A program for opening damaged flash drives. Recovery of a flash drive and further treatment of a USB drive

Today, most users prefer to store information on portable USB drives. This is convenient for several reasons - the relatively low cost of a storage device, high speed of file copying and a wide range of memory capacities. However, flash drives can break, which causes a lot of inconvenience. To solve the problem, there are free programs for repairing flash drives.

The operating system issues a variety of messages when it cannot interact correctly with the drive: “read error”, “unidentified device”, “disk write protected”. Sometimes, when you connect a flash drive, the computer refuses to see it at all.

There are many ways to fix these problems. You can try reinstalling the drivers, testing or formatting via the command line. But the best option is to use official recovery programs from flash drive manufacturers.

Installing the programs in question, even official ones, involves some risk. Especially if you check their effect on a working device. All responsibility lies with the user. If the decision is made, you should select a specific utility that matches the flash memory manufacturer.

The article will discuss programs for Transcend, Silicon Power, Adata, Kingston. Instructions are also provided for identifying the memory controller if the drive case does not contain inscriptions or logos.

Transcend

To restore your storage device, you will need software called JetFlash Online Recovery.

The process of use is quite simple: connect the flash drive to the computer, launch the utility and follow the instructions that appear on the screen. First, you will be prompted to “Fix the drive” - in this case, the program’s algorithms are trying to access the stored files. If there is no result, you can click on the “Format” button (this means destroying the information).

It is recommended to download this utility from the official resource so as not to expose your computer to the risk of virus infection. There is also a small English-language instruction available for download in PDF format. Often, it is not needed - the procedure is completely intuitive, does not require additional explanations and is briefly described above.

Silicon Power

Silicon Power drives are restored in a similar way. Sequencing:

downloading the program from the official website;
launch and follow the instructions of the built-in “wizard”.

If successful, access to information will be restored.

Kingston

To restore a Kingston drive, just visit the manufacturer’s official website and download the appropriate program. It has several capabilities - diagnostics, recovery and formatting.

The application interface is intuitive, so it is suitable for novice users. You just need to select your USB device from the list of connected devices and the file system. Then the program will work automatically, performing the “repair” in a few seconds.

Adata

The manufacturer Adata has also provided a special utility for diagnosing flash drives and subsequent “repair”. Once launched, it offers automatic error checking or formatting if files cannot be extracted. You can download the program on the manufacturer’s website page.

Program for repairing flash drives from any manufacturer D-Soft Flash Doctor

The Doctor utility is not tied to a specific manufacturer; it can interact with any type of flash memory. The developers have equipped the application with a wide range of functions that allow you to scan errors, recover media and create an image.

At the bottom of the window there is a settings button. You can select the bad sector reading speed, formatting speed and number of attempts. But it is better to leave the default settings so as not to aggravate the problem.

The utility's method of action is “low-level formatting”. You don’t have to understand the details of the work, because the program restores the flash drive automatically.

How to find out which program is suitable for repairing a flash drive?

If the above-mentioned tools for how to repair a flash drive (free repair programs) are not suitable for solving the problem, you need to install Chip Genius. It will help you correctly install the memory chip used in the drive and obtain a special identifier for further actions.

After opening the utility, a window is displayed in which you are prompted to select a malfunctioning USB device. This can be done using the arrow keys or the mouse cursor. After which technical information will appear at the bottom of the window: drive name, VID and PID identifiers, series number.
After receiving the information, you should visit the flashboot website, enter digital identifiers in the search field and press the “Search” button.
The results are displayed containing the name of the drive (in the Chip Model column). All that remains is to find a program on the Internet that works with the flash drive controller. The main thing is to check the downloaded file so as not to infect your PC.

If all the described methods do not help, you can use low-level formatting. This is an extreme measure that destroys all files, but the drive becomes suitable for further use.

Low-level formatting involves writing zeros to all sectors of flash memory (as opposed to standard “wiping”, which erases only file headers). After the procedure, it is impossible to restore any information from the flash drive.

If file loss is not critical, you should try free programs for repairing flash drives using the tips above. Perhaps memory performance will be restored. But if the stored information is very valuable, then it is advisable to contact a service center.

In the previous article, we talked about what to do if the computer does not see the flash drive and discussed several effective methods. By the way, here it is. This time we will touch on programs that can also solve some of the problems. Therefore, if you have messages that, or the computer does not see the USB drive at all, and other similar problems that you could not solve, then you can try using free flash drive repair programs.

So, you have carried out various manipulations with flash drives in order to make them workable, but neither the command line nor working with the utility "Disk Management", did not lead to a positive outcome. Then, as I already said, we will use special utilities that will help us. They are provided by well-known manufacturers Kingston, Transcend and others.

It is worth noting that sometimes such programs can only aggravate the situation and the USB drive will be in a faulty state, so if you decide to use such programs, you take full responsibility. But I don't want to scare you in any way.

First, we will look at programs from popular manufacturers, and only then will we find out which memory controller is on your flash drive and find a suitable utility for it.

Repairing a flash drive using a utility from Transcend

If you have a USB drive from Transcend, then to restore its operation you should use the utility JetFlash Online Recovery. The use is very simple. Connect the USB drive to your computer, launch the program and follow the instructions. Moreover, there are only two functions: erase data and restore it. If the flash drive does not act up again, then try cleaning it. You can download it from here.

Repairing a flash drive using a utility from Silicon Power

Go to the official website of the manufacturer, go to the section "Support" and look for a utility there called USB Flash Drive Recovery. Download from here. It is as easy to use as the first one.

Repairing a flash drive using a utility from Adata

If you have a flash drive from Adata, then this company also has its own repair utility. It will help you correct some errors. You can download it by following this link. By the way, it's called USB Flash Drive Online Recovery.

Kingston flash drive repair

Popular company Kingston, I think at least one user who visited this page has a USB drive Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0, then you can get it into working condition using the DTHX30 utility, which can be downloaded from here.

Fixing problems with D-Soft Flash Doctor

Utility D-Soft Flash Doctor is free and does not belong to any known USB flash drive manufacturer. Based on reviews, it is known that this program corrects problems using low-level formatting.

In addition, using the program you can create an image of the flash drive itself in order to avoid malfunctions later. Download from here.

Program to repair your flash drive

Let's assume that all the programs described above did not suit you, then we will use the following method.

If you download the Chip Genius utility, you can find out the memory controller of your flash drive, and using the data PID And VID find the program we need.

Now let’s go to the iFlash website and enter the required values that we received from Chip Genius in the appropriate search fields.

Looking at the column Chip Model, which drives there use the same controller, and in the column Utils look at the utilities offered.

That's all, I hope with this article I helped you fix problems with your USB drive.

How to recover an SD card or USB flash drive if the computer does not see it, does not read or write data? Problems with flash drives are rarely caused by natural wear and tear. More often, problems with them are caused by users ignoring the rules for safely removing the device, experiments with various software in which these flash drives are involved, as well as their initially lousy quality. Below we will consider a list of possible actions carried out in the Windows environment that can solve the problem, unless, of course, the cause lies in a mechanical failure. And we, friends, will go from simple to complex.

Note: below we will only talk about restoring the functionality of flash drives, but not about saving the data stored on them. This is a separate topic, and there is information about this on the website. Most of the methods proposed below for recovering SD cards and flash drives will lead to the loss of their data.

1. Hardware lock

SD cards, MicroSD adapters and flash drives can be hardware protected from writing data or completely blocked even for reading. On such devices there is a lock switch, which must, accordingly, be set to the “Unlocked” position.

2. Problems not related to the drives themselves

The cause of problems with SD cards and flash drives may be Windows security policy. You need to find out whether access to removable drives is blocked (in whole or in part of writing data to them) by the computer administrator. You also need to check the card reader or USB ports of your computer. If everything is fine with the latter - the card reader reads other SD cards, but problems still arise with the flash drive, no matter how you connect it to other USB ports, move on.

3. Windows Explorer

Standard formatting using Windows Explorer can help in simple cases such as unsuccessful writing of data to a flash drive. Or when for some reason a smartphone, tablet, camera or other device cannot cope with this operation regarding SD cards. In any current version of Windows, in the Explorer window on the drive, call up the context menu and click “Format”.

We leave the original file system and first try a quick format.

If it fails, repeat the operation, but with full formatting (uncheck the fast box).

4. Windows Disk Management

You can try to perform the formatting procedure in disk management. To launch this tool, enter in the system search field:

diskmgmt.msc

In the disk management window, focusing on the size of the drive, we look for it among the disks connected to the computer. And in the context menu called on it, we launch formatting.

You can immediately select full formatting.

If the flash drive has a partition structure like a hard drive, you must delete each of those partitions. This is done using the “Delete Volume” option in the context menu.

And then, in place of the resulting unallocated space, you need to create a single partition. To do this, in the context menu on this very unallocated space, launch the “Create a new volume” operation and follow the instructions of the step-by-step wizard.

5. Programs for low-level formatting

Standard formatting tools may not help in complex cases, for example, when flash drives are displayed (in the same Explorer or Disk Management) as unrecognized devices with the RAW file system. The latter means that either the Windows environment does not understand the file system of the drive, or there is no file system as such in principle. Actually, this is what causes problems with a flash drive or SD card when it works on other devices, with other operating systems. In such cases, third-party Windows programs designed for so-called low-level formatting will help restore the flash drive.

In fact, low-level formatting is a procedure that is carried out either in the production conditions of flash device manufacturers, or in serious specialized services. Various types of Windows software that claim to perform this kind of operation actually perform a regular full format, but using mechanisms that differ from those used by the operating system. Such programs cope well with flash drive problems if these problems arise at the file system level. Let's look at two of these programs.

HDD Low Level Format Tool

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

The shareware portable program HDD Low Level Format Tool can format various types of storage media, in particular SD cards and USB flash drives. After unpacking the archive with the program, run it and agree to the license terms.

We choose free use.

Directly in the program window we indicate the problematic drive and click “Continue”.

We confirm the decision.

We wait for the operation to complete and check the operation of the media.

SDFormatter

http://flashboot.ru/files/file/355

A completely free small program called SDFormatter is another tool for so-called low-level formatting. Works with both SD cards and USB flash drives. Install SDFormatter into the system, launch it, and indicate the problematic flash drive in the “Drive” column. Click “Format”.

The program wants to make sure that our intentions are serious, click “Ok.

He asks not to touch the drive while the operation is being performed.

Upon completion, test the flash drive or SD card. If this does not help, repeat the operation with the settings for complete overwriting of sectors (nothing more than full formatting). Press “Option”, select “Full (OverWrite)”. And also click “Format” at the bottom.

If using the above methods it was not possible to revive the flash drive, and it is still under warranty, you need to stop at this stage. And do not take any further action except contact the seller with a request to replace the device. All the actions described below should be resorted to only when, in fact, there is nothing to lose. The instructions below apply to USB flash drives, SD and MicroSD cards. However, in the case of the latter, the likelihood of recovery is extremely low.

6. D-Soft Flash Doctor

D-Soft Flash Doctor performs so-called low-level formatting, and at the same time also detects damaged sectors (cells). Well, and, accordingly, knows how to block them and replace them with backup ones. The program can help when flash drives or SD cards have difficulty reading individual files located on damaged sectors. The program is free and portable. I did not find the official website, but it can be freely downloaded on the Internet.

In the D-Soft Flash Doctor window, the first thing you need to do is run a scan to detect errors.

In my case, there were no damaged (broken) sectors.

But if in your case, friends, the scan results are different and bad sectors are detected, we start the recovery process.

The window for performing this operation promises that the process will not last longer than 10 minutes, but in fact, reassigning bad sectors on a drive with a capacity larger than 4 GB can take quite a long time. So it is better to run the recovery operation at night.

7. Flashing the memory controller

Programs for so-called low-level formatting or their analogues, which in any other form claim to be able to resuscitate all types of SD cards and/or USB flash drives, turn out to be powerless in the event of a software failure of the controller, when it requires flashing. This problem can have different symptoms, but more often it is either the computer does not see the drive completely, or it sees it and can even read the data, but cannot format it by any means. In particular, due to write protection even though the drive is not locked by hardware.

Various problems with USB drives or flash drives are something that probably every owner faces. The computer does not see the flash drive, files are not deleted or written, Windows writes that the disk is write-protected, the amount of memory is displayed incorrectly - this is not a complete list of such problems. Perhaps, if the computer simply does not detect the drive, this guide will also help you: (3 ways to solve the problem). If the flash drive is detected and works, but you need to restore files from it, first I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the material.

If various ways to fix USB drive errors by manipulating drivers, actions in Windows Disk Management or using the command line (diskpart, format, etc.) did not lead to a positive result, you can try utilities and programs for repairing flash drives provided by both manufacturers , for example, Kingston, Silicon Power and Transcend, and third-party developers.

I note that using the programs described below may not correct, but rather aggravate the problem, and checking their functionality on a working flash drive may lead to its failure. You assume all risks. The following guides may also be useful: , .

This article will first describe proprietary utilities from popular manufacturers - Kingston, Adata, Silicon Power, Apacer and Transcend, as well as a universal utility for SD memory cards. And after that - a detailed description of how to find out the memory controller of your drive and find a free program for repairing this particular flash drive.

Transcend JetFlash Online Recovery

To restore the functionality of Transcend USB drives, the manufacturer offers its own utility - Transcend JetFlash Online Recovery, which, theoretically, is compatible with most modern flash drives produced by this company.

Two versions of the program for repairing Transcend flash drives are available on the official website - one for JetFlash 620, the other for all other drives.

For the utility to work, you must have an Internet connection (to automatically detect a specific recovery method). The utility allows you to restore a flash drive both with formatting (Repair drive and erase all data) and, if possible, with saving data (Repair drive and keep existing data).

You can download the Transcend JetFlash Online Recovery utility from the official website https://ru.transcend-info.com/supports/special.aspx?no=3

Silicon Power Flash Drive Recovery Software

On the official website of Silicon Power, in the “Support” section, a program for repairing flash drives from this manufacturer is presented - USB Flash Drive Recovery. To download, you will need to enter your email address (not verified), then the UFD_Recover_Tool ZIP archive is downloaded, which contains the SP Recovery Utility (requires .NET Framework 3.5 components for operation, will download automatically if necessary).

Similar to the previous program, SP Flash Drive Recovery requires an Internet connection to work and restoration of work occurs in several stages - determining the parameters of the USB drive, downloading and unpacking a suitable utility for it, then automatically performing the necessary actions.

You can download the program for repairing flash drives Silicon Power SP Flash Drive Recovery Software for free from the official website http://www.silicon-power.com/web/download-USBrecovery

If you are the owner of a Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 drive, then on the official Kingston website you can find a utility for repairing this line of flash drives, which will help format the drive and bring it to the condition it had when purchased.

You can download Kingston Format Utility for free from https://www.kingston.com/ru/support/technical/downloads/111247

ADATA USB Flash Drive Online Recovery

The manufacturer Adata also has its own utility that will help fix flash drive errors if you cannot read the contents of the flash drive, Windows reports that the disk is not formatted, or you see other errors related to the drive. To download the program, you will need to enter the serial number of the flash drive (so that exactly what is required is downloaded) as in the screenshot below.

After downloading, run the downloaded utility and follow a few simple steps to restore the operation of the USB device.

Official page where you can download ADATA USB Flash Drive Online Recovery and read about using the program - http://www.adata.com/ru/ss/usbdiy/

Apacer Repair Utility, Apacer Flash Drive Repair Tool

Several programs are available for Apacer flash drives - different versions of Apacer Repair Utility (which, however, cannot be found on the official website), as well as Apacer Flash Drive Repair Tool, available for download on the official pages of some of the Apacer flash drives (look specifically on the official website your USB drive model and look at the downloads section at the bottom of the page).

Apparently, the program performs one of two actions - simple formatting of the drive (Format item) or low-level formatting (Restore item).

Formatter Silicon Power

Formatter Silicon Power is a free utility for low-level formatting of flash drives, which, according to reviews (including in the comments to the current article), works for many other drives (but use it at your own peril and risk), allowing you to restore their functionality when no other methods don't help.

The utility is no longer available on the official SP website, so you will have to use Google to download it (I do not provide links to unofficial locations within this site) and do not forget to check the downloaded file, for example, on VirusTotal before launching it.

SD Memory Card Formatter for repairing and formatting SD, SDHC and SDXC memory cards (including Micro SD)

The SD Memory Card Manufacturers Association offers its own universal utility for formatting the corresponding memory cards if problems arise with them. Moreover, judging by the available information, it is compatible with almost all such drives.

The program itself is available in versions for Windows (Windows 10 is also supported) and MacOS and is quite easy to use (but you will need a card reader).

You can download SD Memory Card Formatter from the official website https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

D-Soft Flash Doctor program

The free D-Soft Flash Doctor program is not tied to any specific manufacturer and, judging by reviews, can help fix problems with a flash drive through low-level formatting.

In addition, the program allows you to create an image of a flash drive for subsequent work not on a physical drive (to avoid further malfunctions) - this can be useful if you need to get data from a Flash drive. Unfortunately, the official website of the utility could not be found, but it is available on many resources with free programs.

How to find a flash drive repair program

In fact, there are much more such free utilities for repairing flash drives than are listed here: I tried to take into account only relatively “universal” tools for USB drives from different manufacturers.

It is quite possible that none of the above utilities are suitable for restoring the functionality of your USB drive. In this case, you can use the following steps to find the program you need.

Additionally: if all the described methods for repairing a USB drive did not help, try.

USB flash drive is an external storage device that operates on the principle of a hard drive. Just like hard drives, flash drives are subject to typical failures associated with board short circuits, cluster failures, and poor product quality. When faced with such problems, users are forced to seek the help of specialists to restore the flash drive.

Determining whether a flash drive is inoperable

USB drives were created for the convenience of storing information so that the user could save the necessary file on any computer at any time or exchange the necessary information with another user. It is precisely because of the frequency of use that the media quickly wears out, as a result of which the microcircuits fail, the contact group becomes loose and the computer ceases to recognize the flash drive or identifies it as an unreadable disk.

The main signs of a flash drive failure:

Frequent file system crashes. Instead of NTFS, FAT32 becomes RAW and an unknown file system, as a result of which the user has to format the media, which leads to the complete loss of all information stored on the flash drive.
The computer detects the media is intermittent.

Treatment of removable media

If a user is faced with the problem of their removable storage device failing, do not immediately fall into despair and throw away the flash drive. You can try to restore it before throwing it away using various software. Typically, each manufacturer provides for a force majeure event that a buyer of their products may encounter, and releases diagnostic and flash drive recovery software. You can download the programs on the manufacturer’s official website.

There are also universal programs that can try to cope with such a task as curing a flash drive.

Programs for USB recovery:

SDFormatter performs low-level formatting, the so-called flash drive disinfection, after which you can try to recover files from a working flash drive.
D-Soft Flash Doctor also deals with low-level formatting, but at the same time it detects damaged sectors and can restore them by reassigning them to backup ones.
The site is a universal assistant for the user during recovery. The iFlash section has all kinds of programs for any drive.

Data recovery

If the treatment procedure was successful, all the information will remain on the USB drive and you can continue to use it as normal. But if you had to resort to regular or low-level formatting, then after such a procedure all information will be destroyed. You can try to recover the necessary data using special programs:

Recuva. The program is distributed free of charge. Thanks to a simple, intuitive interface, any user can understand the functionality. But information recovery rates are at a high level.
Wise Data Recovery allows you to recover from various types of media, such as: mp3 player, cameras, phone memory cards.
Pandora Recovery is a lesser-known version of a free program for recovering deleted files, but it copes with its responsibilities no worse than its more popular counterparts.

Similar programs work according to the same scenario.

A complete analysis of the marked disk partitions or selected drives is performed. The user can then select the recovery method - express or manual, and also mark the file types that require attention. After the analysis is completed, the user must select the folder into which the files will be restored and wait for the process to complete.

After which you can check the files for integrity and operability. If the restoration procedure does not produce results, it can be repeated, changing the type of analysis to a deeper one.

If the result is negative again, you can try using another program until the desired result is achieved.

If you use a removable drive carefully, choose a well-known company, do not expose the device to external factors and do not insert it into unreliable computers, then the equipment will serve without failures for many years.