USB flash drives are no doubt a great choice for data transfer and storage. Their lightweight, portability, and high storage capacity are some of the great features they provide. Despite these advantages, like all storage devices, USB drives or pen drives are often prone to corruption, or input-output errors in USB, and data loss at some point in time.
You might have encountered a similar issue. In this article we have covered USB shows empty but is full issue. When you encounter this USB full but empty on Windows or Mac, you may find that your pen drive is working properly but all the data saved on it is hidden or missing.
Why Can't I See the Files Saved on my Flash Drive?
| Reasons | Description |
| 🦠The USB device is virus/ malware-infected | If you accidentally connect your USB drive to the device infected with malware. |
| ⚠USB drives are corrupt or damaged. | USB getting corrupted might be one of the issues for data loss. Due to its mobility nature, we tend to use it frequently to connect to different devices for transferring the files. This will eventually lead to corruption. |
| ☣Bad sectors in the USB drive. | If you have been using the USB drive for a long time it might develop bad sectors on the drive. This will make the data on your computer unreadable. |
| 📄Files are hidden or deleted from the flash drive. | There might be chances that your USB drive might be corrupted or if the user has intentionally hidden the files from the USB. |
| 🔌Flash drive is improperly inserted or connected to your computer. | You need to check if you have properly connected your flash drive. Having connectivity issues result in the OS not detecting the USB drive. |
Important Note: If Your USB drive says no media. then go through this article to find out how to fix USB flash drive no media issue.
6 Ways to Fix the USB is Full But Shows Empty Issue
Before you fix the issue, we recommend you to backup and recover the data. Some of the methods involved in this might further damage the drive. Hence it is advised to recover the files prior using a reliable USB recovery tool and then try the fixing part.
Method 1: Use Remo Recover Software to Recover USB Stick not Showing files
Remo Recover is a powerful USB recovery tool built with a deep scan engine, specifically to recover data from USB drives and other external storage devices that are severely corrupted or showing empty. Additionally, it is compatible with all the latest versions of Windows and Mac operating systems, including Windows 11 and macOS Ventura.
Recover Files from the USB drive Showing Empty or Full:
1: Download the Remo Recover:
To recover the files from a USB showing empty but files are there, the first step is to download the tool. Downloading the tool might take some time. Now you will be navigated to the install setup. Once the software is installed you are good to go with the recovery process.
2: Select the Drive to Recover Data:
Once the software is installed, launch the tool and select the USB drive from the home screen and click on the Scan option. Now the tool will finish the Quick Scan, it will directly initiate the Deep Scan automatically.
3: Can’t Find the Drive:
If you can’t locate the USB drive that is not showing your files on Windows or Mac, you can click on Can’t Find Drive? option this will help the tool to find the USB drive you’re looking for.
4: Preview the Recovered Files:
Once the scanning process completes, you can find all your files from the USB drive showing empty in Dynamic Recovery View. Now you can double click on the Preview.
5: Save the Recovered Files:
Now, select the files which you wish to recover and click the Recover button to restore them to a preferred location and click on the OK.
Method 2: Show Hidden Files and Unhide Folders on USB Stick
Sometimes it is possible that the files in the USB drive are hidden; hence, your USB is empty. In order to make sure this is not the inherent problem, unhide files using the following steps to fix the flash drive full but no files show the issue.
- Connect your USB flash drive to your system.
- Go to This PC and click on File at the top left corner, then navigate to Change Folder and Search options.
- In the pop-up window click on the View tab and in the Advanced settings navigate to Hidden files and folders select Show hidden files, folders, and drives. Then click Apply to see the hidden items option.
Now, check if the files and folders on your USB are showing up or not. In case, if your USB shows full but empty, then proceed to the next method.
Method 3: Check USB Drive For Errors
You may check and resolve issues on your USB drive using integrated methods like checking for errors:
- From your home screen, go to This PC. Select the USB Drive that appears to be empty but is actually full. Go to Properties by right-clicking on it.
- Go to the Tools section of the Properties pop-up menu and click the Check.
- Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors and Automatically Fix File System Errors are the two possible approaches. Select one of the choices and press Start.
This procedure should identify and fix any errors in your Drive. You can try both solutions one after the other to resolve the error.
Method 4: Run Anti-virus
A virus on your USB device may be causing it as well. To rule out this issue, run an anti-virus scan on your USB device.
This can be done either using Windows Defender or any third-party anti-virus application. If you find any viruses on the pen drive, get rid of them. If the scan shows that your USB device is free from any threat, you can proceed to the next method.
Important Point: A virus or malware attack might change the actual storage capacity of your USB drive. Kindly refer to this article to find out what to do if your USB stick is not showing full capacity.
Method 5: Run the CHKDSK Command to Fix the USB Stick not Showing Files
If you're familiar with your Windows PC's command line, you could use this way to fix USB drives to check issues without data loss.
- In the search panel on your home screen, type cmd and select the Command Prompt option that appears.
Note: Make sure you run the command prompt as an Administrator.
- In the Command Prompt window, type chkdsk #: /f and click Enter to execute the command. ("#" in the command "chkdsk #: /f" must be substituted with the drive letter for example your USB drive shows drive f then use f).
After this command is executed, all of your data may reappear, and your USB Drive may show as full once again. If you’re still seeing your USB drive full or empty go through the next method to recover missing USB files but space is still used.
If the previous methods didn’t totally resolve the USB is empty but says full, your USB flash drive has become severely corrupt.
In such cases you can format the drive to fix the issue. However, formatting the drive might result in data loss. Hence it is recommended to always take a backup of your important files. If you have not taken the backup then we recommend you to make use of a USB recovery tool by Remo.
Method 6: Format the USB Drive to Fix an Issue USB Empty But Full
Follow the steps below to fix usb shows empty but is full.
- Go to the File Explorer and Right click on your USB
- Now select the Format option and select the File System you want to format your USB with and select the Check box with Quick Format.
Tips for Managing your USB Drives Better
- In order to avoid USB devices showing no files or empty, always make sure you remove the device using Safely Remove Hardware.
- Secondly, don’t interrupt a data transfer process. This means, that if a data transfer between USB and your system is in progress, don’t interrupt the transfer or remove the device midway.
- Avoid connecting USB flash drives to virus-infected devices.
Restoring a USB drive to its full capacity can be necessary when the device is not showing its maximum available storage space.
Conclusion:
If your USB drive is full but still appears to be empty, you should be concerned about the security of your data. Either try to repair it or use the Remo Data Recovery tool to safely extract all of your data from the infected USB Drive.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Navigate to File Explorer > This PC > Devices and drives and find your inserted flash drive.
Right-click on the flash drive and choose Properties to view the storage capacity.
As mentioned earlier, the reason can be anything right from virus infection, malware attack, improper connection, or ejection of the USB flash drive. Can be the reason why you can't see your files on USB.
Make use of Remo Recover to recover hidden files in flash drive caused by virus attack. Remo is built with powerful drive identifier technology that can deeply scan and find all the connected drives. And the advanced A.I scanners are built to recover all lost, missing, hidden files not just from USB drives, but also from other storage drives.
You can go to the folder options Settings on your computer and choose the option to expose hidden files and folders to search for hidden files on your USB device. Once you've done so, any hidden files on your USB drive ought to be visible.
By making additional partitions from the drive's available free space, you can expand the storage space on your USB stick. To allocate free space, follow these steps:
● Go to the Disk Management and find the unallocated volume.
● Right click on it and select New Simple Volume.
● Enter the size of a new partition and click on Next.
Now select a drive letter and select a volume label from the drop down and click on the Next option and finally click on the Finish.
Following are the reasons why your USB shows full but it is empty
● Logical issues like corruption, bad sectors, etc., might result in USB corruption.
● If your flash drive is physically damaged like moisture, dirt, etc.
● In case you are trying to copy a large file above 4GB on the USB drive which is formatted with FAT32. Because FAT32 can support copying/transfering the files less than 4GB.
