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OS X’s Disk Utility—which enables you to format, partition, repair, and perform other kinds of maintenance on disks (including SSDs, flash drives, and disk images)—is good for what it does. Yet for many years conventional wisdom held that you also needed at least one third-party disk repair utility on hand to solve the problems Disk Utility couldn’t. Does that advice still make sense?

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Disk utilities claim to be able to fix problems involving a volume’s directory, which keeps track of where all your files and folders are. (Directory damage, perhaps the most common type of disk error, can produce symptoms such as missing or inaccessible files, applications that won’t launch, and startup problems.) Most of these tools can also repair a partition map, which is a chunk of data that describes how data is to be stored on a disk; and many can repair certain kinds of errors with individual files, too (such as damaged preference files). Regardless of those details, when your disk is misbehaving, you probably don’t care if you have an invalid B-tree node size or an overlapped extent allocation; you just want the symptoms to go away.

I’ve personally had numerous disk problems that Disk Utility tried but failed to fix, displaying a scary error message that read: “Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.” On these occasions, I was grateful to have more powerful tools available. Many such disk-repair apps exist, but the big three are Alsoft’s DiskWarrior ($100), Prosoft Engineering’s Drive Genius ($99), and Micromat’s TechTool Pro ($100).

Lately I’ve noticed something curious: While I used to turn to such utilities every few months, I haven’t had to do so in a long time—certainly not in the past couple of years. Anecdotal evidence suggests that I’m not alone in this; disk errors beyond the purview of Disk Utility seem to have declined sharply.

One reason is that Apple has made ongoing hardware and software improvements that keep disks running happily more of the time. OS X performs certain disk maintenance tasks automatically in the background—for example, it defragments smaller files on the fly, keeping all their segments contiguous on a hard disk so they’ll load faster. (Solid-state drives don’t require such defragging.) And, when you perform a safe boot (starting your Mac with the Shift key held down), OS X runs a more extensive set of diagnostic and repair procedures without you doing anything else. I credit these and other improvements to OS X with the reduced frequency of disk errors. In addition, Disk Utility has gained a number of new features in recent years, and it can now repair faults that might once have been out of its reach.

Whatever the reasons, I can tell you that my personal copies of DiskWarrior, Drive Genius, and TechTool Pro are all now several versions out of date, something I once would have found inconceivable. I’m asking myself, “Should I bother paying for upgrades? Will I ever even use them?”

If you find yourself asking similar questions, I have two answers for you.

No! Disk utilities are a waste!

As I look over the feature lists of the major disk utilities, I find it striking that they all advertise capabilities that Disk Utility already offers for free. The three third-party programs can check a drive’s SMART (self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology) status, repair disk permissions, and repair at least some types of volume corruption. Drive Genius and TechTool Pro can create a bootable duplicate of your disk and securely erase free space, and Drive Genius can also initialize and format drives. But Disk Utility does all that, too.

Disk repair always requires you to start up from a separate volume. But as long as your Mac is running Lion or Mountain Lion, you don’t need a second drive; simply restart while holding -R to use OS X Recovery, which boots your Mac from a hidden partition (or, in some cases, over the Internet) so you can run Disk Utility. The third-party utilities, by contrast, ship on bootable DVDs—except that they can’t boot the newest Mac models (not even if you use an external SuperDrive, for Mac models that lack an internal one). So in order to repair your startup disk, you’ll need to create a separate boot volume with the disk utility installed. (TechTool Pro’s eDrive is the sole exception here, behaving much like OS X’s Recovery HD.)

So, for most repairs, OS X’s native tools seem to be at least equal to the competition. And even if you encounter an error Disk Utility can’t fix, you don’t necessarily need to buy another app. Thanks to Time Machine, Disk Utility’s Restore feature, and a host of third-party backup programs, more Mac users than ever have great backups. In many cases, restoring a misbehaving disk from a backup can be faster—not to mention less expensive—than trying to repair the disk with a third-party utility.

On the other hand…

Yes! Disk utilities are still important!

Less frequent though they may be, disk errors do still occur, even on the newest Macs running the latest version of OS X. Modern Macs are by no means immune to directory corruption and other disk problems. And however much Disk Utility may have improved, it’s clear that it can’t fix everything. So, it’s still fair to argue that a third-party utility remains good insurance.

However, perhaps a better argument is that each of these utilities offers features beyond conventional disk repair. Here’s what they can do:

DiskWarrior has always been pretty much a one-trick pony—but it’s a great trick. It rebuilds the hidden directories that keep track of where all your data is located (damaged directories being a prime cause of disk problems)—and does so in such a way as to make it (in my opinion) the best all-around solution to that class of problems. If I encountered a disk error tomorrow that Disk Utility couldn’t fix, I’d still reach for DiskWarrior first, just as I did ten years ago.

TechTool Pro can recover files that were accidentally deleted (as in, you inadvertently dragged them to the Trash and then chose Finder > Empty Trash, making them unrecoverable in the Finder). TechTool Pro can also back up your directory while the directory is healthy to make recovery easier if it gets damaged. TechTool does other things, too: It tests RAM and VRAM, helps you calibrate audio and video devices, defragments files and volumes beyond the optimization built into OS X, locates bad blocks on a disk, and monitors devices on your local network. And its eDrive feature sets aside a special bootable partition so you can repair your disk without needing a separate startup disk.

Drive Genius, like TechTool Pro, can find bad blocks and defragment files and volumes. It also offers several features the others don’t, such as locating and deleting large or duplicate files and other disk-hogging resources, editing the raw data on your disk (a dangerously geeky thing to do), repartitioning a disk without erasing it (Disk Utility can do this too, but in a much more limited way), and benchmarking a drive’s performance.

All three of these utilities can also check certain files (such as .plist files) for damage; and they can continuously monitor one or more indicators of disk health, to warn you of potential problems before they become serious.

Only you can say whether the extra features in apps like Drive Genius and TechTool Pro are worth the cost. As for me, I no longer feel I need all these utilities, but I’ll need a few more problem-free years under my belt before deciding I can give up DiskWarrior.

A USB flash drives stores all the data in its memory similar to a hard drive. The operating system can later on fetch this data when required to be accessed. There can be various issues that may turn your USB drive data inaccessible such as if the drive is unmounted improperly from the port then it can lead to data corruption. Another reason for the stored data corruption can be invalid data in the Master Boot Record (MBR) or Partition Boot Record (PBR) or directory structure on the USB drive.

There can be various other reasons also that may make your USB corrupt or unresponsive. This may happen either due to logical corruption or physical corruption. Some common physical corruption issues are broken stems and connectors, dead drives (no power supply), broken circuit or NAND gate, not recognised, RAW, need to format, not accessible, and Dead Drives, etc.

How to Recover Data From an Inaccessible USB Drive?

To recover data from an inaccessible USB or Flash drive, first, you must be able to identify the exact reason leading to the problem while reading the USB drive.

Reasons of USB corruption or inaccessibility can be because of:

1. Logical Issues
2. Physical Issues

1. Recovering Files from Logical Issues.

If there are some logical/software errors with the USB drive, you can easily fix it. You need to repair the file structure so that the USB flash drive can be used again.

This is how you can scan for logical issues using Windows:

• Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your system.
• Go to This PC or My Computer>Removable Disk icon.
• Right click the Removable Disk Icon and open its Properties.
• Click on the Tools tab.
• Click Check Now button.
• You will be given two check disk options “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”.
• Check both checkboxes.
• Click Start. This will initiate the scanning process.
• Click Close after the scan process is completed.

If you are using Windows 10 or a lower version then carry out the following steps to repair the USB Flash Drive:

• Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your system
• Go to This PC or My Computer>Removable Disk icon.
• Right click the Removable Disk Icon and open its Properties.
• Click on the Tools tab.
• Click “Rebuild” button
• Let the scan process get completed. Close the scan window once it’s completed.
• Right-click the icon of the USB flash drive and “Eject”. Then remove the drive from the USB port.

Hopefully, this would help you solve the problem else you can try recovering your USB data using a professional usb drive data recovery tool.

Most USB data loss issues can be solved by using a professional USB flash drive data recovery software. You can free download such program and install it on your PC to begin scanning the device and recover data. Try Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows that supports scanning of large capacity USB drives and traces inaccessible or formatted files with their attributes and size intact.

How to Recover Data From a Corrupt or Inaccessible USB Drive with Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows?

Install and use Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows as explained in the video below.

2. Recovering Files from Physical Issues.

If you have a physical error such as a broken connector, circuit board, NAND memory chip of the drive, then the hardware needs to be replaced or repaired. Doing-it-yourself can lead to even worse situations. Better you get help from the experts in this area. You can hire any trusted data recovery company like Stellar Data Recovery who are specialized in recovering data from a physically damaged USB drive.

Below we have mentioned solutions to some common causes of physical issues with your USB drive.

a. Broken Stems and Connectors, & Dead Drives (no power to the USB):

A common indication of the physical errors is some kinds of error messages or troubles that you see after connecting the USB. Common error messages are “Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk” or “USB Device Not Recognized or Malfunctioned”, “you need to format the disk before using it”, RAW partition, dead or unresponsive drives, and damaged controller chips and/or circuit boards.

If the silver USB connector is broken or the circuit board is damaged it leads to power supply cut-off to the USB. In such case, soldering and circuit repair is required. It’s not advised to do it yourself as if anything goes wrong, you may permanently lose access to your USB and also it’ll reduce the chances of getting your data successfully recovered or sometimes impossible. To deal with above physical errors, specialized equipment and expertise are required. So better you hand over it to some professional and let him deal with the chaos.

b. Error: “Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk”:

This error occurs when the flash drive controller software becomes corrupt. It can also happen if there are some issues with the NAND memory. The above error can be caused by low grade or generic NAND memory chips. With a frequent number of reads and writes, the state of the drive turns worse.

The error indicates that there is some issue with the NAND memory chips. Most probably the metadata stored in the NAND memory is corrupted or wiped and it can’t be mounted then, thus turning the drive unreadable. Whenever you try to read the drive, you will get the error message “Please insert a disk into Removable Disk”. Also, if you try to check the drive size, it usually shows its capacity as 0 MB. As the device cannot be mounted on windows, if you check Device Manager under Disk drives, a different name for the USB drive will be listed. Also, the Disk Management shows a drive letter with No Media.

Lexar Flash Drive Repair Tool

In such case, you need to search for manufacturers that perform USB data recovery or flash drive data recovery.

c. Undetectable USB Flash Drive:

You may not be able to use your USB drive because of some problems with the USB port, not with the USB drive. So, before performing any repair of the USB drive also make sure that the USB port is working fine.

To test the USB Port remove the USB drive, reboot your computer, and test the USB drive again. See if it works. It is possible that one port may not be working but all others are working fine. So try each port of your computer. If this doesn’t help, try the USB drive on some other computer.

Sometimes, the Installed copy of Windows OS may not be able to recognize your USB drive due to some USB version limitations.

You can fix an undetectable USB Flash Drive by drive recognition:

Flash Drive Format Tool For Mac

• Go to Start> Control Panel> Device Manager.
• Expand the list next to “Disk Drives” option.
• You can see a down facing arrow over your USB drive. Double click it and choose the option to “Enable Device“.
• Click Next.
• Click ‘Next’ again.
• Finally, click Finish.

After this, you need to assign the drive letter. To do so follow given steps:

• Go to Start>Control Panel>System and Security>Administrative Tools then choose “Computer Management”.
• Right, click the USB drive. Select the option to “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.
• Click ADD and then click OK.
• Now, assign any available drive letter to the USB drive by clicking it.
• Right, click the USB to designate it as “Online”.

Flash Drive Repair Utility Mac

If this fails, Windows automated “Fix it For Me” service can resolve the issue. If this also doesn’t help, then modifying the system registry will help you tackle the issue. We wouldn’t suggest you go for this option as it may harm your OS.

Flash Drive Repair Software

Conclusion

A USB Drive can become corrupt or unresponsive by any way of Logical or Physical issues. However, you can always securely use a professional USB data recovery tool like Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to recover files after your USB Drive becomes Corrupt or Unresponsive.

Best Flash Drives For Macs

Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows is an award-winning software; it is the recipient of prestigious Editor’s Choice Award for Data Recovery Software from PC Magazine. To quote PC Magazine “For beginners and non-technical users, Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows is the obvious first choice among data recovery software. A beautifully designed, efficient interface makes the program a pleasure to use.”