Usb drive that says needs to be formatted

Not to worry, this should be straightforward. Although feel free to ask again if the following method does not work.

Firstly, find out the drive letter that your USB stick is. Let's say for argument's sake that it is the F drive.

Go to the start menu, and search for "run". Open that and type CMD. Depending on your Windows version, you can simply type CMD into the search bar and open the Command Prompt.

When this is open, type the following, without the brackets: [Chkdsk F: /r] Also remember that I am using the letter F as a reference, yours may be another but you can find it in My Computer.

Back to the point, when you have pressed enter, it will start repairing damaged files and you will see some of your filenames (relief!) before it finally asks if you want to save lost chains into another location. These are essentially remnants of damaged files, I tend to click "Yes" just in case.

Your USB drive should now be working, please let me know how you get on!

it says a disk error occurred during the writing of the file allocation table

solution one: reboot your pc, link your usb drive to pc again, if it dose not work, try another computer. Sometimes this will work, if don't, try solution two.
solution two: download a free data recovery software, restore your files to another usb drive. Generally speaking, all your lost files will be recovered.
solution three: when the file recovery is finished, you'd better check your usb drive.
1.Link it to your pc, right-click on your usb drive letter in "my computer"
2.Select "property", find "hard drive" and select your usb drive in"name", hit "property"
3.Select "strategy" and then "optimization" in the property dialog.
4.Wait till the optimization is finished. Hit "Confirm" and reboot your pc.
5. Format your usb drive.
If solution three dose not work, perhaps your usb chip is damaged, buy a new one.

Hi
generally this problem will occur to everybody who all are using usb drives.Because in day to day life usb can be used in everyone's work life.So there will be a chance of virus attack on those usb drives. No need to worry about lost data because there is one data recovery software is there to retrieve lost data from usb drive. what you need to do download the software and install it in your system. Then follow simple steps to recover your lost data.

Hi! I tried this and I'm getting a "The type of the file system is RAW. Chkdsk is not available for RAW drives. HELP!!!

hi,
I understood your problem... Yes, you can recover all your USB files even after formatting. when i was in same situation I used flash drive software to recover formatted flash drive. For more details about the software check out the link below:
http://www.recoverflash.com/formatted-drive.html
You can also download the free trial edition of this software and check its working
http://www.recoverflash.com/download/recoverflash-windo...

I have the same problem on my Adata 16GB 3.0. - RAW and it needs to be formatted. The wired thing: I just bought it a months ago from newegg and I did format it before saving photos to the ADATA USB. I did not know why a month later, it asked me to format it AGAIN?

I was pretty upset since the photos saved on the new usb was for a new married couple. You know I work for a photographic workshop.

I looked around the web and come to this forum and to my surprise, 95% of lost photos are restored sound, only 3 photos were corrupted. Anyway, I am pretty satisfied with the software and BIG THANK YOU - tomshardware and YOU!

Do not format it!
In order to recover your data successfully, you should try a USB drive recovery freeware at first and then format this drive. That's the right way.
Honestly, this freeware has helped me recover my inaccessible data from a hard drive. It won’t let you down!
Tips:
1. Do not store any new data on this USB drive in case of the original data overwritten by new data.
2. Do not save the recovered data on the same drive in case of recovery failure.
3. Format this card to see whether it could work as before.
4. Do not forget to back up your important data regularly in the future.

i followed the steps and it said the type of the file system is raw? what does that mean?

I had the same problem when I accidently forgot to safely remove hardware, and came across this post. Here's what worked for me with Windows 7:
1. Click start, go to Control Panel, then Device Manager
2. Right-click “USB Mass Storage Device”, and select “Uninstall”
3. Unplug the Flash Drive and wait a few seconds
4. Plug it back in
5. Windows will give you the same “disk not formatted” error - don't worry...
6. Do not format the drive – click cancel
7. Then safely remove hardware (like you would normally)
8. Remove the flash drive, wait a few seconds, then plug it back in.
9. Now that it has been “safely removed”, Windows should give you a message saying “do you want to Scan and Fix” – Click the “Scan and Fix” button.
10. Check “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”
11. Click “Start” to start the scan, wait for it to complete… and then pray that it works for you like it did for me  
Good luck!

"When this is open, type the following, without the brackets: [Chkdsk F: /r] Also remember that I am using the letter F as a reference, yours may be another but you can find it in My Computer."

>>did this and it said not available for raw drives?

Have done this 4-5 times but still it says format disk.Now what should i do?????