Recovery Experts to retrieve lost data in time.
# 2. Format USB flash drive without erasing or losing data
If you need to perform a low-level format, it can only be done by professional Low-level formatting tools. Since low-level formatting will not only destroy all existing data but also will cause damage to the storage device itself. We don't recommend you to do so.
A safer way of formatting is to use high-level formatting on the USB drive. You can use Windows Explorer on your PC and follow the steps below to right-click format your USB flash drive with ease:
Step 1. Connect USB to PC and click to open 'This PC/My Computer'.
Step 2. Find and right-click on the USB flash drive, select 'Format'.
Step 3. Reset the file system to NTFS or FAT32, click 'Start' and click 'OK' to confirm.
After this, you can transfer restore data back to the USB drive and reuse USB flash drive to save and store data again.
Bonus tip to protect USB data from formatting
Knowing useful ticks of protecting USB flash drive, SD card, and external/internal hard drive data from being formatted is also necessary. Here we've listed some useful tips to help you protect data on the USB or other storage devices.
# 1. Create a backup of useful USB data
It's always necessary to create a backup of important files on USB or hard drive, etc. storage devices. You can choose to copy files one by one from USB to another storage device or apply professional file backup software like EaseUS Todo Backup to back up all files in USB at once:
- Tip
- You'd better create the backup file on an external disk or on the cloud in case the local backup gets corrupted or destroyed.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Todo Backup software and then choose 'File Backup', 'Disk/partition Backup' or 'System Backup' for different backup purpose.
Step 2: Choose the system, disk partition, files that you want to back up. Then select a destination where you want to store the backup file.
Step 3: Click 'Proceed' to start the data backup process.
# 2. Check and fix USB errors regularly
By checking and repairing existing file system errors in USB will effectively prevent USB inaccessible or RAW issues. You can either check and fix USB errors by using CMD or use Error Checking in Properties as listed here:
Step 1. Connect the USB to your PC and open File Explorer.
Step 2. Right-click the USB or storage device that you want to scan, click on Properties.
Step 3. Go to the Tools tab and click on the Check button under the top Error checking section.
Step 4. Scan drive and Repair drive if errors were found.
When the scanning finishes, click on the Show Details link to see the Chkdsk log in Event Viewer. You'll see the detailed errors USB that have been fixed.