How to Repair a Flash Drive
Flash memory devices are essentially miniature hard drives that allow you to keep your data in a portable location. Flash drives do store and transfer their data in different ways than standard hard drives, which can occasionally lead to problems. If you use your flash drive incorrectly, or simply use it on a regular basis over an extended length of time, the data can become corrupted. There are several different ways you can try to repair the drive and recover the corrupted files.
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Instructions
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Plug the flash memory drive into an open USB port on your computer. Open the Start menu and select "My Computer."
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Right-click the driver letter for your flash memory drive. Click "Properties." Navigate to the "Tools" tab.
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Click "Check Now" underneath the "Error Checking" heading. Click the "Automatically Fix File System Errors" and "Scan For and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors" check boxes. Click "Start."
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Wait for the error-checking process to finish running. Try opening or modifying one of the files on the drive to find out if the problem was fixed.
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Navigate to one of the Resources links if the data on the drive is still corrupted. Download and install a flash drive repair utility such as "BadCopy Pro," "Recover My Files," or "Virtual Lab Data Recovery."
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Open the repair utility. Click "Recover" or the equivalent option for the utility you downloaded. Select "Browse" and then choose the flash memory drive.
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Click "Output" or the equivalent option. Select the folder where you want the recovered data to be saved. Click "Start."
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Try accessing the data on the flash memory drive again. Return to the "My Computer" window if the data is still corrupted. Right-click the drive letter again and choose "Format."
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Click "Start" to reformat the flash drive.
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Tips & Warnings
When you reformat the flash memory drive, all of the data that was saved on the drive will be permanently lost.
The options you need to click to run the error-checking tool may differ if you are using an operating system other than Windows Vista.
Never make changes or save a file directly on the flash memory drive. Instead you need to transfer the file to your computer, make any necessary changes, and then transfer it back to the flash drive. Flash drives are considered "volatile" memory and they can easily become corrupted if you directly change the data stored on them.
