Despite the fact that removable USB-drives are much less susceptible to mechanical damage than the same optical disks, there are also enough problems associated with the loss of working capacity and information. There may be a lot of situations that a user may encounter. Therefore, it is proposed to consider some issues regarding how to recover information if the flash drive is broken, formatted, or some data has been deleted, it seems to many, irrevocably. Immediately I want to somewhat reassure all readers: do not get upset and give up. You can bring a flash drive to life and recover lost data . In most cases, unless damage is critical, this is done quite simply. The main thing is to choose the right tool or procedure for using different techniques in each particular case, if this becomes a prerequisite for restoring the device itself and the information that has disappeared for some reason.
The main problems with flash drives and loss of information
We will begin the consideration of the main issues, perhaps, with a description of the main most common problems that can cause the drive to become inoperative or to lose information. It goes without saying that you should not discount physical damage to USB drives. But mainly they relate to the electrical part of devices (microcircuits and connectors). Information recovery from a damaged flash drive, even if it is not detected by the Windows operating system, can be done through the use of special programs.
If such tools are not at hand, you can use a makeshift method to determine the device in the system when connected to the corresponding port, by closing the contacts on the connector with numbers 29 and 30 before connecting the USB flash drive to the port, using a thin needle. But when performing such actions, one should be very careful, since one incorrect action can lead to a complete failure of the device.
Often, problems with flash drives can be that users incorrectly remove them from ports. If anyone does not know, first you need to set the extraction in the operating system itself, after which the device will stop working. The same applies to the loss of electricity at the moment when the drive is formatted, information is copied to or from it, etc. All this leads to the fact that the file system is already violated. When you reconnect the device to the computer, the operating system sees the device in RAW format, and it is impossible to access the information on the drive (although the full size of the drive’s memory is sometimes determined). A similar situation, when it may also be necessary to recover information from a USB flash drive or an external USB HDD, is that the file system is simply damaged (and not changed to RAW format), but when connected, the system immediately displays a message that you need to use the drive format.
No less common cases are situations where users delete files completely by accident or format devices. Recovery of information from a USB flash drive after formatting can also be performed, however, it is believed that this can only be done if the cleaning of the table of contents has been applied, that is, fast rather than full formatting. One may not agree with this, since programs capable of extracting information even after full formatting can be found. About them will be discussed separately.
Finally, one of the problems is viral exposure. Typically, viruses that attack USB drives create a special autorun.inf autorun file in their root directory with the Hidden attribute, which is activated when the device is connected to a computer or laptop. You can also get rid of this type of threat, even without resorting to anti-virus utilities.
Media requires formatting: how to recover information from a flash drive and what to do first?
Now briefly dwell on all the situations described. And for starters, consider cases where the system issues a notification about the need to format the device. Here you need to clearly understand that the requirement relates to high-level, and not to low-level formatting (in this case, the drive would not be defined at all). Although there is little hope, but still agree with the requirement and try to format the medium with a regular system tool.
If such actions turn out to be impossible (which most often happens), perform a similar procedure using the command line using the format command with the letter of the drive and the quick format attribute “/ q”. If fast formatting is not possible, perform full formatting. Again, if this can not be done in a working system, boot from the installation disk, call the command line (Shift + F10) and perform similar steps, pre-determining the flash drive letter, which may differ from that assigned to removable media directly in the operating system ( diskpart and list volume commands).
Microcontroller flashing
But suppose that the main problem that the device does not work, concerns damage to the built-in microcontroller, and relates more to the software, rather than the physical category. In this case, the recovery of information from a flash drive can only be done after resuscitation of the device itself by flashing it (as is done, for example, in the case of smartphones or tablets to restore the original factory state).
First of all, you need to use utilities like Flash Drive information Extractor or ChipGenius, with which you can define two identifiers (PID and VID) in the same way as the values of the DEV and VEN parameters are determined in the “Device Manager”. Based on the identifiers found, you need to search for the desired firmware (for example, on the flashboot.ru resource), download and install it yourself, after which the device, in theory, will work without problems.
Is it possible to recover information from a flash drive when changing the file system to RAW?
With the advent of the RAW-format instead of the usual file system due to some unforeseen failures, one can also fight. Recovery of information deleted from a flash drive will become possible after returning to the previous file system.
So, for example, one of the most effective solutions is to use the command line with the command to check the media chkdsk N: / f, where N is the drive letter in the system. Similarly to the previous method, you can run the check at startup from the boot disk, after having previously determined the letter of the problem flash drive. Additional third-party applications will be discussed separately.
What to do if viruses are suspected?
To recover information on a flash drive after a virus, it goes without saying that you first need to get rid of the threat itself. In this case, it’s best to use portable anti-virus tools like KVRT or Dr. K for scanning. Web CureIt !, but sometimes it’s much more advisable to check before starting the operating system, booting from the media on which the Kaspersky Rescue Disk utility is recorded, mark the flash drive in the program itself and then perform a deep scan.
If you want, you can remove the virus like autorun.inf yourself. To do this, you will need to call the command console on behalf of the administrator (you can even on a running system), and then sequentially execute three commands:
- cd X: /;
- attrib -a -s -h -r autorun.inf;
- del autorun.inf.
Note: the letter “X” corresponds to the drive letter under which it is visible in the system, and the commands are executed without entering the specified punctuation marks.
The most necessary programs
Finally, talking about how to recover information on a USB flash drive after deletion (in any of the situations), you should separately dwell on some types of programs that can be used individually and jointly. But we immediately draw attention to the fact that in most cases, the consistent use of several highly targeted utilities is necessary. It is a matter of first using the programs to restore the device’s operability, if for some reason it doesn’t work or is not detected by the computer system. As an intermediate tool, you may need applications for formatting (low- and high-level), as well as programs for extracting information from damaged devices with the creation of a media image. And only after all the preliminary operations are completed, it is possible to use programs designed directly to restore files and folders, some of which are even able to reanimate the file system that was previously present on the device.
Utilities to restore device health
Now a few words about situations when the flash drive does not work. How to recover information? It is clear that at first the drive itself needs to be brought to life. A technique using the command line, especially in cases with changing the file system to the RAW format, may not always work. Therefore, it is better to restore device health using utilities like TestDisk, DMDE or HDD RAW Copy Tool.
The first two utilities are designed to return the file system that was previously available on the drive, and the third one is used for sector-by-sector copying of corrupted content and then saving the data to an IMG disk image that can be opened in special file recovery programs.
Quite often, recovering information from a USB flash drive is impossible without prior formatting. In this regard, the toolkit of Windows-systems, as they say, is no good. The most powerful program that allows you to format any medium and in almost any situation is the HDD Low Level Format Tool. You may not be particularly confused by the name of the application, because many might think that it is intended exclusively for hard drives. In fact, this program works great with almost all known types of storage media (an exception, as you probably already understand, are only optical disks). Utilities like Storage Format Tool, D-Soft Flash Doctor or Flash Memory Toolkit also look good in this regard.
Applications for conventional file and folder recovery
Now suppose that a user from a flash drive deleted information accidentally. How to recover files and folders? Here you need to understand that after a normal deletion, you can do it elementarily, but after formatting you will have to work a little. For ordinary users, if the information was really deleted accidentally, and after that new files and directories were not copied to the device, several simple applications can be offered. So, for example, it is for such cases that a program for recovering information from a flash drive or from any other drive called Recuva is not bad.
You can really use it only in such situations. If formatting was performed, you might not even dream about restoring deleted objects with its help.
You can also use applications like the JetFlash Recovery Tool, Hetman Partition Recovery, Undelete 360, File Scavenger, PhotoRec, Recover My Files, CardRecovery, Unformat and many others. If you carefully look even at the names of the listed utilities, it becomes clear that some of them have a narrow specialization (for example, to recover deleted files in graphic format), others are designed to search for deleted ones due to data formatting, etc. However, these are only the simplest software products and far from the most powerful. Their use for reasons independent of the user in some cases may not give the expected result. Here you have to turn to more serious professional development.
The most powerful programs for recovering information after formatting drives
But the most powerful program for recovering information from a flash drive or deleted files from any other medium, as it is believed, is the R-Studio application. You can also find a utility very similar to it, called R.Saver (it looks a bit like a lightweight version of R-Studio, although in fact it is not).
In the R-Studio application, you can not only restore deleted files, but also reanimate the entire file structure previously present on the device. And that's not all! Remember, it was said about one program in which it was supposed to save the data extracted from the flash drive as an image file? So it is in the R-Studio application that such an image can be opened and then restored data even without the need to directly scan the problem device itself. R.Saver application is no worse, although it seems to be somewhat simpler to use. Due to this, it is perfect for an unprepared user, while the R-Studio package is designed specifically for professionals. Some users, however, are somewhat confused that the program is capable of creating several folders with different names but similar contents when restoring information from a flash drive and then saving it in another location on the hard drive. This is normal. Most often, this situation can be observed if the same files were written to the drive at different times. And in general, do not be surprised that after scanning the application will find such objects that you don’t remember at all and have no idea that they were once on the device.
Note: when working with this application, it should be borne in mind that, despite the rather high scanning speed for the presence of potentially recoverable objects, the process of restoration (saving information) itself can take quite a lot of time. This is especially felt when working with removable memory cards. However, if you want to restore everything that is possible, you will have to be patient. But the result will really exceed all expectations.
General recommendations for action
In principle, in matters of recovering information from a flash drive, you can put an end to. Please note that the described methods are equally well applicable to removable memory cards, which can equally be attributed to ordinary flash drives (unless they are connected via card readers, and not via USB ports). Some of the programs described are also applicable to hard drives.
If you give advice, in the end it is worth noting that most of the tools described should be used mainly only together. It goes without saying that one should pay attention to the current situation and take into account whether the flash drive is working, whether it is detected in the system, whether it is infected with viruses, what is the nature of the damage, and many other factors. The procedure for using the appropriate tools will depend on this. But as a rule, in the worst case, you will first have to restore the drive to working capacity, format it, and only then try to restore the data that was stored on it. Well, as for the choice of the right application, among the above utilities the most suitable program for performing certain actions will be found.