How to Fix or Repair a Broken USB Flash Drive

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Is your USB flash drive not working? you can scan and repair your flash drive using your PC or Mac’s built-in repair utility, If your USB drive has corrupt data, you can reformat it—you might be abble how to recover information from a broken flash drive? If your USB drive has corrupt data, you should know there are a lot of reasons why this can happen, but there’s generally one term applied to that unfortunate state your card has fallen prey to — RAW.  This guide will teach you to fix a USB flash drive.

1. How to Fix a Corrupted USB Drive

A USB flash drive can become corrupted for many different reasons, including improper removal, software bugs.

  1. Plug your flash drive into your computer.
  2. Press⊞ Win+E to open File Explorer . This opens File Explorer on Windows 10 and 11.
  3. Go to This PC.
  4. Right-click your flash drive and select Properties. You’ll see Properties at the bottom of the menu that appears when you right-click the drive.
  5. Click the Tools tab. This option is at the top of the Properties window.
  6. Click Check. You’ll see this button at the top of the Tools tab.
  7. Select the Scan and repair drive option.
  8. Wait for the Error Checking tool to repair your drive.
  9. Once the repair is complete, click Close to finish.

To avoid similar problems with USB drive corruption in the future, we recommend you always safely remove your drive before physically disconnecting it from your computer.

2. How to Fix a Read-only USB

When a USB is in read-only mode, you won’t be able to store any new data on it. when you any attempt to write data to it will be showing with a message stating “The disk is write-protected”.

If you want to remove a USB physical write-protection switch, you must instead remove the “read-only” attribute currently associated with the USB device. Follow these easy steps:

  1. In Windows 10/8/7, search command prompt and run as administrator. For Windows 11 users, click Terminal and run as administrator.
  2. Right-click Start and search Command Prompt and run as administrator. For Windows 11 users, click Terminal and run as administrator.
  3. Type diskpart and press Enter.
  4. Type list disk and press Enter. Make note of your disk number.
  5. Type select disk *. Replace with your disk number.
  6. Type attributes disk clear readonly and press Enter.

Once you do this, your USB will no longer be read-only and you can once again start storing files on it.

3. Fix the Incorrect Size USB Drive Using DiskPart Command

When your flash drive has many partitions on it, you need to remove all partitions, format the drive and then recreate partitions on it. This is essential tool for Windows users to troubleshoot most computer problems, including your flash drive showing incorrect size.

To fix USB drive incorrect size problem using CMD, follow these steps:

Step 1. In Windows 10/8/7, search command prompt and run as administrator. For Windows 11 users, click Terminal and run as administrator.

Step 2. On the Command Prompt window, type diskpart and hit Enter.

Step 3. Continue typing list disk and then select disk N followed by the Enter. Here N represents the disk number of your flash drive. If your flash drive is disk 2, then type select disk 2.

Step 4. Now type the following commands one by one and hit Enter after each:

  • clean
  • create partition primary
  • format fs=ntfs (To format the flash drive to FAT32, type format fs=fat32 quick instead)
  • assign

Step 5. Type exit to close the command prompt.

4. Reformatting USB (Windows)

  1. Connect the USB flash drive to your computer. Formatting your USB drive will erase everything that’s on it.
  2. Press ⊞ Win+E to open File Explorer.This opens File Explorer on Windows.
  3. Right-click your flash drive and select Format.
  4. Go to “This PC” first.
  5. Select a file system. Use the drop-down menu, Your options are as follows::
    • NTFS – The default Windows operating system format. This format only works with Windows.
    • FAT32 – The most widely compatible format. Works on Windows and Mac but has a storage limit of 32 gigabytes.
    • exFAT (Recommended) – Works on Windows and Mac and has no storage limit.
  6. Click Start, then click OK.
  7. Click OK when Your flash drive has successfully been formatted.

5. What is a RAW USB Flash Drive

RAW is a state of a storage device where it has either an unrecognizable, damaged, or no file system. Basically, the storage device’s file system is the root of the problem.

Following are reasons that can put your flash drive into a RAW state:

  1. Flash drive improper removal or power failure.
  2. Virus or malware
  3. Corrupted or Incompatible file system

You’ll be able to verify if your flash drive is in a raw state using the Disk Management tool in Windows. Press Win + R, type diskmgmt.msc, and press Enter to launch the Disk Management console.

6. Converting a RAW flash drive using the command prompt

This method, should be used only if your flash drive did not contain any important information, because, all the data on the flash drive will be destroyed.

The point is that sometimes an error occurs when formatting a USB drive or memory card using Windows Explorer:

“Windows was unable to complete the format”

  1. In Windows 10/8/7, search command prompt. For Windows 11 users, click Terminal.
  2.  Right-click on the “Start” button and select “run as administrator” (you can also use the “Win+R” key combination)
  3. In the window that appears, type “cmd” and press “Enter”
  4. Type the “diskpart” command and press “Enter” again.
  5. Enter the following commands one by one and press “Enter”
  6. list disk” this command displays all the drives.
  7. select disk n” n should be replaced by the number of the flash drive.
  8. clean” this command completely cleans the previously selected flash drive.
  9. create partition primary” this command will create a new partition on your flash drive.
  10. active” this will make your partition active.
  11. list partition” to display all the partitions on your flash drive.
  12. select partition 1” this command will select the partition you just created.
  13. FORMAT OVERRIDE QUICK LABEL=FixedDrv” this command will format your partition to NTFS

This article will help you to find the best solution for your USB drive.

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