Files and folders in USB drive lost after connecting to Android phone! I have been using a Kingston 32GB OTG USB device (pic-1) on my Samsung J1 Ace, for some time now. Today I plugged it to the phone and moved several folders to the USB drive. Then I plugged it to my laptop. But all the old files and folders in the USB were lost, except for those folders that were moved from the phone. 

I have posted a screenshot (pic-2) of how the folder looks like when the USB pen drive is opened from the laptop (it’s the same when opened from the phone as well). 

Can someone please explain what happened and how to recover the folders (hopefully)?


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All your data seem lost or corrupted. Improper removal of drives could cause data corruption, or in worse cases, put the integrity of your drive at risk.

We need to consider three different protocols your drive may use when connecting to your computer. Two of them don’t need to be ejected at all: MTP protocol and PTP protocol. 

But If your drive  connects using the
USB Mass Storage protocol then it should ideally be ejected, this applies even if you’re not actually using the device at the time.

The reason is because operating systems use a process called write caching . The operating system doesn’t always write a file to a drive immediately, but instead caches it and waits until it has multiple write operations to complete.
Doing these all at once improves performance, but if the cache is still full when you remove the drive, your data will become corrupted. Clicking the Eject button causes the cache to be emptied and any remaining data to be written to the drive.

That’s the reason why there’s often a delay of several seconds between ejecting the drive and being notified that it’s safe to remove it.

Your data can be recovered partially or in integrity using file recovery softwares. Try Recuva, Puran File Recovery, File Scavenger or get a complete non-exhaustive list from here.

Good luck.