The flash drive has become an indispensable friend to us. All important and secondary files are transferred from one computer to another thanks to this tool. Compact media quickly began to displace obsolete disk drives. Now even optical disks have ceased to be important in working with a computer.
But, unfortunately, troubles with drives also happen. How to restore a flash drive, few know, and most, faced with this problem, decide to simply throw out the media and purchase a new one. But such a hasty action is erroneous, since almost any flash drive can be restored.
Major breakdowns
Before you figure out how to restore a USB flash drive, you should understand why it might fail. Such errors can happen often, they are not always caused by unfair use or system problems. Nevertheless, it is already possible to distinguish several main types of breakdowns that occur with flash drives.
Mechanical damage
Often mechanical damage occurs. Few people always attach importance to them, since cracks and other visible defects, it would seem, can in no way affect the performance of the carrier. But this is not so. Some defects can violate the integrity of the chip, respectively, affect the functional component of the device.
It will also negatively affect the operation of the media and the deformation of the connector. Although this type of malfunction is the most unpleasant, and most likely you will not be able to restore the deviceās functionality with it, you should still try to reanimate it.
Crash
Another failure is a malfunction in the firmware. At first glance, it seems that this error rarely happens. But it is associated with one very important process that many users simply ignore. It's about safely removing the removable disk.
Very rarely, the user waits until the system allows you to remove the USB flash drive. Most simply pull the drive out of the slot. Perhaps, such use will not be reflected in the media in any way. But it also happens that the built-in firmware crashes.
Safely removing the removable disk will help to avoid such problems. But if this happened to your drive, then its recovery is quite real. Since this error is most relevant to software, it will be simple to repair it with a similar method. It is only important to find the right utility.
Exhaustion
Many users want to learn how to recover a flash drive after it has run out of resources. Unfortunately, such a process will happen sooner or later with a drive that runs for a long time. All devices are not eternal, which means that the flash drive, sooner or later, will come to an end.
If your drive has served you for more than 5-7 years, then most likely it has run out of cycles for writing and deleting files. In this case, no program will help restore it.
Electricity
And the last major problem that happens with a drive is electrical damage. The same problem often occurs with other devices of the system. It is caused by unstable power.
If a power surge occurs, internal circuits may short circuit. Microcircuits may also fail on the media. Many people think that in this case, the recovery process rarely helps, but there are also successful procedures.
Recovery
As mentioned earlier, everyone should know how to restore a USB flash drive, since any malfunction in this device can be successfully prevented. In this case, the main thing is to be careful.
Firstly, the recovery process does not take much time. Secondly, you can save on the purchase of a new flash drive. Thirdly, even if there are any problems with the media, you can definitely recover lost files.
Variety of utilities
Unfortunately, in order to find out how to recover a damaged flash drive and which programs to use, you will need to dig into the system and determine the mediaās operating technology. Why might this be necessary?
The fact is that many drive manufacturers use their technologies specifically and adapt the software to their devices. Therefore, there is no single utility that could handle device recovery. Of course, there are manufacturers, for example, Transcend, who release special software that helps restore flash drives of this particular company. But such programs are definitely not suitable for other devices.
Therefore, to restore the USB flash drive, the program will have to be selected specifically for your device. To do this, you will need to visit the flashboot.ru resource. In order to find the necessary utilities on this site, you will need to find out some parameters of the drive. Having determined the manufacturer, the name of the carrier model and VID / PID, it will be possible to restore the device.
Definition
At this point, it will not be difficult to determine the name of the manufacturer, which is usually located on the device. All other parameters will have to be determined using additional software.
Usually in this case, use the utility ChipGenius or CheckUDisk. It is very convenient that both programs are simple and do not require any special knowledge. To find out the VID and PID, you need to run the ChipGenius program. She has a version that does not require installation.
After the program opens, you need to connect a USB flash drive. The list of all devices connected to the USB interface will be a long one. Therefore, you will have to carefully find the line that says "+ USB HID-compatible device." After you need to click on it with the left mouse button. Media information appears at the bottom of the dialog box. You need to find the line PnP Device HD, which will contain information about the VID and PID.
If you use the CheckUDisk program, then you will need to find the VID & PID line and determine the indicators of these parameters.
Resource
Not everyone understands how to restore a flash drive. Using the flashboot.ru resource, you can find the right utility for resuming the mediaās health. To do this, go to the site and open the Flash tab. After you know the VID and PID parameters, you will need to enter them in the corresponding lines. After that, it will be enough to click "Find."
Then a long list will appear in which you will need to find a model specifically for your drive. The table will show the utilities for working with each device. You will need to download the software that is opposite the model name of the flash drive.
To do this, go to the main page of the service and select the "File" tab. After that, enter the recommended program in the search bar. The service will find a link where you will need to go and download the file.
Work with the program
It is almost impossible to describe the work with each utility. But they all have approximately one algorithm. Each software has a clear interface, therefore, it is quite simple to work with it.
Such utilities, as a rule, carry out a number of standard processes. Together with formatting, they can reflash the drive. Next, the firmware is restored. If the drive does not have serious physical damage, then most likely the process will be successful.
Naturally, formatting will delete all data that was stored on a USB flash drive. It should be understood that not all programs can help recover lost files.
To work with the program without incidents, it is better to read the recommendations that are provided on the resource flashboot.ru.
The difficulty in working with this resource is that there are a lot of variations in the tables with models and utilities. And here it is important to be attentive to each number and letter so as not to make a mistake and not to install useless software.
System difficulties
There are other problems with working with a flash drive. For example, the computer does not see the USB flash drive. Restoring the media in this case will not be easy, although it is important to carefully approach this matter. Perhaps there are some loopholes that will help bring the device back to life.
If the computer does not want to interact with the flash drive, then in most cases some notifications appear in the system. For example, a computer may ask you to insert a disk, even when a USB flash drive is already installed in the slot. Sometimes a standard drive icon and a characteristic sound appear, but when you go to My Computer, the user does not see the drive.
Also, the system may ask you to format the drive, or indicate data errors. Very rarely, but the whole system may freeze. And finally, the most common problem is a notification that the device is not recognized.
Troubleshooting
First of all, itās best to start with a troubleshooting tool for the system itself. This option is suitable for computers based on the Windows operating system. This is the fastest, safest and easiest way.
This service starts automatically when some errors occur with drives. A dialog box opens on the desktop in which you need to follow the instructions. Very often, the system independently finds all errors that could lead to the fact that the computer does not see the USB flash drive.
If the above process does not help, then you need to independently verify whether the system sees the connected devices. To do this, run the command line using the combination of Win + R buttons and enter the diskmgmt.msc command. Thus, we will open the āControl Panelā, in which we need to go to the āAdministrationā tab, then āComputer Managementā and āDisk Managementā. A new dialog box opens, in which all connected drives to the system are listed.
To determine the performance of the flash drive, you will need to connect and disconnect it while viewing the list of drives. If the flash drive then appears, then disappears, then the matter can be fixed. If there is a drive name in the table, then right-click on it, select "Make Partition Active" in the list, and assign a drive letter. After that, a new volume should appear in the "My Computer" dialog box. You can immediately format the flash drive.
The last option is to go to the āDevice Managerā. To do this, click on the āMy Computerā shortcut, right-click on an empty area and select āPropertiesā. In the left part of the dialog box, click on āDevice Managerā. A new dialog box opens, in which there will be a list of all connected devices of the system.
Here, the flash drive can be displayed either as "Unknown device", or fall into the "Other devices" section. The drive can be renamed to "USB Mass Storage Device", or displayed by its name. Next, you need to click on the line with the flash drive, then delete it.
Now go to the tab "Actions" and select "Update hardware configuration." Usually after that, the flash drive is detected by the system and functions correctly.
Data recovery
After the drive is restored, you will need to recover data from the USB flash drive. In general, this task often faces users who accidentally lost files. Therefore, this question is very relevant for everyone who constantly works with this device.
Programs that restore the flash drive, a huge amount. There are paid ones that have advanced functionality and are carefully working on data recovery. There are also free ones, which are in no way worse than the previous ones. In any case, if formatting or deletion was not critical, then recovering data from a USB flash drive is quite realistic.
Popular programs
Before using any utilities, you need to understand how important the deleted files were. If valuable information was really stored on the flash drive, it is better to contact professional programmers who have special tools for this.
After formatting the flash drive, the Recuva program will help restore the files. This is the most famous and simple utility, which is also free. You can install it from the official site.
The user can download the installer or the portable version of the program. It is ideal for those who have deleted files from a USB flash drive; they donāt know how to recover it. This software is often used if documents were deleted, but after that no one used the drive. In this case, the recovery will be almost one hundred percent.
If the USB flash drive is formatted, and even in a different file system, then not all data will be restored. In any case, the program is simple and quite effective, so you need to and can work with it.
Together with Recuva, PhotoRec software is often mentioned. Despite its name, this program can work not only with photos, but also with other files. The peculiarity is that it uses a special recovery algorithm. Therefore, if the previous program did not restore all the data, you can try this one. The result could be much better. If you use PhotoRec as the first software and it does not give the desired result, try installing another program to restore files.
But R-Studio is a paid utility that works with a flash drive. The file recovery program received a lot of positive feedback due to its working algorithm. In addition, it has many additional features that will appeal not only to owners of flash drives, but also will please those who want to recover data from a memory card, floppy disk, RAID arrays, damaged hard drives and other devices.
Memory card
As practice shows, the question of how to restore a formatted flash drive is solved. More questions arise at the time of the resumption of the memory card. These drives have also become useful and popular among many users. They are often installed in a mobile device, camcorder and other devices. But, unfortunately, they are also not without failures.
What is the difficulty? Many who are trying to learn how to restore a micro-flash drive think that this is done on the same principle as restoring a flash drive. But it is not so. The fact is that recovering SD or microSD with similar programs will not work, since it is rarely possible to determine PID and VID.
It is good if the computer detects SD. In this case, it will be possible to install the Easy Recovery utility or PC Inspector Smart Recovery. It should be noted right away that the first utility is paid, the second is free.
Managing both is very simple. You must first select a flash card, then select the format of the recoverable files, and then select the folder where all the documents found will go.