If you’ve ever copied an ISO file to a USB drive, or you have just installed a new Windows on your PC, there is a chance that you encounter the issue of vanishing disk space. This is a common problem that can occur with your PC and your USB or other storage devices.
However, if you ever wish to recover your USB drive, the additional space may have just been unallocated.
Whenever the partition pattern is modified, the drive’s size might appear to change. If that’s the situation, even formatting the disc will not restore the lost space.
If you cannot locate the disk partitions on the USB drive for whatever reason, there’s no need to worry. This article will enlist two methods to recover lost/unallocated space on the USB drive.
Important Note: It would be best if you make a backup of all of your data before beginning the recovery process.
What is Unallocated Space on a USB?
Unallocated storage is a space that has not been formatted or separated and thus is not used for data storage. In a short, unallocated space on a USB drive is worthless and unavailable. But how can unallocated space on a USB occur? Let’s have a look at this in the following section.
Why Does Your USB Drive Have Unallocated Space?
Because a USB drive is detachable, it is more vulnerable to malware and viruses than a hard disc. As a result, the USB device unallocated space issue is frequent. There can be other reasons like:
- File systems
- Broken system files can all result in unallocated space on a USB device
Data loss always occurs when a partition is converted to unallocated space in such instances. Fortunately, you can quickly recover your data from a USB drive with unallocated space.
How to Recover Unallocated Space on USB Drive?
This issue may annoy you since you don’t understand how to resolve it. Don’t worry. There are simple solutions.
When you accidentally lose all of your data or for other reasons, utilizing a recovery application is the best approach to retrieve all deleted data from a USB device. You may restore all lost/inaccessible files from a USB drive with the USB Drive Recovery tool. This program is intended to recover any forms of data, including photographs, audio, and movies.
Regardless of why the contents were lost from the USB flash drive, all data may be simply restored utilizing the program. It thoroughly examines the disk for missing files and easily recovers them.
Following are two methods to recover Unallocated space on a USB drive.
1. Using Disk Management Utility
Under this procedure, we will be using the disc management utility to regain lost or unallocated space on a USB drive. Use the steps given below:
- Step 1: To begin, launch the Windows RUN dialogue box by clicking the Windows Key + R combination.
- Step 2: In the RUN dialogue box, type diskmgmt.msc and press the Enter key.
- Step 3: In Disk Management, right-click just on Unallocated space under your USB device and choose New Simple Volume.
- Step 4: Select the Next option in the New Simple Volume Wizard.
- Step 5: You must now specify the volume size. Simply select the volume to be recovered and press the Next button.
- Step 6: You would now be prompted to enter a drive letter. Simply click the Next button after assigning a drive letter.
- Step 7: At this point, you must format the newly created volume. Choose NTFS as the file system and check the ‘Perform a quick format box. Tap the ‘Next’ toggle when you’re finished.
That concludes the first method. This will allow you to recover any unallocated space on the USB device. Now, let us move on to the second method.
2. By using Diskpart
Because Disk Management can’t remove or format certain files, you might discover there’s no method to use unallocated space. Then you may move to the next method called Diskpart, which will undoubtedly assist you in reclaiming the missing storage on the USB device.
Before you begin, make a backup of the data since improper Diskpart actions might result in irreversible data loss.
- Step 1: Attach the USB device that is causing the issue to your computer. Open Run dialogue by pressing Window + R. After that, type “diskpart” inside the Run dialogue or search field and hit Enter to launch the Diskpart application.
- Step 2: Type the “list disc” command to get a list of all available discs with a given disc number on your system.
- Step 3: Type “choose disc” to find and pick the USB device. The disc number of the USB device is 2, so just put “select disc 2” into the command line.
- Step 4: Type “clean” to erase all partitions and volumes on the specified disc, which in this case is the USB drive.
- Step 5: To make a primary partition, type “create partition primary.” If you wish to makeover than one partition on the USB device, use the following format to indicate the partition size: Make a main partition [size=n]. Run the command “create partition primary size=3000” to create a 3000MB partition, for example.
You also recover unallocated space on USB by using some third-party apps, i.e., AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard edition or EaseUS Partition Master, etc.
Conclusion
It is normal to lose unallocated space on a USB drive at a certain point. In such a scenario utilizing the finest USB drive data recovery techniques, you may simply restore unallocated space on a USB flash drive.
The two methods listed in this article are easy to apply and very effective for regaining unallocated space on a USB drive.
So, without further ado, try these methods to fix your USB drive problems.