2022 Guide: How to Recover Deleted Files from Pen Drive in 3 Ways

How can I recover deleted files from my pen drive? Don't worry if you lost or deleted files from a pen drive. Here, on this page, you'll get a complete guide to recovering data from a pen drive in 3 efficient ways:

Your Reliable Tips: If your pen drive data get lost by deletion or virus attack, professional data recovery software in Method 1 is a better choice. As to recovering hidden files, the CMD in Method 2 can help you with it. If your drive is damaged, you can turn to experts in Method 3.

Causes of File Corruption/Loss on USB/Pen Drives

Pen drives, being small, portable, and lightweight, are widely used to store files and transfer data between devices. However, there's also much data loss that happens on pen drives quite frequently. To recover deleted files from the pen drive, you may want to find the causes of pen drive file loss:

• Accidental deletion
• Formatting
• Virus attack
• File system becoming RAW 
• Files are hidden.

Luckily, with the help of advanced pen drive data recovery software and CMD, you can recover data from a pen drive on your own.

Method 1. How to Recover Files from Pen Drive with Software for Free

It is simple, reliable, and efficient to recover pen drive data lost due to deletion, formatting, virus attack, etc. with third-party pen drive recovery software. Qiling free data recovery software is reliable in pen drive data recovery. Check what can Qiling pen drive recovery software do for you:

Download it now and follow the steps below to recover deleted files from your pen drive in minutes:

Step 1. Select file types and click "Next" to start

Launch Deep Data Recovery software. Select file types and click "Next" to start.

Step 2. Run USB Data Recovery Software

Connect the USB drive or pen drive to your computer and launch Qiling USB data recovery software on your PC. Select the drive which is labeled as a External drives, and click "Scan" to start looking for lost files.

Step 3. Scan and Search Lost Files on a USB Drive

Deep Data Recovery will thoroughly scan your USB flash drive/pen drive and find all your lost data on it. When the scan process completes, use the Filter feature to find wanted files.

Step 4. Restore All Lost Files from USB

A double-click will allow you to preview the files. Select the target files to restore and click "Recover" to save them to a secure location on your PC or other external storage devices.

Method 2. How to Recover Data from Pen Drive Using CMD

Sometimes, when your pen drive is corrupted or gets empty, the files will disappear. These missing files are hidden not lost.  CMD can help to recover data from a pen drive when the files are hidden from your device.

Here are the detailed steps of using CMD to recover hidden data from your pen drive: 

Step 1. Connect the pen drive to your computer.

Step 2. Click "Start", select "Search" and enter cmd.

Step 3. Right-click "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as administrator".

Step 4. In Command Prompt, type attrib –h –r –s /s /d e:*.* and hit "Enter".

Syntax Explanation: 

• The "-h" option is used to clear the hidden attribute.
• The "-r" option to clear the read-only attribute.
• The "-s" option to clear the system attribute.
• The "/d" attrib option includes directories, not only files, to whatever you're executing. You can only use /d with /s.
• The part "e:" means the drive letter of your pen drive. Replace it with your own drive letter. 

Step 5. Wait patiently, when the process completes, type exit and hit "Enter".

After this, your pen drive data will show up in its original location on your drive. And you can make use of them again.

Method 3. Use a Data Recovery Service to Repair a USB Flash Drive

If your USB flash drive or pen drive is physically damaged, you cannot recover data with data recovery software. Instead, you can turn to data recovery experts. Qiling has partnered with the most reliable data recovery lab in the US. For more than 17 years, we've been providing DIY data recovery solutions. Now you have a chance to get your data back even from previously "unrecoverable" devices.

Here Is What to Do after Recover Deleted Files from Pen Drive

After restoring deleted files, we suggest you save your files to another drive instead of the original pen drive. And here are some pen drive protection tips that we would like to share with you.

Tips on What to Do after Pen Drive Data Recovery:

• #1. Format the pen drive to a suitable format - FAT32 or NTFS. Read Also: Best USB Formatter.
• #2. Create a backup of important pen drive files regularly.

Your files are in danger as any false operation may cause data loss. To safeguard your files, you can back up your pen drive data by using free backup software, syncing to cloud storage, or using Copy & Paste. For a secure way out, third-party backup software like Qiling Backup is a good choice.

Step 1. For the first time you use Qiling Backup to back up files, click File backup on the Backup and recovery page.

Step 2. Follow the paths to locate the files, folders or directories you want to back up, select them all.

Step 3. Now you need to select a backup location to save and retain the backup.

Step 4. Qiling Backup allows users to save the backup files to every device that is handy for you, like a local hard drive, external USB drive, SD card, network drive, or a NAS drive, plus a cloud drive of the Qiling brand. We personally recommend users to choose the cloud drive prior to a physical drive to save important backups due to the greater accessibility, flexibility and safety.

Step 5. If you're interested in an automatic and intelligent backup schedule for the next file backup task, go on with the "Options" setting. There you can encrypt a confidential file backup, compress the backup image size, or customize a backup scheme to tell the software in what time to start the next backup. 

Customize an advanced and automatic backup task here:

Step 6. Click "Proceed" to start the file backup process. Your completed backup files are visible on the left area in a card style.

• #3. Run antivirus regularly to keep your PC and pen drive safe.

Conclusion - Your Deleted Pen Drive Files Are Important

On this page, we explained the causes of your pen drive loss issue and collected two reliable ways for pen drive data recovery - using third-party software or CMD.

• Method 1: Pen drive recovery software - Deep Data Recovery enables you to recover deleted/formatted data in only 3 steps. It's a perfect beginners' tool. 

• Free Download
• Windows 11/10/8/7, 100% Secure

• Method 2: CMD - you can retrieve hidden files from your device.
• Method 3: Data Recovery Service - you can retrieve USB files with the help of experts.

Note that as long as your pen drive files matter, take action and recover deleted files from your pen drive immediately.

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