Everything you may need to know about how to fix errors in USB Flash drives and how to Format USB Flash

USB Drives, Flash Drives, Pen Drives or USB Flash drives are one and the same thing. These are one of the most popular and useful medium to carry content around. I may be on the extreme end, but I carry most my most useful code on my USB Drive. So few days back, when I my Flash drive was infected with virus, I was really worried. Though finally I managed to delete the virus from the USB drive.

Make sure to remove read only from USB drive USB drives are popular because of the ease of writing on it. As I was going through the forum posts about issues faced with USB drives, I was surprised to see many users facing issue simpl because they had not removed the write-protect on their USB drive. You may not have write protect button on your Flash drive. Ignore the above then





Always keep a back up of the data present on the USB Flash drive
Threat of loss of data due to some corruption of memory is real. Sometimes files present on the USB flash drive, simply refuse to open. It is always a good idea to have a back up copy of data present on the pen drive.

Never remove the USB drive while data transfer is on
Remove the pen drive only after stopping it properly. Go to ‘Safely remove hardware’ (green arrow icon art bottom right corner), stop the usb drive and remove it only when it says it is safe to remove it.

If a file is not opening, transfer another copy of the file with a different name
When you transfer the same file with the same name the file may get stored in the same physical location and the problem may persist. Many a times transferring the file after renaming it helps.

The nuclear bomb: format USB drive
Never use formatting your USB drive as the first option. You will loose all your files and too many formats may reduce the life of the USB flash drive. Think of formatting as the nuclear option, use it only when everything else has failed.

Avoid quick format of USB drive
quick format gives rise to more problems than it solves. At least that is my personal experience. Avoid the temptation to do a fast quick format and go for the detailed option.

How to format USB drives?
The required software to format USB drives is generally present on the CD accompanying it. If you have misplaced the CD then simply google for it. You will find it on the support website for the manufacturer of the USB drive.