In the modern world, people are used to using flash drives to transfer information. A few years ago there were disks, and before that there were floppy disks. Compared to these already obsolete devices, a flash drive is much more productive and smaller in volume. Of course, with such popularity, they began to develop rapidly, and now you can find an external drive from 1 GB to 516 GB.

Unfortunately, they, like any other technique, can break. It happens by different reasons: they took out a flash drive during recording or it broke down from heavy loads, etc. Users began to look for options on how to repair a flash drive. If the problem is related to the hardware, then it can simply be thrown out. Another case is software failures. In this case, you can try to restore the external drive. You should not immediately carry your USB drive to a service center, since it is not difficult to return a USB flash drive to life, the main thing is to follow the rules. Let's look at how to repair a flash drive yourself.

Flash drive won't open

You may have connected a USB flash drive, the computer sees it, but errors occur when you try to open the content. If the computer issues "No access", then most likely it is necessary to clean the external drive from viruses.

What is the problem? After malicious files penetrated the flash drive, they created the autorun.inf file. He is the reason why the external drive does not start.

How to repair a flash drive? In this case, you need to check the external drive with an antivirus. After you remove the malicious files, we need to manually remove the autorun.inf file. Go to "My Computer" and right-click on the flash drive. Then select "Open". A flash drive will open in a new window, we just have to delete the malicious file.

USB stick not formatted

The reason why the flash drive does not open may be a memory failure. How to repair a flash drive? In this case, it is enough to format the external drive. Unfortunately, all content will be erased.

Go to "My Computer" and right-click on the external drive. Next, select "Format". Unfortunately, this method does not always help. If you were unable to restore the external drive, then you need to try the second method.

So, we need to go to the "Disk Manager" directory. To do this, press the key combination Win + R. In a new window, enter the command diskmgmt.msc and click "OK". The "Disk Manager" will open, where we need to select the flash drive and click "Format".

on the computer

To make sure that the problem is with the external drive, you need to take it out and try inserting it into other USB connectors that are located on motherboard. If the problem persists, then you need to check the USB drive on another computer.

How to repair a micro sd flash drive? First you need to check it in other USB connectors. If the problem persists, then perhaps the problem lies in the card reader. Try to change it.

If the external drive is detected on another computer, then you need to try uninstalling the drivers. How to do it? Go to the "Control Panel", where we select the "Device Manager" directory. In a new window, look for the line "Memorable USB device and uninstall the drivers.

After the done actions, disconnect the USB flash drive and restart the computer. After that, we connect the USB drive and install new drivers.

If the reinstallation did not bring results, then you need to clean the registry branches. They contain all the information about your device. First we need to collect this information, or rather, find out a few parameters (PID and VID). To find out this data, you need to return to the "Device Manager" directory and right-click on the USB flash drive. Go to the "Details" item, where the device code will be displayed.

After that, press the key combination Win + R, in a new window, enter the regedit command. So we will open the registry editor, where we need to find two parameters, the first one ends with the word USB, and the second USBSTOR. We open these directories and look for identifiers, after which we delete them. We restart the computer and check the performance of the external drive.

External drive is detected, but dimensions are not displayed

If you find yourself having such a problem, then there have been memory failures. How to repair a flash drive? In this case, you need to download the ChipGenius program. This way we can find out the VID and PID of your external drive. After you have found the flash drive chip model, you need to go to the flashboot.ru website, where you need to enter the received data. We start the search. So what have we found? These are the appropriate drivers and utilities for your removable drive. After installation, your flash drive should work.

How to repair a USB flash drive if nothing helped

Of course, there may be various problems with an external drive that do not allow you to restore a flash drive for the problems already described. There is another way to bring a removable drive back to life. However, this method is suitable specifically for a flash drive; memory cards cannot be restored this way. If you are tormented by the question of how to repair a Transcend flash drive, then try this method.

Where to start? Take your USB drive and remove the plastic cover. We need to put our device into test mode. Turn the flash drive over as shown in the picture. In the corner is a small button that will need to be closed. As a rule, it is necessary to close contacts 29 and 30. How to do this? Take a needle and press in the right place.

We insert a removable disk so that the computer detects the USB flash drive and it becomes available. Only after that we open the contacts. However, do not disconnect it from the computer, as it will not work yet. Next, you need to install drivers and utilities, we have already covered how to do this.

Output

After the above steps, your USB device should work. If this does not happen, then there may have been problems with the hardware. In this case, it is easier to throw it out than to restore it. As you have already noticed, repairing a flash drive is not difficult if the problem lies in the software part. However, in order to quickly and efficiently restore your device, you must immediately identify the problem.

The age of CDs and DVDs is nearly over. Today, flash drives are used everywhere as universal storage media. USB drives are small, have enough built-in memory and allow you to add or delete any files without any harm to existing ones.

Everything seems to be fine, but flash drives have one significant drawback - if used incorrectly, they often fail ... The most typical failure is when the computer detects the drive as an unknown device or a disk with zero memory:

If you were careless to pull your USB drive out of the socket without first using the safe removal function, then it is quite possible that it will become a victim of a short circuit and become unreadable. Is it possible to recover a flash drive after such an excess, read on...

Types of flash drive failures

So, if you are reading this article, then most likely you already have a "corpse" flash drive. Before trying to revive it, you need to find out what kind of trouble happened and how your USB drive reacts to connecting to a PC. In other words, we look at how bad everything is :)

The flash drive can react in two ways: either the indicator diode on it lights up, or not. If the diode does not light, then a physical failure can be diagnosed. In this case, you can try to fix the drive only if you have a soldering iron and know how to work with it (this is the last section of the article).

A much more optimistic forecast can be given if the indicator lights up and does not go out. This means that we have a software failure and it can be fixed with the help of special software. In this case, one of two scenarios awaits us: the flash drive may be defined as an unformatted disk with a capacity of 0 bytes, or it may not be detected at all.

If the computer sees an empty drive, then everything can be solved by proper formatting. However, most often the problem is that due to a sudden power surge, the firmware of the flash drive is damaged and we will have to look for it on the Internet.

Summarizing the algorithm for diagnosing a breakdown, I suggest you act according to the scheme below:

Treatment by formatting

The easiest failure that can happen to your flash drive is a file system failure. A failure can be of two types: with a violation of the cluster layout and without. In the latter case, you can even do without formatting and save all data on a flash drive!

You can diagnose a failure without violations if the flash drive is detected by the computer, but does not open. The computer just freezes when trying to display its contents, so we do not try to open anything. We look under which letter the removable media is defined, run command line(Start - Run - cmd) and enter the command "CHKDSK G (or other letter): / f":

The /f switch will automatically try to fix file system errors that made your flash drive unreadable and, if the command completes successfully, you will receive a fully functional media with all the data that was on it before the error!

Unfortunately, it's not often that you get off so easy ... Much more often you have to deal with flash drives, whose size is determined by the computer as 0 bytes. In this case, formatting can save. And not by regular means, but by special utilities. One of the most versatile in this regard is HP USB Disk Storage FormatTool (you can download it in the archive from the link at the end of the article):

This utility allows you to properly format any media in FAT32 and NTFS systems. To do this, simply select the desired device from the drop-down list and click the "Start" button. By default, the quick format option is activated, but this mode may not work with a damaged flash drive. In case of failure, you must uncheck the corresponding box before starting the second procedure.

In especially advanced cases, when even HP USB Disk Storage FormatTool gives an error, but the flash drive is still recognized as removable media, the so-called low-level formatting. With it, all sectors of memory are erased byte by byte and filled with zeros, which makes it impossible to attempt to recover data in the future.

If saving a flash drive is more important for you than saving the data that was on it, then the HDD Low Level Format Tool utility (available in the archive for the article) can help format it in the above way:

When the program starts, a window will appear where we will be asked in which mode we want to use the HDD Low Level Format Tool. Naturally, we need a free one, so we press the "Continue for free" button or simply close the window. The main window with a list of disks will appear. Select the one you need, click "Continue", confirm your agreement and wait for the process to end.

The low-level formatting itself is rather slow, so be prepared for the fact that it can take about an hour (depending on the capacity of the flash drive and its read/write speed). Moreover, in the free mode, formatting speed is limited to 50 megabytes per second (about 180 gigabytes per hour).

Determining the controller type

If formatting fails or the flash drive is initially recognized by the computer as an unknown USB device, then the problem is most likely a corrupted firmware. Finding firmware for popular media models on the Internet is not that difficult, but you need to know exactly what to look for. And for this, the first step is to determine the type of flash drive controller.

You can do this in two ways: using special programs or by PID and VID. It is preferable to use, of course, programs with good databases, since controllers of completely different companies can have the same identifiers and you will have to look for a suitable firmware utility for a long time ...

The best in terms of determining the type of controller are programs of Chinese origin ChipGenius and ChipEasy, and from Russian, perhaps, Flash Drive Information Extractor (everything is in the archive). You can use any of them, however, the disadvantage of the Russian language is the lack of links to download utilities for the firmware (highlighted in pink in the screenshot):

All of them give out quite a lot of different information, however, we are mainly interested in two parameters: device identifiers (highlighted in yellow in the screenshot) and, directly, the controller model (highlighted in green). Knowing this data, we can find a firmware program on the Internet.

By the way, Chinese programs already give us links to such programs, but it is not always possible to download them, even if you use the page translator from Google, so the search will be discussed below separately. It's a pity, of course, that our developers could not integrate the search for a link to the firmware into their program, but oh well :)

In the meantime, it is worth mentioning that you can find out the identifiers (but not the data about the controller!) of a flash drive without special utilities. To do this, go to the Device Manager ( context menu icon "My Computer" - "Properties" - "Device Manager"), select our drive from the list, call its properties and in the "Details" tab select the "Hardware ID" property:

We have an unnamed flash drive at our disposal (alas, a working one :)) and we found out its identifiers, as well as the type of controller and its model. Now it's time for the most difficult procedure - finding a program for the firmware.

flash drive firmware

Firmware or firmware (abbreviated F / W) is a firmware that controls the operation of a flash drive controller. In the event of its failure, the drive, while remaining physically serviceable, stops responding to standard computer requests, which is why you can neither read information from it nor write it down.

Fortunately, firmware for most controllers is freely available on the Internet. Therefore, the main problem is only their search. You can search directly in search engines on requests, such as: "Alcor (chip manufacturer) AU6982 (chip model) VID: 058F ​​PID: 6387 firmware", and on specialized sites.

One of the best Russian-language resources for finding and downloading firmware for any flash drives is FlashBoot.ru:

On the search page, we need to enter the PID and VID identifiers, and then click the "Search" button. We will get a whole list of flash drives that have the same IDs as ours. The task now comes down to finding a device with the same controller model as ours.

If you found a flash drive in the table that resembles yours in all respects, click on its name and you will see detailed information about her:

Here we are primarily interested in the UTILS line, which contains the name of the utility needed to flash our flash drive. We copy this name and search for it on the Internet. You can do it differently. You can search on the same site. To do this, go to the "Files" section in the top menu. True, the names of the programs from the list and those on the site are different, so the search will not always be successful.

In any case, we found out that the flash drive we have is on an Alcor chip and its model is AU6982. This is already enough for a successful search, which leads us to the need to download the AlcorMP utility of one of the versions available on the site:

We unpack the downloaded archive into a folder, check if the version of the program matches the version that we determined by identifiers and run the executable file. If the version of the "flash driver" is suitable, then we will see data about our flash drive in one of the cells of the working window. It remains only to press the "Auto" or "Setup" button (if you know how to configure the parameters) and wait for the firmware to finish.

If the working window is empty, which often happens, then we were not lucky the first time :) We need to try downloading other versions of programs suitable for the same chips as your flash drive. In a word, the lottery is already starting here, and sometimes you can try up to a dozen different utilities until you find the only one that will correctly identify your drive.

After flashing, safely unplug the flash drive and reinsert it. If everything worked out, then it should be determined by the computer without any problems. If not, try other firmware programs until you succeed.

Treatment for physical injuries

The most severe case of a flash drive failure is when it does not show any signs of life when connected to a PC: the indicator does not blink, there are no messages about unknown hardware, and there are no undefined devices in the Device Manager. In this case, real physical damage can be ascertained.

However, if the flash drive hasn't been dropped from a great height, exposed to high temperatures, or dropped into water, you have a slim chance of saving it (and sometimes even the data on it!). Most likely the problem is that due to a short circuit on the flash drive board, something has soldered off. Often the legs are soldered, through which food flows.

In any case, we will have to open the case of the flash drive to try to restore it. To do this, it may be necessary, alas, to dismantle it if it does not understand. Inside we will see something like this board:

The main "problem" places are the legs of the USB plug and the power stabilizer, which over time tend to solder or burn out due to short circuits. If you know how to work with a soldering iron, first try to solder the extreme terminals of the plug, which are responsible for power and ground. This should restore normal power to the flash drive.

If, after manipulating the soldering of the extreme legs, the flash drive, when connected to a PC, starts blinking with an indicator, but is not detected, the problem may be in the soldered legs, data reception and transmission. Solder them too and check again. If the connection is not accompanied by a blinking indicator, then, most likely, you need to solder or replace the power stabilizer.

conclusions

Alas, sometimes it happens that even after all attempts at resuscitation, the flash drive does not show signs of life. In this case, it is worth admitting that you did everything you could, and with a clear conscience, send the media to the trash can.

Although, if the flash drive is very dear to you, you can take it to a good service center. There you can unsolder the memory chip and transplant it to a new board. True, the cost of such an operation is comparable to the cost of a new device, and sometimes even exceeds it! Therefore, it is advisable to do this only if the flash drive has some important information.

However, most often it does not reach the service center. Most flash drives can be restored at home. Our article and the archive of programs, which you can download from the link below, will help you with this. Wish you success!

P.S. It is allowed to freely copy and quote this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.

In this article, you will learn about programs that can recover data on a flash drive, as well as configure settings so that there are no problems with flash drives in the future.

It is possible to fix various flash drive errors by setting up drivers, connecting a flash drive to different ports, and so on. But if this does not help, then you need to apply more effective methods and use third-party programs.

I must say right away that the use of such programs for recovering flash drives does not always solve, but exacerbates the problem. Therefore, the choice is yours. This risk is yours and yours alone.

In the article on flash drive repair, we will talk about such popular flash drive manufacturers as Kingston, Adata, Silicon power and Transcend.

Free programs for recovery and repair of flash drives

UtilityJetFlash Online Recovery forflash drivesTranscend

This utility was formerly called JetFlash Recovery Tool, now JetFlash Online Recovery. This is the official tool.

Working with this utility is quite simple: we connect a USB flash drive, run the program, and then proceed as the flash drive recovery wizard tells us.

There are two options here:

1. You can fix the flash drive and save all the data on it.
2. You can fix the flash drive and erase all the data on it.

Here, how lucky, if the first option did not help, then we move on to the second.

Download utility for free JetFlash Online Recovery

(downloads: 25494)

Utility USB Flash Drive Recovery forflash drivesSilicon power

The utility is freely available on the official website of the manufacturer. You can also download it from our website.

Silicon power

(downloads: 21273)

Flash drive Kingston and its repair

If you have a Kingston flash drive (quite common among the user), then you can use the utility from the official website of the Kingston manufacturer.

Free download utility for flash drive Kingston

(downloads: 13663)

Now let's go through the utilities and programs that are not the product of a particular manufacturer.

Program for recovering data from a flash drive D-Soft Flash Doctor

The program is free. Reviews about it are very flattering, so it can help you recover data from a flash drive.

How to determine which program is suitable for my flash drive?

It happens that a person does not know what kind of flash drive he has. Therefore, we suggest that you use a program that will determine the memory controller you are using - Chip Genius. The VID and PID parameters will be indicated there, they will be useful to you.

As a result, you will be given the search results.

In the Chip Model column, you will see what other flash drives, besides yours, use the same controller. The Utils column offers utilities for flash drive recovery. Then look for the proposed program and use it.

Flash drives from Kingston, due to their reliability, long service life and relative cheapness, are very popular. But, like any other technique, they are not protected from various breakdowns and failures. The drive sometimes really "dies", and it is not possible to restore it. Although the situation is more common when a flash drive can be brought back to life with the help of special utilities.

In this article, we will tell you several effective ways to restore a Kingston flash drive.

Is it possible to restore

Here are a few signs that a flash drive can be recovered:

• the system prompts you to format the removable disk;
• a notification appears when a USB flash drive is connected that a new device has been detected;
• errors occur when writing data and reading;
• the drive shows up in explorer but doesn't open.

These problems are eliminated by formatting the media or firmware of the controller, but if there is important information on the drive, then you must try to “pull it out” before starting the recovery procedures.

Controller firmware

To recover a Kingston flash drive, you will need special utility, and in order not to make a mistake and download the correct program, you need to find out the controller model.

One of the ways to obtain the necessary information is the Flash Drive Information Extractor program.

• on the flashboot.ru website, go to the iFlash section;
• enter the PID and VID value in the corresponding windows and click Search.

Press the get data button, a report with PID and VID lines will appear. Their value is used to search for utilities for correct recovery of the Kingston Datatraveler flash drive.

Using the FLASH MODEL and FLASH VENDOR columns, find your flash drive and see which utility fits the drive's controller.

Programs for flash drive recovery Kingston

Of course, you can find the necessary utility without knowing the controller model. To do this, it is enough to type the query “recovery utilities” in the browser search engine. There are several applications in the results, among which the following recovery tools are sure to be.

The problem is that Kingston flash drive recovery utilities only work if they are compatible with the controller that is installed in the drive. Therefore, if you download the first utility that comes across, you can expect that it will not detect the connected USB flash drive.

When necessary program found and installed, you can proceed with the recovery procedure. Just be sure to first read the instructions, which are usually packaged with the utility in the archive, to find out if there is a special procedure for the recovery program.

Kingston Format Utility

This is a proprietary utility designed to format Kingston flash drives. Initially, the program was released specifically for the HyperX DTHX30/XXGB USB series. Nevertheless, it supports any drives from this manufacturer. This program compared to others standard means formatting shows faster speed.

Kingston with this utility happens by converting the media file system to NTFS and FAT32. Both of these systems have their advantages and disadvantages. We only note that FAT32 is better for storing small files, and NTFS is better for large ones. In addition, FAT32 format drives have restrictions that will not allow you to write files larger than 4 GB. This must be taken into account before starting formatting and choosing file system.

All the necessary program controls are concentrated in one window, where the required media is selected (if there are several connected) and the source file system is indicated. As soon as you click the Format button, formatting will begin.

The program does not need to be installed and works with drives of any size.

Key features:

• quick format drives from Kingston;
• work in portable mode;
• support for FAT32 and NTFS file systems;
• in the main window, a minimum of controls;
• high speed compared to other formatting tools.

Recovery flash drive Kingston

Hetman Uneraser is designed to recover files deleted from various media. The application supports work with almost any storage media - USB devices, hard drives, memory cards, cell phones.

The list of supported file systems includes VFAT, NTFS, and FAT 12/16/32. The Hetman Uneraser utility is able to recover office documents, multimedia files, emails, photos, RAR and ZIP archives, etc.

You can also try to recover not only deleted information, but also data from damaged and already formatted media.

USB Drive Antivirus Utility

Designed for all those who worry about and care about the security of their computer and its file system as a whole. There are many different spyware and viruses currently available that, when they enter your computer, will delete all your data or steal passwords and confidential information. Therefore, it is recommended to pay special attention to the exchange of information with partners and friends via USB drives.

All antiviruses usually slow down the system, take up a lot of space, and also spend a lot of your system resources to work. USB Drive Antivirus Portable does not require installation and runs directly from a USB drive or other removable media, consumes a minimum amount of random access memory and other resources.

The program is perfect for recovering a Kingston dtse9 flash drive, eliminating the possibility of any conflicts with anti-virus software and fully compatible with it.

This utility will detect and remove all the latest spyware and virus programs that can get onto your computer through removable devices. As soon as a USB drive is connected, the application automatically scans the device for malware, viruses and suspicious files.

Low Level Format Tool

Judging by the numerous user reviews, this program does an excellent job with damaged Kingston media. It works at a low level, so it is quite successful in its functions. This applies not only to drives from Kingston. Just note that the utility will format the flash drive and restore its functionality, but the data from it will not.

The advantages of the utility users include:

• work with all types of media (removable drives, SD cards, hard drives, flash drives);
• completely resets the information on the drive.

Disadvantages:

• in free version there are restrictions on formatting speed;
• after the formatting operation, it is necessary to initialize the device;
• only English interface.

USB flash drive is not recognized as a disk when connected to a computer or laptop? Can't you write anything on it? And even formatting the flash drive does not work? Basically, all is not lost. Most likely, the problem lies in the controller. But we'll fix it. And everything will take a maximum of 5-10 minutes.

The only caveat - restoring the performance of a flash drive is possible only if it does not have any mechanical damage (+ it displayed in device manager). That is, if you disabled it not through "Safely Remove" (or something like that), then this can be fixed. At the very least, it's worth at least trying to restore a non-working flash drive.

How to restore the performance of a flash drive

Even if it seems that the USB flash drive has come to an end, you should not take it in for repair. And even more so throw it away. First, you can try to recover a damaged flash drive.

The instruction works for all USB flash drives: Silicon Power, Kingston, Transcend, Data Traveler, A-Data, etc. It can be used to restore the file system and fix any problems (except for mechanical damage).

So, the first thing you need to do is determine the parameters of the USB flash drive. Or rather, its VID and PID. Based on this information, you can determine the brand of the controller, and then choose a utility that will help restore a damaged flash drive.

To find out these parameters, do the following:

1. Connect the flash drive to a PC or laptop and go to Start - Control Panel - Device Manager.
2. Find the "USB Controllers" section.
3. Double click on it and look for "USB Mass Storage Device". This is your flash drive (I remind you that it must be connected to the computer).
4. Right click on it and select "Properties".
5. In the new window, go to the "Details" tab.
6. In the "Property" field, select the item "Hardware ID" (or "Instance Code").

   

7. See the VID and PID values ​​and remember them.
   
8. Next, go to the site http://flashboot.ru/iflash/, enter your values ​​​​at the top of the site and click the "Search" button ("Search").
   
9. Look for the model of your USB flash drive (by manufacturer and amount of memory). In the right column "Utils" there will be the name of the program with which you can try to restore a non-working flash drive.
   

After that, it remains to find this utility by name or follow the link (if any) and download it.

Restoring Kingstone, Silicon Power, Transcend and other models is easy: just run the program and follow the instructions.

What to do if you have not found a suitable utility for your model? To do this, go to Google or Yandex and write something like this: “Silicon Power 4 GB VID 090C PID 1000” (of course, you should specify the parameters of your flash drive here). And then look what the search engine found.

Never use programs that are not suitable for the VID and PID parameters of your controller! Otherwise, you will “kill” the flash drive completely, and it will no longer be possible to restore it.

In most cases, recovering a damaged flash drive is successful. And after that it will be determined when connected to a PC or laptop.

This is how you repair a flash drive with your own hands using a free utility.

And most importantly: in this way it is possible to restore a damaged flash drive in 80% of cases. While most specialized programs may not be able to cope with this task.