How to Recover a Formatted USB Flash Drive on a Mac

Lost Data from Formatted USB Flash Drive

Mac users might format a removable disk for various reasons. It's necessary to format USB flash drives, external hard drives, and storage cards to a suitable 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 caused by file system corruption, virus attacks, bad sectors, and other common usage issues.

Mac users usually use the built-in Disk Utility app to format a USB flash drive. <a href="/mac-file-recovery/format-usb-flash-drive-to-fat32-on-mac.html">Format USB Flash Drive to FAT32 on Mac</a> There are also many users who prefer third-party disk formatting utilities. As mentioned above, formatting can be intentional or accidental. If we know that this quick formatting is about to happen, we would back up the important data on the USB drive. However, if it's a careless or mistaken operation, formatting will remove the data without you even having a backup.

"Free download USB Flash Drive Data Recovery Software"

We love to use USB flash drives to store common file types like documents, pictures, movies, music, and more. Losing any one of these files can be a disaster, let alone formatting that wipes everything off altogether. When you run into the problem of losing all your data due to formatting, don't wait for a second. Look for a reliable Mac data recovery software right away to perform the recovery as soon as possible.

tools Data Recovery Wizard offers both Windows and Mac versions and has been serving global users for over 10 years. It's a popular and powerful recovery tool that can retrieve data from over 100 file types and existing storage devices. It runs seamlessly on both older versions of Mac OS X and the latest macOS. Additionally, it offers a free version that allows users to recover up to 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 here to learn how to recover formatted USB drives.

How to Recover Formatted USB Flash Drive

Step 1: Connect the USB drive to your Mac

Plug in the USB flash drive to your Mac correctly. Launch the tool Data Recovery Wizard for Mac. Start by selecting the flash drive and then click “Search Lost Files” to let the software scan for lost files on it.

Step 2. Look for Lost Data on the USB Drive

Upon completion of the scan, all files will be displayed in the left pane of the scan results.

Step 3: Recover data from USB flash drive

Select the files you wish to recover, then click the “Recover” button. To avoid 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 that data has been formatted, deleted, or is simply hiding somewhere. That said, don't put all your eggs in one basket because it's too risky. To double protect important digital data on a flash drive, USB drive, SD card, or HDD, you should back up regularly. Nowadays, cloud storages like iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox are great places for Apple users to sync files and back up. Additionally, it's also a good idea to create backups manually with Time Machine and third-party Mac backup and recovery software.