How to open a flash drive without formatting on Windows 8. What happens to the data if you format the flash drive

Many people have encountered a situation where, when trying to open a flash drive, they saw a message on the screen asking them to format the device. If you agree, the computer completely clears the data, which may cause the loss of important information. That is why it is important to know how to open a flash drive without formatting. If you see an error message, there is no need to panic because there is a way to fix the situation. It is worth noting that if the flash drive was mechanically damaged, then the only chance to recover the information is to contact a specialist.

How to open a flash drive via the command line?

Let's consider a universal method that is suitable for drives of any model. The work will take place in several stages to achieve the desired result.

How to open a flash drive without formatting it:

1. First you need to find out two important values: PID and VID, which will help you identify and find out the brand, model and type of device. To do this, go to “Start”, and then go to “Control Panel” and “Device Manager”. There is the easiest way to quickly get to the desired folder - immediately type in the search bar - “mmc devmgmt.msc”. Once in the desired folder, you need to select “USB Controllers”. You should find in the drop-down list. Most often it is labeled as a storage device. The next step is to open a window by clicking the right button, where you select “Properties” and “Information”. This is where the information you need is found. In the “Equipment ID Codes” section, find the four-digit PID and VID numbers.
2. Understanding the topic - how to open a flash drive on a computer, we came to the next step, in which you need to go to the site - http://flashboot.ru/iflash/. Where you need to enter the values ​​that were defined in the previous paragraph in the appropriate fields. The site will perform the necessary operations and display the result. The right column will indicate the names and versions of programs that can be used to restore the flash drive.
3. All that remains is to download, install and use the program, following the existing instructions. There should be no problems with the operation of the program, since they are all simple.

Perhaps the most frequently asked question. If a flash drive malfunctions, when accessing it, the operating system usually prompts you to format the device. The reasons why the flash drive requested formatting can be very different: from minor software errors, such as damage to sector 0, to more serious problems associated with the incorrect operation of the flash drive controller, or its complete failure. Simply put, if the computer manages to recognize that there is some kind of device in the USB connector, but the file structure is inaccessible, it is immediately prompted to format the device.

Causes of flash drive failure:

- Violation of the logical structure of the flash drive;

- The appearance of unreadable sectors in memory chips (bad blocks);

- Flash card controller failure;
- Rash actions of users.

- Result of a virus attack;

It is curious that there is a fairly large category of users who are confident that restoring a flash drive or card is possible using formatting. That this operation will restore the functionality of the flash drive and the problem will be successfully resolved.

Why you don't need to format a flash drive:

1. Formatting a flash drive does not restore data. The result of successful completion of formatting is a clean device, ready to record new information.

2. The formatting procedure involves a writing operation. Without knowing the cause of the malfunction of a flash drive or memory card, it is impossible to predict the results of completing the formatting. The fact is that a flash drive, when it detects internal problems with writing or reading memory cells, conducts self-diagnosis and replaces faulty cells, where important data or information from the file and directory allocation table may be located, with cells from the reserve zone.

Recovering data from a flash drive or memory card after formatting is possible, if quick formatting was carried out, the flash drive as a device was working properly and there was a violation of the logical (file) structure of the drive.

Possible problems with a flash drive after formatting
The danger of formatting a flash card can lead to the impossibility of data recovery in the event of a violation of the addressing of the flash device controller, a problem accessing one of the flash memory chips, or the presence of a large number of broken memory cells. In this case, when you try to access and write to a flash drive, recovering the flash drive data may be difficult or impossible.

Advice
There is no need to format a flash card if it contains data that is important to you.

They are one of the most popular ways to move files from one computer to another. Flash drives have gained such popularity due to their large capacity, high speed and versatility. But flash drives also have disadvantages. For example, they are not very reliable.

Users who actively use flash drives know that a flash drive can stop working at any time. One of the typical problems is when the flash drive does not open and asks for a disk. In this material we will tell you what to do if you encounter just such a problem.

If your flash drive does not open and displays the message “Before using the disk in the drive, it must be formatted,” then this means that its file system is damaged and the operating system cannot use it. In most of these cases, the files stored on the flash drive remain unharmed. Therefore, there is no need to panic and mourn lost documents ahead of time.

Firstly, if you encounter such a problem, it is not necessary until you have recovered all the data from it. This will increase your chances of successful file recovery.

And secondly, to recover you will need a special file recovery program. Most of these programs are paid, and those that can work correctly with flash drives are generally paid. In this article we will demonstrate the recovery of files from a flash drive using the paid program Active@ File Recovery 12 as an example.

So, let's launch the Active@ File Recovery program. In the left side we select a flash drive that does not open and asks to format the disk.

After this, a window with scanning settings should open in front of you. Here you need to select the file system that was used on the flash drive. In our case it is . If you don't know what file system was used on the flash drive, you can mark several file systems at once. After selecting the file system, click on the “Scan” button.

After the scanning is completed, the “SuperScan” section will appear in the left side menu, and your flash drive will appear in it. Select the flash drive with the mouse and on the right side of the screen you will see the files that were stored on it. In order to restore a file, you need to call the context menu (right-click) and select “Recover”.

After clicking the “Recover” button, the recovery process will begin. Recovery time depends on the file size.

That’s it, after that the recovered file will appear in the folder you selected.

If there were a lot of files on the flash drive and you cannot find the document you need, then you can restore all the files at once. To do this, select all the files and start restoring them, as described above. In addition, after you have scanned the flash drive, you can use the file search. To do this, select the flash drive in the left side menu and click on the “Search” button.

Using portable media to store important information is a mistake many people make. In addition to the fact that a flash drive can be easily lost, it can fail and valuable data will be lost. An example of this is the situation when it is not readable and asks to start formatting. We'll talk further about how to access the necessary files.

Let us immediately clarify that we are talking about an error, which is shown in the photo below.

It usually occurs when the file system is corrupted, for example due to improper removal of the flash drive. Although it does not work, its contents are not damaged in this case. To extract files we use the following methods:

• program ;


• program ;


• program ;


• Chkdsk command.

It should be said right away that data recovery from a portable device does not always end in success. The probability that the above methods will work can be estimated at 80%.

Method 1: Handy Recovery

This utility is paid, but has a trial period of 30 days, which will be quite enough for us.

To use Handy Recovery, do the following:

As you can see, using Handy Recovery is completely simple. If after performing the above procedures the error does not disappear, use the following program.

Method 2: Active@ File Recovery

It’s also a paid application, but the demo version is enough for us.

Instructions for using Active@ File Recovery look like this:

Method 3: Recuva

This utility is free and is a good alternative to the previous options.

To use Recuva, do this:

If you have any problems, you may find a solution in our article on using this program. And if not, write about them in the comments.

If no program sees the media, then you can format it in the standard way, but be sure to check "Quick (clear table of contents)", otherwise the data will not be returned. To do this, just click "Format" when an error occurs.

After this, the flash drive should be displayed.

Good day.

You work with a flash drive, you work, and then bam.. and when you connect it to the computer, an error is displayed: “The disk in the device is not formatted...” (example in Fig. 1). Although you are sure that the flash drive was previously formatted and there was data on it (backup files, documents, archives, etc.). So what's now?..

This can happen for many reasons: for example, when copying a file, you removed the flash drive from the USB, or turned off the electricity while working with the flash drive, etc. In half the cases, nothing happened to the data on the flash drive and most of them can be recovered. In this article I want to look at what can be done to save data from a flash drive (and even restore the functionality of the flash drive itself).

1) Disk check (Chkdsk)

If your flash drive starts asking for formatting and you see a message like in Fig. 1 - in 7 out of 10 cases, a standard disk (flash drive) check for errors helps. A program for checking the disk is already built into Windows - it is called Chkdsk (when checking the disk, if errors are found, they will be automatically corrected).

To check the disk for errors, launch the command line: either through the START menu, or press the Win + R buttons, enter the CMD command and press ENTER (see Fig. 2).

Next enter the command: chkdsk i: /f and press ENTER (i: is your drive letter, note the error message in Figure 1). Then the disk check for errors should start (an example of work in Fig. 3).

After checking the disk, in most cases all files will be available and you can continue working with them. I recommend making a copy of them right away.

Rice. 3. Check the disk for errors.

By the way, sometimes administrator rights are required to run such a check. To run the command line as an administrator (for example in Windows 8.1, 10) - just right-click on the START menu - and in the pop-up context menu select " Command Line (Administrator)«.

2) Recovering files from a flash drive (if the check did not help...)

If the previous step did not help restore the functionality of the flash drive (for example, sometimes errors like “ File system type: RAW. chkdsk is not valid for RAW disks"), then it is recommended (first of all) to restore all important files and data from it (if you don’t have them on it, you can proceed to the next step of the article).

In general, there are a great many programs for recovering information from flash drives and disks, here is one of my articles on this topic:

After installing and launching the program, you will be asked to select a disk (flash drive) and start scanning it (we’ll do just that, see Fig. 4).

Next, a window with scanning settings will open. In most cases, you don’t have to change anything else; the program automatically selects the optimal parameters that will suit the majority. Then click the start scanning button and wait for the process to complete.

The duration of scanning depends on the size of the flash drive (for example, a 16 GB flash drive is scanned on average in 15-20 minutes).

Important! You need to restore files not to the same flash drive that you scanned, but to another physical medium (for example, to a computer hard drive). If you restore files to the same media that you scanned, then the recovered information will overwrite sections of the files that have not yet been recovered...

Rice. 6. File recovery (R-STUDIO).

There, points that were omitted in this section of the article are touched upon in more detail.

3) Low-level formatting to restore a flash drive

I would like to warn you that you cannot download the first utility you come across and use it to format a flash drive! The fact is that each flash drive (even from the same manufacturer) can have its own controller, and if you format the flash drive with the wrong utility, you can simply disable it.

For unambiguous identification, there are special parameters: VID, PID. You can find them out using special utilities, and then search for a suitable program for low-level formatting. This topic is quite extensive, so I will provide here links to my previous articles:

• - instructions for restoring the flash drive:
• - flash drive treatment:

That's all for me, good work and fewer mistakes. Best wishes!

Thank you in advance for your addition to the topic of the article.