Although Macs are reliable machines, they are not exempt from hiccups. All you need to do is carry around a single USB flash drive to be ready for situations the require you to diagnose, repair, or experiment with Mac OS X.
One of the maintenance tools every Mac user should have available in case of emergency is a bootable copy of Mac OS X on a removable device. A clean installation of the operating system can help pinpoint problems and will come to the rescue in a bind. And since most Mac owners use a MacBook of some kind nowadays, portability is a valuable thing. That means carrying around a bulky external hard drive with cables is not always ideal. It turns out a tiny USB flash drive serves as a great alternative.
Not sure when having OS X loaded on a flash drive would come in handy? Here are just a few examples:
- Your Mac isn’t starting correctly and you’re not sure if the internal hard drive is failing or if another piece of hardware is to blame.
- The file system on your startup disk has become corrupt and needs to be repaired.
- A software problem is plaguing your Mac and you’d like to see if you can replicate it in an isolated environment.
- Your Mac’s hard drive is completely dead and you’d like to use your computer for basic tasks like email and web browsing while you wait for your new drive to arrive.
Now that you’re convinced, let’s figure out how to do this. First you’ll need an Intel-based Mac from the past few years. Second, at least a 16GB USB flash drive, such as this SanDisk Cruzer Micro for about $30 at Amazon. Keep in mind 10.6 Snow Leopard was used to demonstrate this tutorial, so I’m not sure how much space 10.5, 10.4, and earlier require. While they should be fine, squeeze those versions of Mac OS X on a 16GB drive at your own risk. And the third thing you’ll need to get the job done is your OS X installation DVD.
Mar 13, 2020 If the damaged USB drive is set into write protection mode by accident in Command Prompt window, then you need to remove read only attribute using command line. With this great SanDisk USB repair tool, you can easily repair damaged USB flash drive, pen drive or SD card in Windows 10/8/7. Apr 14, 2020 Step 5 The tool will scan the USB drive and repair USB drive errors if it can find any. USB Repair Tool on Mac. First Aid on recovery mode can serve as a computer flash drive repair tool on Mac. Step 1 Restart your Mac and press Command + R during the reboot until the Mac boots into recovery mode. Step 2 Click Disk Utilities(Utilities) Disk.
- To start things off, connect the USB flash drive to your Mac. Make sure there’s no valuable data on there because it will be permanently wiped out in a couple minutes.
- Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) and click on your flash drive in the list on the left.
- Go to the Partition tab and select “1 Partition” from the Volume Scheme menu. Enter a name for the volume (I called mine “OS X USB”), select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” as the Format, and make sure the size is somewhere around 15-16GB.
- Click on the Options button towards the bottom and choose “GUID Partition Table” from the popup window. Click OK.
- Now that all of the settings have been chosen, click the Apply button and then Partition. Disk Utility will take a minute or two to complete the task.
- I don’t believe this step is required, but it makes me feel better and doesn’t hurt. Click on the volume name you entered in Step 3 (in the list under the flash drive’s name). Go to the Erase tab, make sure the Format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled),” and click the Erase button.
- Insert your Mac OS X installation disc if you haven’t already. A window should pop up with the contents of the disc. Double-click the “Install Mac OS X” icon and progress through the installer until you get to the screen that says “Mac OS X will be install on…”
- Click the Show All Disks button and select your USB flash drive.
- Click on the Customize button and a new window will appear. Un-check all of the items except “Essential System Software.” You may choose to check “Rosetta” and “QuickTime 7” since they are so small and might come in handy. Click OK and then Install. The rest of the process should be automated and might take between 30-60 minutes since USB flash drives are slower than internal hard drives. When all is said and done, you should find about 9GB of your 16GB drive has been filled.
- Eventually, the installation will finish and it should reboot directly to the USB drive. If it doesn’t, restart the Mac manually and hold down the Option key to choose the drive yourself. This is how you will access it in the future, too.
- Set up the fresh installation just like you would a new computer. Once you’re in, run Software Update a few times to get the latest patches and install any third party diagnostic utilities you may have. For example, Alsoft’s DiskWarrior is an invaluable tool that goes above and beyond what OS X’s own Disk Utility has to offer. This way both tools are available in one convenient place whenever you need them.
All done! That wasn’t too painful, was it? Yes, booting to the flash drive will be a tad sluggish, but it’s not meant to be used on a regular basis. This is mainly for diagnosing issues and trying potentially risky things in a virtual sandbox that won’t ruin any of your data. While you’ll hopefully never need to use it, having a bootable copy of OS X on a USB flash drive is a cost-effective, portable emergency tool for your Mac.
Jun 23, 2020 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions
How do I Fix a Corrupted Flash Drive?
Can a corrupted/broken, damaged USB drive be fixed and retrieve data back? A USB drive, just like any other data storage device, has the possibility of corruption or inaccessibility can be because of physical and logical issues. In the next following guide, we will show you how to repair the corrupted USB drive and get your data back. We introduce Recoverit Data Recovery which is a professional USB data recovery tool to help you retrieve USB data back.
What Caused the USB Drive Got Corrupted/Damaged/Broken?
When your USB drive gets corrupted or damaged, you will get an error message like 'Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk'. The other common errors: 'USB Device Not Recognized or Malfunctioned', 'you need to format the disk before using it'. The error is a clear indicator of a corrupt flash drive controller software. The drive got virus-infected and the files got corrupted. It also indicates there is a problem with the NAND memory. If it is a relatively new USB drive, it can be caused by low-quality NAND chips usually a feature in cheap drives. Not being able the access the controller software has caused the drive to be unreadable by the operating system.
Flash drive repair for computers is still a lot easier to use with a better recovery rate compared to ones for SD cards. However, the software you use to recover data from damaged USB drive needs first to be able to detect the drive especially since corrupted drives will not mount as easily. Then the software will need to recover data in one of the many strange formats that used.
How to Repair Corrupted/Broken/Inaccessible USB Flash Drive
1. How to fix Undetectable USB Flash Drive
The first step to repair a USB drive is getting the Windows operating system to recognize it. The steps below will help force the Windows operating system to recognize it, the steps to fix USB flash drive not recognized error.
- Start by clicking on 'Control Panel' and then 'Drive Manager'.
- Click on the '+' symbol to expand on the 'Disk Drives' list.
- You will see an arrow that faces down across the 'USB drive' Just double-click on it and choose the 'Enable Device' option.
- Then you click 'next' and then 'next' again, and finally, it's done.
Once the drive recognition steps have been completed, you then have to assign drive letters. This can be done by following the steps below:
- Click on 'Start' then 'control panel' and then go to 'Security' and choose 'Administrative Tools' and click on 'Computer Management'.
- Right-click on your USB drive. You then choose the 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'.
- Click on the 'Add' button and then 'OK'
- You can now assign any one of the available drive letters to the USB drive by simply clicking on it.
- You then right-click on the drive and give it the 'online' designation.
2. How to Fix USB Drive Logical Issues in Windows
- The first step is to insert your USB thumb drive into the computer’s USB drive.
- Click on ‘My Computer’ and choose the USB drive that appears.
- Right-click on the drive and go to 'Properties’.
- Then choose the ‘Tools’ tab.
- Click on the ‘Check Now’ button.
- You should be now presented with two repair options, i.e. “Scan for and attempt to recover bad sectors” and “Automatically fix file system errors”.
- Check both the boxes and click ‘start’ to commence the scanning process.
- Once the scan is complete click ‘close.’
3. For Windows 7 Users as Following Steps:
- Start by inserting the USB drive into the port of your computer
- Right-click on the USB drive in ‘My Computer’ and then go to ‘Properties’.
- Click the ‘Tools’ tab.
- Then click on the ‘Rebuild’ button.
- The scan takes a while to complete after it completes close the ‘scan’ window.
- Then just right click on the USB drive and then ‘Eject’ before removing the USB drive from the computer.
4. Windows is Unable to Format the Drive Error:
- Step 1. The USB drive should be inserted into the port and then right-click My Computer icon. Select the 'Manage' option
- Step 2. Click the Disk Management option.
- Step 3. Select the faulty drive and make sure that it is checked for health and the other factors that are being presented by the system
- Step 4. Right-click and select 'Format' option to format it
How to Recover Files from Corrupted USB Drive with Recoverit Data Recovery
Hope those solutions can help you fix or repair the corrupted USB flash drive, what if all cannot solve the problems, you should buy a new one to replace or follow the next steps to recover your data from corrupted flash drive with Recoverit Data Recovery program. It is the professional USB data recovery software to recover lost data from corrupted/broken/damaged/inaccessible USB flash drive.
The USB data recovery program can easily recover deleted files from USB flash drive on Windows and Mac. Undeleted files from a formatted USB device, restore files after virus-infected USB, or any other data loss issue from USB flash drive.
Video tutorial on How to Recover Data from USB Flash Drive
Steps to Recover Data from Corrupted USB Flash Drive
Download and install Recoverit Data Recovery on your computer. Connect your USB drive to the computer and follow the next steps to perform flash drive recovery on Windows computer. If you are working on Mac, you should download Recoverit Data Recovery for Mac.
Step 1 Select the USB Flash Drive
Make sure your USB drive detected by the computer, select it, and click the 'Start' button to process.
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Step 2 Scan USB Flash Drive to Search Data
Recoverit Flash Drive Data Recovery will start a quick scan to search for data. If you cannot find your data after the first scan, you can go to scan again with 'All-around Recovery'. It will search for more files but will take more time.
Step 3 Preview and recover data from a USB drive
After the scan, you can preview some recoverable files like photos and images. Select your data and click the 'Recover' button to get your data back.
Note: Please do not save any recovered data to the damaged or corrupted USB drive, get a safe storage device to save all recovered data to avoid data loss again.
This powerful data recovery software can easily help you retrieve lost files from corrupted flash drive, otherwise, it also can help you recover deleted or lost files from other external devices like SD memory card, digital camera, mobile phone, external hard disk drive, etc. Download Recoverit Data Recovery software as below and get your data back.
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