Various problems with USB drives or flash drives - this is what, probably, every owner of them faces. The computer does not see the USB flash drive, files are not deleted or written, Windows writes that the disk is write-protected, the amount of memory is incorrectly displayed - 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 works, but you need to recover files from it, first I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the material.

If various ways to fix USB drive errors by manipulating the drivers, actions in Windows Disk Management or using the 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 such as Kingston, Silicon Power and Transcend, and third-party developers.

On the official website of Silicon Power in the "Support" section, there is a program for repairing flash drives from this manufacturer - USB Flash Drive Recovery. To download, you will need to enter an email address (not verified), then the UFD_Recover_Tool ZIP archive is downloaded, which contains the SP Recovery Utility (requires .NET Framework 3.5 components to work, will be downloaded automatically if necessary).

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

You can download the program for repairing flash drives Silicon Power SP Flash Drive Recovery Software for free from the official website http://www.silicon-power.com/web/download-USBrecovery

If you own a Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 drive, then on the official Kingston website you can find a repair utility for this line of flash drives that will help you format the drive and bring it to the state it had when it was purchased.

You can download Kingston Format Utility for free from 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 fix flash drive errors if you cannot read the contents of the flash drive, Windows reports that the drive is not formatted, or you see other errors related to the drive. To download the program, you will need to enter the serial number of the flash drive (to load exactly what is required) as in the screenshot below.

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

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

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

Formatter Silicon Power

Formatter Silicon Power is a free utility for low-level formatting of 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 don't help.

The utility is no longer available on the official SP website, so you have to use Google to download it (I don’t give links to unofficial locations within this site) and do not forget to check the downloaded file, for example, on VirusTotal before launching it.

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

The SD Memory Card Manufacturers Association offers its own universal utility to format the appropriate memory cards if problems arise 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 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 D-Soft Flash Doctor program 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 an image of a flash drive for subsequent work not on a physical drive (in order to avoid further malfunctions) - this can be useful if you need to get data from a Flash disk. Unfortunately, the official site 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 USB flash drive

In fact, there are many more such free utilities for repairing flash drives than are 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 your USB drive to work. In this case, you can use the following steps to find the program you want.

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

Do you have an inoperative USB flash drive or other media and are you wondering which program to choose for recovery?

We have reviewed the most popular utilities. Which of the above programs is right for you and will restore your flash drive with a 100% guarantee?

A one-of-a-kind program will help you pull out all the data Hetman Partition Recovery.It is loved by both beginners and pros for its convenience, speed and advanced information recovery algorithm. Your files will be found and copied even when there is no longer access to the media file system or it is damaged.

JetFlash Recovery Tool is a proprietary utility that has the simplest interface and support for working with Transcend, JetFlash and A-DATA drives. Control with only two buttons, obviously you will like it. Do not forget that the cleared data cannot be restored, so the preliminary saving of information from the flash drive will not be superfluous.

If you need to constantly have a universal program with you, which is convenient to use both on your home computer and outside it, we recommend D-Soft Flash Doctor, its platform does not imply pre-installation, it starts instantly on any PC. The software is suitable for repair, unlock,
restoring the volume of the flash drive and its performance.

If you need to recover SD cards, we recommend downloading F-Recovery SD, which has an effective set of simple options for working with damaged flash drives from digital cameras and other portable devices. From the point of view of a professional approach to Flash drives, it will be interesting to use the Flash Memory Toolkit, the application contains a whole range of additional functionality that can test flash drives, in addition, the program works with any version of the OS from Microsoft.

The USB Disk Storage Format Tool, which has a very clear and user-friendly interface, can recognize the maximum number of different types of Flash Drive, among the above utilities, as well as quickly revive the performance of drives. The USB Disk Storage flash drive repair program will be able to quickly recover data from damaged hard disk partitions, even if flash drive firmware problems are found.

If none of the flash drive recovery programs helped, we recommend checking the status of the memory controller using the ChipGenius utility. The program works with USB, micro SD, SD, SDHC and USB-Mpz players from Kingston, Silicon Power, Transcend, Adata, PQI. Further actions to correct errors, restore lost data are advisable only xli
the flash drive is defined in Chip Genius.

Portable USB-Flash drives have become part of our lives. They help us in our work, study and leisure. But, probably, everyone is faced with the fact that one day the flash drive stops working as it should or is not detected by the computer at all. Many in this situation will prefer to send a broken flash drive to the trash and buy a new one in return. Fortunately, the prices for flash drives are now quite low. But do not rush to commit this rash act, as you can try to bring the flash drive back to life.

Today we will consider the issue of restoring the performance of a flash drive using the example of the Transcend JetFlash 300 8Gb, which "froze" during data recording and after extraction was not detected as a drive.

When connecting a flash drive to a PC, she blinked a diode with a smooth damping, as if telling us: “Ooops! There is a problem". The following picture was observed in the device manager:

In the properties of the device, it was seen that the flash drive is detected, the VID and PID correspond to the model, but it was not displayed as a disk and was absent in the disk manager.

Any flash drive has a controller (control chip) inside and one or more memory chips. Due to failures, power problems, or other reasons, the controller can be blocked, and "bad" sectors can appear in memory, like in hard drives.

In the event of a software failure, which occurs in our case, the flash drive resuscitation algorithm is as follows:

1. We determine the manufacturer of the controller.
2. Find the manufacturer's service utility.
3. We transfer the controller to test mode, if required.
4. We restore.

So, let's start by defining the controller manufacturer. The best way to determine exactly which controller is being used is to disassemble the stick and see. Therefore, as the same model of USB-Flash drive at different times can be produced on different controllers with different memory.

Considering the fact that the warranty for our Transcend JetFlash 300 8Gb has long been out, we will not hesitate to analyze it:

Carefully lift the edge of the sticker from the side of the lid with a knife, lift it up. Under the sticker we see the latch tooth:

Press something thin on the latch tooth and pull the connector forward. You can use a thin screwdriver inserted between the body and the colored plug:

The case is detached quite easily:

And now we have in our hands a completely disassembled Transcend JetFlash 300 8 Gb flash drive:

See what kind of controller chip? - SM3255Q AB.

On the reverse side, we find the memory chip - Samsung K9BCG08U1A-MCB0

We have decided on the initial data. Now we start looking for the utility from the wonderful site flashboot.ru

We have a chip from SMI, which means we are looking for a service utility that can work with the SM3255AB controller. Through trial and error, the utility was found - SMI MPTool V2.03.20 v2 J0324. Please note that there are a great many versions of this utility, but only this version saw our flash drive (v2 with J0324 at the end).

At first, none of the utilities wanted to identify the USB flash drive. In specialized forums, it is recommended in such cases to transfer the controller to test mode, in which the memory chip is not interrogated during the initialization of the flash drive (see flashboot.ru for details). Then install the factory driver (included with the utility).

To put the controller in test mode, you need to close two legs. But not just any, but special ones! But, unfortunately, it is not always possible to find the datasheet (documentation) for the controller, and there is a high probability that you will close the wrong legs and completely burn the control microcircuit. Therefore, they usually go the other way, namely, they look for a datasheet on a memory chip, and close the legs on it. The data bus of the memory chip and the controller is usually directly connected.

If we have a datasheet for our microcircuit, then in the circuit we are looking for conclusions signed as F0D0, F0D1, etc., this is the data bus. We close them in pairs using a thin screwdriver or tweezers, before connecting a USB flash drive (it is convenient to use a USB extension cable), and try to determine it in the utility (F5). For the Samsung K9BCG08U1A-MCB0 memory chip, the required legs were 19-20. The legs are counted from the key (point in the corner of the microcircuit) in the direction of the legs counterclockwise / clockwise, depending on the case. In our case, the pins are located clockwise.

In our case, the flash drive was detected by the system, so the factory driver was installed without the need to put the controller into test mode. The driver is located in the folder with the utility, along the path .. \\ UFD_MP \\ FactoryDriver \\ WinXP \\ SMIInfUpdate.exe

Although the driver itself is intended for XP, but it was successfully installed on 7-ke.

Here we enter the VID and PID of our flash drive and press the SMI Factory Driver button, after which the driver installation will be completed. We reconnect the flash drive to the PC. Now in the device manager it should be like this:

I had a little trouble. A 32 gigabyte flash drive from transcend has stopped working. That is, the operating system does not see it. And not that there would be very valuable information, but because of the large volume, it became a pity to throw the flash drive away "without a fight."

The standard JetFlash Recovery Tool failed to reanimate the device. I had to find another way. A little "googling" on the topic of how to restore a USB flash drive, I found an online service for firmware directly from the manufacturer.

For obvious reasons, the service only supports devices manufactured by Transcend. If it happens to your flash drive that it refuses to be detected in the system or some other malfunction has occurred. Do not rush to throw it away, but try to restore it using the online recovery service.

It was with the help of him that I was able to restore the performance of my flash drive.

For greater clarity, I recorded a video on how to restore a USB flash drive using the transcend service:

To use the transcend flash drive recovery service, you need to go to the site by entering the following address in the address bar of your browser: http://ru.transcend-info.com/support/DlCenter/DLSoftware.asp?SID\u003d3

So, we go to the service page. We select the type of your device.

To download the program, you will need to register.

You will be prompted to download the OnlineRecovery program. It should be noted here that the program will require administrator rights! Therefore, you need to run the utility as an administrator.

After starting the program, you must select the volume of the restored drive. In my case, this is 4 gigabytes, and click "Ok"

While the program is running, do not disconnect the Internet connection!

After the program checks the USB flash drive, it will offer to restore the device without saving the data, or you can try to restore the information.

We press start.

That's all. We are waiting for the end of the process, after which we remove the USB flash drive and check the performance.

In this article, I wrote how to restore a transcend flash drive using the manufacturer's standard service.

Thus, I was able to recover two flash drives for 32 and 4 gigabytes. I hope this method will help you too. Good luck.