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How to Recover Data from Virus Infected Pen Drive?

Priya | Modified: 2024-05-20T10:53:31+00:00|Data Recovery | 6 Minutes Reading

Summary: A pen drive can be easily infected by a virus that causes deletion, corruption, and alteration of data, which leads to data disaster. If your pen drive gets infected,. Then don’t worry! You can solve this problem in just a few minutes. Surprised to hear this, Don’t be! It’s true. In this article, we will show you the best ways that will definitely help you recover data from virus infected pen drive.

A pen drive is a portable data storage device that is of great use because of its small size and huge storage capacity. Users can store any type of data file whether it is an image, audio, video, text file, document, or many more. But these drives are not safe from virus attack, due to which data stored in the pen drive may get corrupted and deleted, which results in the inaccessibility of data. Users may face various problems when their pen drive is infected by a virus. Some of them are mentioned below:

  1. Pen drive corruption: When the pen drive is affected by the virus, it may become corrupt and restrict you from accessing the data.
  2. Files Deletion: When the pen drive is infected by a virus, the files and folders stored in the USB drive may get deleted without any notification.
  3. Malfunctioning of the Drive: A virus affected pen drive may function abnormally, creating problems while accessing it.
  4. Data Alteration: Sometimes viruses may modify the data stored on a pen drive or create unnecessary folder shortcuts.
  5. Infect the System: Once the infected pen drive connects to the system, it infects the system as soon as you double click on the pen drive icon shown on your computer.
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Let’s Understand a User Query:

“I have a Samsung pen drive containing all my important data/documents. When I connected it to my laptop, I found, it was infected by virus and most of the files got deleted. I really need to get them back but I don’t know the exact process to retrieve files from virus infected pen drive. Can you help me to recover deleted files from virus infected pen drive?”

Before jumping onto the solution part, let’s get to know some safety measures to avoid virus infection:

  1. Scan your pen drive on regular basis before accessing files from it.
  2. Avoid downloading or saving of unsecured data.
  3. Carry out the antivirus scan, as soon as you come across virus infection.
  4. Use genuine antivirus software for scanning your pen drive.
  5. Do not use your pen drive on public computers, use it only on a safe computer.

How to Recover Data from Virus Infected Pen Drive Using CMD

Follow the below-given steps to retrieve files from virus infected Pen drive:

  1. Connect your infected Pen Drive to your PC, and press Win + R to run the program.
  2. Type cmd and then click OK.
    Recover Data from Virus Infected Pen Drive using CMD
  3. Type ATTRIB: H-R-S/S/D I:*.*, in the command prompt wizard (here ‘I’ is the USB drive letter). You should replace ‘I’ depending on your own USB drive letter shown on the computer. Recover file from Virus Infected Pen Drive
  4. Press Enter Key. Windows starts repairing the virus-infected pen drive, once the process is complete. You can look for them in your Pen Drive.

Format the USB Drive

1: Connect the USB drive to your computer system. Do not open the drive, just connect it through the computer’s USB port.

recover deleted files from virus infected pen drive

2: Go to your desktop and click on the My Computer icon. Select your USB drive from here.

recover deleted data from virus infected pen drive

3: Next, Right-click on the USB or pen drive and Choose Format.

how to get data from virus infected pen drive

4: Finally, you will be asked to confirm the formatting process. Press the Start option to start formatting the drive.

retrieve data from virus infected pen drive


The formatting process will take a few seconds. After formatting the drive, you can use the recovery options to recover your files. Again, when using this tool, be sure to use an uninfected drive to store the recovered data.

If this manual method fails to recover deleted files or the steps are difficult for you,. You can use the following solution to retrieve files from virus infected pen drive with Pen Drive Data Recovery software:. This is a professional USB flash drive recovery software that can easily help you recover deleted files from virus infected pen drive flash drives.

Recover Data from Virus Infected Pen Drive Using Expert-Solution

If you cannot find the required data after utilizing the above-stated manual method, then you just need to make use of professional software, i.e., USB Drive Deleted Data Recovery Software. You can download this utility on Windows OS.

The software is designed with a user-friendly interface, which makes it easy for users to work with this utility. Moreover, the software is compatible with all brands of pen drive and supports recovery from exFAT, FAT & NTFS formatted pen drive. It is an eminent piece of software that is capable of getting data from virus infected pen drives, flash drives, and memory cards.

Author Suggestion

In the above blog, we have discussed two simple approaches to recover data from virus infected pen drive. One method uses CMD, while the other is a professional third-party utility. You can choose any of the methods as per your requirement. However, we always recommend users try this professional software. It is available in two versions, free and paid. You can test the demo version, as it is 100% safe and secure to download and effectively recover files from a flash drive that needs to be formatted without any hassle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How to Show virus-infected files on a flash drive?

To recover hidden files from a virus-infected USB drive, you can use two solutions in this article: one is to use the ATTRIB command line, and the other is to use a professional virus file recovery tool to recover the infected files.

Q: How to recover files from a virus-infected USB?

  1. Open the Start menu, type cmd in the search box and press Enter.
  2. Click cmd.exe and you will enter the Windows command prompt
  3. Type attrib -h -r -s /s /d G:\*. * (replace the drive letter with G) to recover virus-infected files.