How to recover deleted videos from a USB flash drive
Deleted videos from a USB stick, formatted it by mistake, or it suddenly won’t open? Files deleted from a flash drive don’t go to the Recycle Bin, which makes it feel final. It usually isn’t: the videos stay on the drive until something new is written over them.
Why the videos are still there
A USB drive keeps a list of which files live where. Deleting a file, or quick-formatting the drive, only clears entries on that list and marks the space as free. The video data stays exactly where it was until a new file is saved over it.
That’s why the single most important thing is to not save anything to the drive, not even the recovered videos.
What your chances look like
- Deleted, drive not used since: very good.
- Quick-formatted (the Windows default): very good.
- Drive asks to be formatted or shows as RAW: good. See this guide, which applies to USB sticks too.
- New files copied onto it since: partial. Some videos, or parts of them, may have been overwritten.
- Made into a Windows or Linux install stick: partial. The installer overwrote the start of the drive; videos further in often survive. See Made a Windows install USB on the wrong stick?
- Full format (Quick Format unticked): gone.
Recovering the videos with Keepsake
- Plug the USB drive straight into the PC, not through a hub. If Windows offers to format it or to “scan and fix” it, say no.
- Download Keepsake to your PC (not the USB drive) and open it. Allow the administrator prompt; it’s needed to read the drive directly.
- Pick the drive. It’s listed by name and size. Keepsake only reads from it and never writes.
- Scan. Videos appear as they’re found, each with a score showing how much of it is intact.
- Preview for free, and save the ones you want to your PC or another drive. A license is $49 once.
Keepsake finds MP4 and MOV videos by their own index, the moov, rather than by the start of the file. That’s what lets it find videos whose beginning was overwritten, which tools like PhotoRec and Recuva can’t see. Keepsake was first built to recover wedding videos from a USB stick that had a Windows installer written over it.
Questions
Do files deleted from a USB drive go to the Recycle Bin?
No. Windows deletes them straight away. They’re usually still on the drive until overwritten, so recovery software can find them.
Does this work for external hard drives too?
Yes, for regular hard drives connected over USB. SSDs are different: most erase deleted data automatically in the background, so recovery from an SSD rarely works.
The drive is slow or keeps disconnecting.
Tick Make a safety copy first in Keepsake. It reads the drive once into a file on another drive, then works only from that copy.