Flash drive works how to fix. How to flash a flash drive? Restoring the USB drive. Flash Drive Information Extractor - a program for obtaining information and diagnosing a usb flash drive

A variety of problems with USB drives or flash drives is something that, probably, every owner of them 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 working, but you need to recover files from it, I recommend that you first read the material.

If different ways to fix mistakes USB drive by manipulating drivers, actions in Windows Disk Management, or using 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.

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. You will need to enter an address to download. Email(not tested), then the UFD_Recover_Tool ZIP archive is loaded, which contains the SP Recovery Utility (requires the .NET Framework 3.5 components to work, will be loaded automatically if necessary).


Similar to the previous program, SP Flash Drive Recovery requires an Internet connection and recovery takes place in several stages - determining the parameters of the USB drive, downloading and unpacking the appropriate utility for it, then automatically performing the necessary actions.

Download repair software Silicon flash drives Power SP Flash Drive Recovery Software is available for free from the official website http://www.silicon-power.com/web/download-USBrecovery

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

Download for free Kingston Format Utility can be found at 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 you 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 associated with the drive. To download the program, you will need to enter serial number flash drives (so that exactly what is required is loaded) as in the screenshot below.


After downloading - run the downloaded utility and follow a few simple steps to restore work USB devices A.

The 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 at once - different versions Apacer Repair Utility (which, however, cannot be found on the official website), as well as Apacer Flash Drive Repair Tool, available for download at official pages some of the Apacer flash drives (search the official website for your specific USB drive model and check out 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(item Restore).

Formatter Silicon Power

Formatter Silicon Power is a free low-level formatting utility for 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 performance when no other methods do not 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 give links to unofficial locations within this site) and do not forget to check the downloaded file, for example, on VirusTotal before running it.

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

The Association of SD Memory Card Manufacturers offers its own universal utility for formatting appropriate memory cards in case of problems with them. At the same time, judging by the available information, it is compatible with almost all such drives.

The program itself is available in versions for Windows (there is support for Windows 10) 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/

D-Soft Flash Doctor

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

In addition, the program allows you to create a flash drive image for later work on a non-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 program to repair a flash drive

Actually this kind free utilities there are much more to repair flash drives than listed here: I tried to take into account only relatively “universal” tools for USB drives from different manufacturers.

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


Additionally: if all the described ways to repair a USB drive did not help, try.

Hi all! It was not for nothing that I undertook to write an article on how to flash a flash drive - I have experience. Yesterday I restored my flash drive Kingston DT Elite 3.0 16GB. Everything worked out, and I thought, why not write a similar instruction, and tell what and how to do in order to give the flash drive a new life :).

Now, probably in every house there is a flash drive and very rarely one. It is convenient to transfer information to them, they are beautiful and, moreover, recently they are not expensive. But very often USB drives fail. If we talk about why this happens, then we ourselves are in the first place. Do you always safely eject a flash drive? So I rarely. Of course, there may be other reasons why flash drives simply “die”.

One point needs to be clarified here. It happens that the flash drive really “dies”. In this case, it cannot be restored. At least at home. But if a USB drive, when connected to a computer, shows at least some signs of life, then you can try to restore its operation with the controller firmware.

What are the signs of USB drive life?

  • When you connect a flash drive to a computer, the computer gives a signal about connecting the device - it's already good.
  • At Windows connection ask to format a removable drive (but there are problems and errors during the formatting process such as “Windows cannot complete formatting”).
  • The flash drive is detected and visible in the explorer, but when you try to open it, the message “Insert disk ...” appears
  • Errors occur when copying information.
  • Very slow write/read speed.

If there is valuable information on the flash drive, then you can try to restore it before and after the firmware. You can do this with different programs. I advice Recuva, here is an article, but there are many other, good programs.

If the information is very valuable, then it is better not to do anything on your own so as not to make things worse. Contact special service centers who are involved in data recovery.

Let's now look at the whole process of flashing the controller on real example, on the example of my Kingston flash drives DataTraveler Elite 3.0 16GB. I have this flash drive broke generally interesting. I had to upload files to it and delete those that had already been recorded. I connected it to the computer, began to delete the folder. But the Folder was deleted very slowly. I disconnected and reconnected this flash drive, an inscription appeared that the disk must be formatted “Before using the disk ...”.

Since there were no Important files on the flash drive, I started formatting without hesitation.

But the process itself lasted a very long time and never ended, I forcibly stopped it. The message “Windows could not complete formatting” may also appear.

But still, I formatted it, since the tenth time and only in FAT 32. After that, the USB drive was normally defined and I was even delighted. But it was not there. I started copying files to it, and the recording speed was about 100 kb / s. I decided to flash it, which I did.

Determine the VID and PID of the USB controller

To start we need determine VID and PID. This is data about the model and manufacturer of the controller, which is in our drive. Based on this data, we will look for a firmware utility. There are many different programs with which you can determine the VID and PID. I recommend the utility Flash Drive Information Extractor you can download from the link.

Connect the flash drive to the computer and run Flash program Drive Information Extractor (extract the folder with the program from the archive and run the GetFlashInfo.exe file).

Click the button at the top of the program “Get flash drive data”.

The program will give us the result. We look at the information that is opposite the VID and PID.

You can copy these numbers, or leave the utility window open, we will need the data now.

We are looking for a utility for flashing a flash drive

According to the VID and PID data, we need to find a utility with which we will flash the controller. There is a good site flashboot.ru, which contains a database of flash drives and utilities for their recovery.

In the search results, we are looking for a flash drive similar to ours. The list may include devices from other manufacturers. They just have the same controller, it was determined by VID and PID. You may have noticed that I have a 16 GB flash drive, and in the list I have allocated 32 GB. I don't think there's anything wrong with that (just where the name of the utility is not indicated on 16 GB). You try to choose a more similar device from the list.

We are interested in the field UTILS(utility), copy its name, completely.

Unfortunately, the utility I needed was not found on this site. Perhaps you will be more lucky and you will see something in the search results. Download the utility to your computer.

But I did not stop there and started to google. I just asked “SK6221 MPTool 2013-04-25” and found this utility on some other site. If you have the same flash drive, then this utility is. True, the name of the archive is different, but this did not stop me from successfully curing my flash drive.

USB drive recovery process

Turn off your flash drive. Extract the utility folder from the archive and run .exe file. In my case, this is the MPTool.exe file. See also text file readme.txt. Perhaps there is an instruction, or a link to a site with instructions. If the instruction is in English, then translate it using the same translate.google.ru.

I'll tell you how I did (it’s just that you may have a different utility and everything may be different there, but it should not be very different).

The utility is running. We connect the flash drive. I have information about the flash drive in two lines in the program. We press the button start. In my case, the yellow bar signaled the firmware process. We wait.

When the process ended, I saw a green color, everything seems to be fine.

Should appear immediately Windows message prompting you to format the drive. But the first time, it probably won't work. Unplug the flash drive and plug it back in. The driver should install and the removable drive should appear in File Explorer. You can format it.

I checked the write speed, everything is as it should be for USB 3.0, everything is fine!

You must be prepared for the fact that the actions may differ from those that I described. And not everything can work out the first time. The main thing is not to give up and everything will work out!

How to restore the file system of a flash drive without losing data, step-by-step instruction! Flash cards have long established themselves as a reliable and compact storage medium, but even they sometimes fail. Fortunately, in most cases, all problems with flash drives can be solved independently at the program level, using special utilities. In this article, we will tell you in detail how to recover flash drives from various manufacturers(such as transcend, kingston, silicon power etc.) without resorting to expensive service centers - at home.

What could happen to the flash drive, why does the computer not see it?

Problems due to which a laptop or computer does not detect a flash drive can be completely different. Recovery of flash drives may be necessary for the following reasons:
- USB port on the front system block not connected.
The main cause of all problems. Often, users insert a USB flash drive into the port that is located in front of the computer, because it is quite convenient. But there are situations when, during assembly, this port is inadvertently not connected to motherboard. The result will be non-working connectors in front - both a USB port and, for example, a headphone input.
- Faulty flash drive.
The second most popular reason. Flash drives also have their own expiration date, after which they inevitably break. The main problem is burnout.
— Virus.

Unfortunately, in our time it is almost impossible to completely avoid infection. When copying data from a computer containing a virus, the situation can develop in two ways:
a) the contents of the flash drive are not visible;
b) the flash drive itself is not visible.


Another option is that the infected computer simply will not detect the flash drive.
- Problem with drivers.
An extremely rare problem, but it's still worth checking this possibility.
— Conflict of different file systems.

There are times when a flash drive is installed file system FAT, and on a laptop or computer - NTFS. These file systems may conflict, as a result of which the computer will not see the flash drive.
- Inoperative USB port.

There is a possibility that the port to which it is connected is faulty, and not the flash drive.

How to restore the file system of a flash drive?

One day, your flash drive may stop working, and when you try to open the contents, you will see the message “No access. The file or folder is corrupted. Reading is impossible. In this case, you will not be able to copy data from it or do anything else.
If you open My Computer and call context menu flash drives, you will see that the file system will be an unusual RAW, and not the familiar FAT or NTFS.

Recovery usb flash drives can be done with the program. IN free version the user has the ability to recover files up to 1 gigabyte in size.
After you launch the program, select the disk and files from which you are going to recover files. You should select a flash drive. will show all folders and files located on it. Select all the files you want to restore and click the blue Save Files button. The utility will specify where to save the recovered files and once again ask you not to write the data again to the same USB flash drive from which the recovery is being performed.

After that, copying will be carried out. The duration of the process will depend on the size and number of files.
After the operation is completed, you will see a corresponding informational message.
Check all data for readability. If everything went well, format the USB flash drive and copy the data to it.

The American company SanDisk is primarily known for the fact that it produces memory cards for various electronics: cameras, players, phones. It occupies a large part of this niche and owns big amount various developments and patents. For example, CompactFlash memory cards were developed by SanDisk employees. The SD format was developed jointly with Matsushita Electric and Toshiba.
In parallel with memory cards, fast and convenient flash drives are also produced. Their distinguishing feature is a bright design with black and red elements. Most likely, you will never need to restore a Sandisk flash drive. The company produces very reliable memory chips, but no electronics is immune to various errors due to frequent use, power surges and improper operation.


Often you can encounter errors related to writing-reading, incorrect device detection, incorrect memory size detection, bad blocks and other malfunctions, which are typical for all drives of this class. You can solve them with the help of a specially designed program for repairing and restoring SanDisk flash drives. It was designed just for such cases. The chance of data recovery, although not 100%, is quite large.
You won't need any additional utilities or instructions. You just need to connect the flash drive, download the program to restore the flash drive, and run it.
With the right selection of repair programs, you can repair almost any flash drive. SanDisk is one of the most reliable manufacturers, so with it you rarely have to think about malfunctions.

Programs and utilities for recovering usb or micro sd flash drives

The most effective and popular programs for recovering micro sd flash drives.

  • CardRecovery;
  • Auslogics file recovery;
  • R.saver;
  • Pandora Recovery;
  • DMDE;
  • Hetman Uneraser;
  • Hetman File Repair;
  • Smart Image Recovery;
  • Soft Orbits Flash Drive Recovery
  • Magic Uneraser;
  • Stellar Phoenix;
  • winhex;
  • RS File Recovery;
  • PhotoDOCTOR;
  • Starus File Recovery;
  • back2life.


The main utilities for recovering a flash drive:

  • A program from the manufacturer to recover a Silicon Power flash drive;
  • adata;
  • D-Soft Flash Doctor;
  • Chip genius.

The last three are perfect for recovering Kingston flash drives.

USB drives have long taken the position of a faithful companion in the life of every modern person. Movies, music, photographs, business documents - all this roams from computer to computer using a small key fob. Flash drives have successfully replaced unreliable floppy disks in the world of storage media and are gradually taking away "bread" from optical discs and even hard drives.

However, despite the fact that a flash drive is much more convenient and reliable than the media described above, few people are safe from problems with it today. USB sticks fail just the same. In this article, we will describe the main reasons for the failure of flash drives, as well as consider the most effective and simple methods their recovery.

The main types of USB drive failures

  1. Mechanical damage - the occurrence of cracks and other visible defects that violate the integrity of the microcircuits and, accordingly, lead to a complete loss of drive performance. Mechanical damage can also include deformation of the connector itself. This type malfunctions can be called the most unpleasant, since as a result, hopes for the restoration of the flash drive tend to zero. However, trying to bring it back to life is still worth it - some defects may be non-critical. It's just that the built-in firmware, one way or another, blocks the media in order to prevent data loss from it.
  2. Firmware failure - did you know that there is a safe way to remove a removable drive? But many regularly ignore this procedure, simply pulling the flash drive out of the connector. The full-fledged operation of the drive is carried out by the firmware (firmware) built into it. And if, in most cases, it is ready to forgive the user’s disrespectful attitude towards itself, then at some point, if it is incorrectly removed, it can fail, blocking the operation of the entire removable disk. In this case, the recovery procedure is more than possible - physically the flash drive remains healthy. It is only necessary to restore the normal functioning of the firmware, for which the utilities developed by the manufacturer of USB drives are usually used.
  3. Drive resource exhaustion - the flash drive has a certain resource for the number of file write/delete cycles. And this is fraught with the fact that over time the drive will simply be unable to store the information written to it. Resource exhaustion is a problem, as a result of which it will probably be impossible to restore a flash drive. Unless, having given it for repair, but in this situation it is much easier to buy a new keychain.
  4. Electrical damage - as a result of an unstable power supply or due to moisture getting inside the flash drive, a short circuit of the internal electrical circuits or failure of individual microcircuits. In this case, you can try to restore, but no one will give you a 100% guarantee for the successful completion of the procedure.

In general, it is worth trying to restore in any of the above cases. You won’t spend much time, but here’s how to save on the purchase new flash drive you can happily. It is worth clarifying one more thing - never store your data on only one drive (this applies not only to flash drives). Try to create additional backup on a computer or cloud storage. This will greatly facilitate the procedure for their recovery in case the main drive fails.

Drive recovery with JetFlash OnLine Recovery

If you are a happy owner of drives manufactured by the well-known company Transcend, then you are incredibly lucky! You can safely skip all the steps described above - your attention is provided with a convenient and simple tool for restoring the performance of your flash drive. All you need for this purpose is a stable and fairly fast Internet connection throughout your work with the program.

The utility is called JetFlash Online Recovery. You can try to apply it not only to Transcend products. But whether she wants to work is another question. Again, it doesn't hurt to try. The beauty of Online Recovery is that the user does not need to find out the VID, PID, brand of the controller and memory chip, set the optimal settings, etc. All this is done automatically. Drive data and handling methods are verified and installed over the Internet. That's why having a stable connection is so important.

The algorithm of actions does not cause any difficulties. First of all, you need download and install OnlineRecovery on your computer. After that, connect the USB flash drive to the computer and run the utility. In the main window of the application, set the amount of memory that your drive has. The next step should be to set the recovery options for the flash drive - with saving data ("Repair drive & keep existing data" option - another advantage lies precisely in this possibility) or without it ("Repair drive & Erase all data"). It is worth paying attention to the fact that even if you select the first item, there is no guarantee that absolutely all data will be saved.

After setting the necessary settings, click the Start button and wait for the flash drive to finish formatting. When finished, press the Exit button, remove the drive from the USB port and reinsert it. If the flash drive is still being restored, its work will be resumed.

In the event that JetFlash Online Recovery was unable to return your flash drive to working capacity, you can try to do it manually using a specially designed for specific model drive. This process is more laborious and can even cause a state of some stupor in a beginner. But there are few options, so knowledge of how this is done also does not hurt.

Defining a flash drive recovery utility

The problem of data recovery is that USB flash drives are issued by different manufacturers. Accordingly, each of them can use slightly different technologies and adapt certain software for servicing flash drives. There is no single application that would allow you to restore damaged removable media (some unification exists for Transcend products, but we will consider this issue later as a separate item) - it will have to be selected individually.

The Flashboot.ru resource, popular on the Web, allows you to determine the program suitable for a specific flash drive. In order to search system The site has found the right utility for you, you need to know the basic parameters of the drive - the manufacturer's name, the name of the flash drive model, VID and PID. With this information in hand, you can easily choose an effective means of media recovery.

The name of the manufacturer can be easily determined by reading the logo on the body of the flash drive. To determine the remaining parameters, you can use additional software.

Convenient means of obtaining the necessary technical information about drives are programs such as ChipGenius and ChekUDisk. In principle, you do not need any supernatural abilities from such programs, so you can use any of them.

To determine the VID and PID using the first utility, run the ChipGenius program (no installation required) and plug in your flash drive. In the list of USB devices, find the item "+USB HID-compliant device" and click on it with the left mouse button. Detailed information about the drive will be displayed at the bottom of the window, where the PnP Device HD line will contain information regarding VID and PID.

ChekUDisk works on the same principle. In this case, the information will be displayed in the VID&PID line in the format "Vid_0000&Pid_0000". You should be interested in what comes after the underscore character.

After that, go to the Flashboot.ru website and open the iFlash tab. In the VID and PID fields, enter the relevant data determined by you using the programs described above, and click the "Find" button. A list of drives will open, among which you will need to find the model of your flash drive. The last column of the table will display the name of the utility for working with your USB drive.

Now you need to download and install the program recommended for use. Everything is very simple here. On home page all the same Flashboot.ru service has a "Files" tab. Go to it and copy in the field search query the name of the utility you are looking for. Click on the found link, download and install the utility for working with a flash drive.

The next step depends on specific program. In general, they all have a very intuitive interface (which usually comes down to pressing a single button), so understanding how to work with them will not be any particular problem.

Utilities for working with a flash drive, as a rule, carry out low-level formatting, or flashing, of the drive. This step allows you to bring the built-in firmware to life and bring the flash drive back to life. In the event that it does not have serious damage in its structure. In addition, formatting is fraught with the fact that all the data that was stored on the drive will be lost. And even the means of data recovery after formatting, for the most part, will be powerless here.

Before you start working with a particular utility, also pay attention to not all the recommendations that are usually included on the download page on Flashboot.ru and in the search results on iFlash. This will greatly facilitate your further communication with the utility.

This method is mostly universal and is suitable for restoring almost any available USB drive models. There is only one drawback here - a motley patchwork of models, names of controllers and memory chips can confuse an inexperienced user. There can be only one recommendation here - carefully read all the attached information.

After recovery...

The procedure of low-level formatting, designed to return a “healthy look” to the flash drive, as a rule, leads to the loss of all files and data stored on it. We have already mentioned this, but it will not be superfluous to draw your attention to this fact again.

Upon completion of the recovery procedure, you can try to extract the data, as after a normal format. We described this in a separate article on our website. It also does not give any guarantees about whether it will be possible to recover the memory of the flash drive (more precisely, what occupies this memory). Usually, low-level formatting results in complete erasure of data. But there are still good chances.

Recovery of damaged files

Step by step instructions for restoration USB flash drives in which I will try to answer the question in an accessible language How to recover a flash drive independently and without much effort.

It happens that you help a person, and then he will tell everyone that you are so good and there are already crowds of people who are thirsty for help. Something like this happened when I restored several flash drives colleagues.

Now the people carry not only their flash drives, but also flash drives their friends, acquaintances and relatives. Well, at least someone else dragged a bottle of beer or a cookie - figurines.

It's not difficult for me to help, but when I suggest that you learn how to do all this yourself, you refuse. I'll just make those next time. If you don't want to learn, move on.

With the lyrics, I end here and go directly to the topic of the post ..

If your flash drive stopped determined like a drive, doesn't want to be formatted, does not allow you to write down information or something else happened to it, BUT it does not have mechanical damage, then you know - not everything is lost. Most likely glitched controller and it will take a little fiddling with it. In time, this procedure takes approximately 5 minutes.

I must say right away that there is no universal programs For recovery all varieties flash drives. You will need to find exactly the one that can work with the controller of your flash drives.

First, we need to define VID And PID non-working flash drives.

Determine VID and PID for flash drive recovery

Plug in flash drive to the computer and run device Manager. Start – Run - mmc devmgmt.msc.


Then go to section USB Universal Serial Bus Controllers.


Find yours in the list flash drive. Usually, everything flash drives have a name USB mass storage device.


Press the right key on the device and open Properties.

Go to tab Intelligence.

In the drop-down list, select the item Instance code device or Equipment codes (ID).

In this window we see PID And VID.

Finding a flash drive recovery program

We go to the FlashBoot.ru website and enter the received VID And PID.


Click on the button Search.

In the results, we are looking for our manufacturer and model of the flash drive. I have this Kingston DataTraveler 2.0.


In the right column there will be the name of the program we need or a link to it.

All. Now search Google for the program by name or download from the link provided. Launch and follow the instructions. Usually, in such programs for recovery there is only one button, so you should not have any questions.

That's all!

Any questions - ask in the comments.