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Flash Drive is Empty But 'Not Empty', What to Do?

My USB flash drive says there's only 200KB available storage space on it (it holds 1GB). However, I find nothing on the drive. How can I let the disk know that there's 1GB available space on it?

Best Answered by

Connie Yang

Answered on Monday, April 29, 2024

First, you can press down Command + Shift + the period key (.) together to show the hidden files on your flash drive.

If no hidden files appear, the drive may have some errors. You can run Disk Utility First Aid to check it.

  1. Open the Launchpad > Other > Disk Utility.
  2. Select the flash drive and click First Aid > Run.
  3. Wait for the checking process done.

Still no luck? Your flash drive is probably corrupted, in this case, you can reformat it. However, reformatting a disk will erase all content on it. If you worry that the disk contains some invisible files, you can use a data recovery tool like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to scan the data on the flash drive for free before formatting.

After formatting the flash drive on your Mac, all the storage space is available.