How to Recover Data from Pen Drives?

Pen drives are also known as USB flash drives. They have become essential tools in our daily lives for storing and transferring data. They offer a portable and convenient way to carry important information with us wherever we go. Whether it’s a collection of photos, documents, or music files, pen drives provide a quick and easy solution to data storage. However, with their convenience comes the risk of data loss. And it’s devastating to lose data, especially those that were not backed up. This is where data recovery comes in. In this article, we will discuss how to recover data from pen drives.

Contents

Reasons for Data Loss from Pen Drives
Methods to Recover Data from Pen Drives?
Steps to Recover Data from Pen Drives
Conclusion

Reasons for Data Loss from Pen Drives

There are various reasons to cause data loss, such as accidental deletion, formatting errors, virus attacks, physical damage, and more.

Physical damage: Physical damage can occur due to mishandling or accidental drops. And once this occurs, the pen drive may no longer function correctly, or the data stored on it may become inaccessible. This is the most common reason for pen drive data loss.

File system corruption: Another reason is file system corruption. It can be caused by a sudden power loss or improperly ejecting the pen drive from the computer. As a result, data may corrupt or even be lost entirely.

Virus and malware attack: Virus and malware attacks may also cause data loss as they corrupt or delete important files.

Human error: Human errors, such as accidentally deleting files, or emptying recycle bins, can also lead to data loss, and it is another common reason for data loss from pen drives.

Software or hardware failure: What’s more, failures such as faulty USB ports or outdated drivers, can result in pen drive data loss.

Methods to Recover Data from Pen Drives?

Knowing the reasons why you lose the data, you can pick up the specific methods to recover them. Here we list the methods to recover lost data from pen drives and the advantages and disadvantages.

Software-Based Data Recovery: Software tools are used here to restore lost data from a pen drive. You can scan the pen drive and recover lost data with software like RecoverXData.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Software-Based Data Recovery:

This method is quick and easy to use and doesn’t require specific knowledge or skills. You can just choose reliable software like RecoverXData, and then, you can scan and recover with just a few clicks. However, it may not always be effective for all types of data loss. If the pen drive is physically damaged and cannot be recognized by computers, you need hardware-level data recovery.

Hardware-Based Data Recovery: It physically repairs the pen drive to recover lost data. And it usually requires opening the pen drive and repairing or replacing damaged components.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Hardware-Based Data Recovery:

This method can recover data even if the pen drive is physically damaged. However, it is a complex process that requires specialized skills and equipment, and it can be expensive.

Online Data Recovery: This indicates online services for recovering lost data from a pen drive. These services usually require users to upload the pen drive’s image file to their servers, where the data is recovered.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Online Data Recovery

This method is very convenient and can be done anywhere with an internet connection. However, it can be risky as users have to trust the service provider with their sensitive data.

In summary, software-based data recovery is quick and easy to use, hardware-based data recovery can recover data from physically damaged pen drives, and online data recovery is convenient but risky. The choice of method depends on the specific situation, the level of data loss, and the user’s budget and expertise. And among the above methods, software-based data recovery is the one you can DIY and try first. And here are the detailed steps.

Steps to Recover Data from Pen Drives

What is RecoverXData?

RecoverXData is a software tool designed for data recovery. It recovers lost, deleted, or formatted files from various storage devices. You can use it to recover data lost on pen drives, hard drives, USB drives, memory cards, or any other type of removable media.

With advanced algorithms, it can easily scan and recover data from pen drives and other storage devices. And it supports recovering a wide range of file types including photos, videos, documents, and others.

You can scan and recover with just a few clicks with the user-friendly interface.

Widely used by individuals, businesses, and organizations, RecoverXData is well known for its ability to handle data recovery.

Step 1: Download and Install RecoverXData

Download and install RecoverXData from the button below.

Step 2: Connect Pen Drive to the computer

Step 3: Launch RecoverXData and select the pen drive

Launch RecoverXData, choose a scenario of how you lose the data or switch to Wizard mode and select the pen drive.

Step 4: Scan the pen drive and preview the found data

Scan the pen drive and wait a while until it finishes. And then, you will know what data can be recovered.

In the scanning result, you have several ways to classify and target the data you want.

File path tree: If you hope to view and recover the data in the file tree, you can choose this tab on the left pane.

File type: If you hope to recover files in specific formats, you can choose this tab.

Deleted: In this tab, you can find the data marked as “deleted”. There might not be all of the deleted files and you can target them in other ways if you can’t find the one you need.

Filter: On the top-right corner, you can press the filter button and filter by type, period modified, or size.

Search: And what’s more, you can also search the file by its name.

If you can’t find the data you lost, you can press “Deep Recover” to run the deep scan. It will take longer time to scan and analyse, but will find more data.

Step 5: Recover the lost data

Once selected, you can press “Recover” and save the recovered data to a different drive.

Tips for a successful recovery process

To help you recover as much data as you can, here we list some important factors below.

Stop using the device: Once a file is deleted, it will be marked as “deleted” and “can be overwritten”. As a result, the more you use the pen drive, the more chance the file will be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

Use the right recovery software: Choosing a reliable and trusted data recovery software can save time and effort. RecoverXData is specially designed to recover data from pen drives and other removable media drives.

Scan the entire device: Please scan the entire device. This includes all partitions and areas of the storage media. And it helps find all the lost or deleted files.

Save the recovered files to a different device: Please save the recovered files to a different device, or the original files may be overwritten.

Don’t modify the recovered files: Once you have recovered the files, avoid modifying them. This can corrupt the data or make it harder to recover the original files.

Backup your data regularly: To avoid losing your data in the future, make sure you back up your files regularly to a separate storage device or cloud service.

Conclusion

In the end, the more we love and use pen drives, the more chance we may lose data due to physical errors, file system problems, human mistakes, etc. And the more we will be frustrated by the data loss. However, with the methods and steps provided in this article, you can easily recover lost data from pen drives. And it’s highly recommended to backup your data regularly to avoid data loss.