A flash card in our time is one of the main attributes in the arsenal of every modern person. Remember the time when the shelves in the cabinets were bursting with a pile of dusty books, discs, cassettes and old albums with yellowed photos! In the modern world, everything is much more practical and convenient, all this bunch of necessary things can be stored on a small flash card, which practically takes up no space - it fits in any pocket. Yes, of course, this is good, but even here, unforeseen situations can await us. Sometimes, sticking a USB flash drive into a computer, we see a message on the monitor screen stating that this disk drive needs to be formatted. What to do in such a situation?
It's one thing when an empty flash drive is not formatted - it is not so scary, because in this case you will not lose anything. But it’s a completely different matter when important information is on it, and the computer, except for the question “Format?”, Does not give out anything else. In any case, do not give up! After reading this article to the end, you will learn what to do in cases where the flash drive is not formatted and does not open. And one of these useful utilities will come to our aid:
- EasyRecovery
- Compact flash
- Object Rescue Pro.
- R-studio.
- FlashNul
The flash drive is not formatted. What to do?
First of all, we need to restore the data (if any), and only then proceed to the treatment of flash cards, i.e. bug fixes. How to do this, we will look at the example of the R-studio program.
1. Run the program, click on the "Drivers" menu. We will see a complete list of physical drives. To the right, if we click on one of the disks, you can see the list of "Properties". It reflects more complete information about the selected section.
2. Select the disk from which we will make the image by clicking on it with the left mouse button and click "Create" - "Create image".
3. In the window that appears, in the "Image name" line, specify the path where we will save the image, and click "OK".
4. Disconnect the flash card from the PC and open the image that you just created. This can be done by clicking "Drive" and then "Open drive image".
5. The image is open, now click on it with the right button and select the "Scan" item, in the window that appears, click "Scan" again. After the scan is completed, the program will give us the result - which files can be restored.
6. Go to data recovery - click 2 times on "Recognized1" or "Extra found files". Here we mark those files that need to be restored.
7. Call the menu "File Recovery Marked", click "Recovery Marked". In the field "Output Folder" indicate the path where the recovered data will be saved. End the action by clicking "OK".
Now if you have a situation where the flash drive is not formatted, you can easily find a way out. Remember: if suddenly after scanning information in the program window a large number of red cubes are displayed - do not rush to throw out the flash card! Try restoring data using another program.
Why is the flash drive not formatted?
Many factors can affect this: the presence of viruses, a malfunction of the firmware, or maybe even a wear of the memory. Nevertheless, you can format it - using the programs USBDeview, UsbIDCheck, CheckUDisk 5.0 or ChipGenius. These utilities will help you learn the controller model. And if he is known, then finding a driver for the drive will not be difficult. Now you can easily flash the flash drive and continue to use it. This method, of course, is not for everyone. Therefore, if you have never done so before, then you should not try, it is better to entrust this work to an experienced programmer. Well, now you know what to do if the flash drive is not formatted.