Recover USB Flash Drive Data on Mac

You just copied some important data on your USB flash drive from your friend’s Windows system. You connected it to your Mac system. Unfortunately, the USB drive is not showing up on your system. You pull out the USB and reinsert it. It is not detected by the system again.

You restart the system. Connect the USB drive again and see if it is getting detected. It is still not seen in the list of volumes on the system.

Now, let us explore solutions to this issue:

1. Reset your USB drive

For your USB drive to be detected and shown, let us first go to Finder Preference.

• On the upper left corner of your screen, click Finder -> Preferences->General.
• Make sure that under “Show these items on the desktop”, the checkbox next to External Disks is checked. On the Sidebar, make sure that External Disks option is checked.
• Go to Applications -> Utilities -> System Information.
• On the left pane, click USB. If USB Flash Drive is visible on the right pane, it is detected properly.

Just check if drive is mounted by selecting Go -> Go to folder and type /Volumes. If the disk is still not showing up, let us make use of Disk Utility feature.

Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility.

In some cases, the drive is detected, but you might have problems accessing contents of the drive.

After this process, unmount the disk by clicking Unmount. Unplug the drive, wait for few seconds and then plug it back again. Check if you can access contents of the drive.

2. Try a different system

Connect your USB flash drive to a different Mac or a PC and see if you are able to detect and access its contents.

3. Reset USB Ports on your Mac

• Click Apple logo. Now click Restart to reboot your Mac system.
• If the ports are not functional, unplug the USB devices. Restart your system again and reconnect your USB devices.
• Click Apple Menu. Select About This Mac -> More Info -> USB to view list of USB devices that are connected to your Mac.
• If you still do not see your USB drive, shut down and restart the system. While the system is restarting, hold the Command+Option+P+R keys simultaneously until you hear startup chime sound for second time. Now release these keys.
• You can click Command+Option+Esc keys to shut down applications that are not responding.
• Click Apple menu and click Sleep. After a few seconds, you can press any key to wake the computer.
• Restart your system. Click Apple Menu and click Shutdown. If it is not shutting down, hold the power button for at least 10-15 seconds to shut it down.
• Now unplug your power cord. Wait for about 15-20 seconds and plug your power cord back again. After about 5 seconds, press the power button to turn on the Mac.

Check if your USB drive is showing up on your system. If it is, you can start the recovery process.

Recover Data with YupTools Mac Hard Drive Recovery Software

• Download and install the latest version of YupTools Mac Hard Drive Recovery Software.
• Connect your USB flash drive to the system.
• On the home screen, select Lost File Recovery.
• The software now shows all the drives available on the system. Select your USB drive and click Next.
• The software scans the entire drive and retrieves data. You can view all the recovered files through Preview feature.
• You can save the recovered files to a destination folder of your choice.

YupTools can also retrieve data when USB says not enough space. Just follow the above steps for a simple data recovery.

NOTE:

When you lost data on your storage device, do not perform any operations on it. It leads to data overwriting and no data recovery software can reoover all your data completely

Precautions:

• Always have a backup of your data on a different storage device.
• Avoid formatting or reformatting of the disk
• Use a trusted anti-virus software to perform regular scanning on your storage device.

Other Popular Software