Why an USB flash drive gets corrupted? Actually, there are so many causes could result in corruption on USB flash drive. Formatting is the easiest way to fix a corrupted USB flash drive, whether the file systems gets corrupted or files are infected by virus on your USB flash drive. For instance, there are two methods to help you format a corrupted USB flash drive to exFAT on Mac. Of course, you also can rescue your data with a reliable data recovery solution.
Two methods to format corrupted USB flash drive to exFAT on Mac
To fix the corrupted USB flash drive, you may choose to format the USB flash drive. When the corrupted USB flash drive is not working on your Mac, just follow the guide below to format your corrupted USB flash drive.
1. Format corrupted USB flash drive to exFAT with Disk Utility
Plug your corrupted USB flash drive into your Mac, then open disk utility. You will see the USB flash drive on the left sidebar. Click to choose the corrupted USB flash drive. Then click on Erase button.
It will show a windows to let you rename the USB flash drive and choose the file system. Just choose ExFAT. Then click on Erase button. Disk utility will quickly format the corrupted USB flash drive to exFAT.
Some of the users also want to restore the data on the corrupted USB flash drive, whether it is formatted or not. Here is a data recovery solution to help you recover lost data. The data on the hard drive which is formatted by Disk Utility also can be recovered by data recovery software. Do Your Data Recovery for Mac is one of the best data recovery software, it is able to completely recover lost data from an USB flash drive, whether it is corrupted or erased by Disk Utility.
Step 1. Download Do Your Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac computer. Then run it from Launchpad.
Step 2. Do Your Data Recovery shows all hard drives and devices on your Mac computer. Click to choose the USB flash drive to start data recovery.
Step 3. Just click on Scan button to scan the USB flash drive. It offers quick scan and deep scan. If the quick scan can’t find all lost files, then try advanced recovery mode to find much more lost files.
Step 4. Once the scan is completed, you can preview all recoverable files. Then select the wanted files and save them to a safe location.
2. Format corrupted USB flash drive to exFAT with Mac Data Eraser
Third-party Mac disk formatting tool also can help you format corrupted USB flash drive to exFAT. Before you sell, donate or discard an old corrupted USB flash drive, you’d better format it and permanently remove all your private data. DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac is a reliable data eraser. It can help you securely format corrupted USB flash drive to exFAT and permanently wipe all data on the corrupted USB flash drive. Follow the steps below.
Step 1. Download and install DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac on your Mac.
Step 2. Choose mode Wipe Hard Drive, click to select the USB flash drive.
Step 3. Click on Wipe Now button to format the corrupted USB flash drive and permanently wipe all data on the USB flash drive.
Once the process gets finished, the corrupted USB flash drive will be formatted to exFAT, all data on the USB flash drive is gone forever, just like you get a brand new USB flash drive. There is no way to recover the erased data. After erasure, you can sell, donate or give away the USB flash drive without any worry.
The two methods above can help you securely repair corrupted USB flash drive, format it to exFAT on Mac. You also can format the corrupted USB flash drive to FAT 32 or APFS, HFS file systems.
Written & Updated by Nancy
Nancy works as a tech columnist at DoYourData. She is familiar with macOS and Windows OS and writes computer solution, data recovery, disk clone, data erasure articles for DoYourData. She is a big fan of Mac products and is fond of testing utilities software (such as cleaner, recovery, eraser, NTFS for Mac, video editor, etc) on Mac.