Step-by-step instruction By USB recovery flash drives in which I will try to answer the question in an accessible language How to recover a flash drive independently and without much effort.
Sometimes you help a person, and then he will tell everyone that you are so good and there are already crowds of people thirsty for help. This is roughly what happened when I restored several flash drives colleagues.
Now the people bear not only their own flash drives, but also flash drives your friends, acquaintances and relatives. Well, at least someone else would bring a bottle of beer or a cookie.
It’s not difficult for me to help, but when I suggest you learn how to do all this yourself, you refuse. Next time I’ll just sew them off. If you don't want to study, pass by.
I’ll finish with the lyrics here and move directly to the topic of the post..
If your flash drive stopped be determined like a disk, doesn't want to formatted, does not allow you to write down information or something else happened to it, BUT it has no mechanical damage, then you know that all is not lost. Most likely a glitch controller and you will have to tinker with it a little. This procedure takes approximately 5 minutes.
I’ll say right away that there is no universal programs For recovery all varieties flash drives. You will need to find exactly the one that can work with your controller. flash drives.
First we need to define VID And PID non-working flash drives.
Determine VID and PID for flash drive recovery
Stick it in flash drive into your computer and run device Manager. Start – Execute - mmc devmgmt.msc.
Then go to the section Universal Serial Bus Controllers.
We find ours in the list flash drive. Usually, everything flash drives have a name USB storage device.
Press the right button on the device and open Properties.
Go to the tab Intelligence.
Select the item from the drop-down list Instance code devices or Equipment IDs.
In this window we see PID And VID.
Finding a flash drive recovery program
We go to the website FlashBoot.ru and enter the received VID And PID.
Click on the button Search.
In the results we look for your manufacturer and model of the flash drive. I have Kingston DataTraveler 2.0.
The right column will contain the name of the program we need or a link to it.
All. Now search Google for the program by name or download it from the link provided. Launch and follow the instructions. Usually, in such programs for recovery There’s only one button, so you shouldn’t have any questions.
That's all!
If you have any questions, ask in the comments.
First of all, it is necessary to mention in what cases it is required flash drive controller firmware. The list of such faults is not very long; just below I have made a list of the most common situations when this technique can help in repairing a flash drive. But you should not perceive the technique described here as a panacea for all “diseases”. Each case is individual, but the general methodology is similar, with the exception of some issues that are associated with different controllers, memory chips and a different combination of faults. You can also read others on the blog.
When to use the flash drive controller firmware technique:
- Zero capacity of the flash drive, incorrect volume (2\4\8\16 KB\MB) instead of the normal size;
- The drive is not detected on different PCs;
- When connecting a disk, the “insert disk” error appears;
- Error “Disk not found in device”;
- Error “The disk is write protected”;
- Read/write errors occur and there is no way to copy or write data to the flash drive. It may be that data is written but not opened from the flash drive;
- When connected to a PC, the flash drive is detected for a long time with errors “Error “Code 10”, Error “Code 43” and the like.
I may not have mentioned everything here. If anyone has any additions, write your case in the comments, and I will try to promptly make adjustments to the materials.
We move on to preparatory work on the flash drive for its further flashing (the controller itself is being flashed). We will assume that we have decided that there are no other options except flash drive controller firmware We don’t have any left and this is the last chance to repair a precious flash drive (road like memory, large volume, beautiful case, etc.)
Flash drive controller firmware (work stages):
1) Determination of the flash drive controller
Here we have only 2 options for determining the manufacturer and model of the controller. The first option is the most banal - open the case (if this is structurally possible). To do this, you need to open the flash drive casing and remove the drive board from there. For the most part, all USB flash drives are the same internally, with the exception of monolithic flash drives. As an example, I took a photo of the general view of the flash drive board and controller (using the example of a photo of a flash drive from free sources).
The visual method is very simple and most accurate, since programs for determining pid&vid devices are not always accurate. If it is not possible to look at the controller visually or there are difficulties in disassembling the case, then we have a direct path to programs for determining pid and vid flash drives.
Important: In cases where the flash drive is not detected on the PC, the controller can only be identified by visual inspection.
Determining the controller by PID and VID
2) Selecting a utility for the controller
The next step is to search for a specialized utility for flashing the flash drive controller. We already have the VID and PID values, so we can start looking for a utility for the controller. To find the required utility, I use the service http://flashboot.ru/iflash/.
After pressing the search button, it offers us more than one result. The thing is that such a controller, as in my case, is used in flash drives from different manufacturers and with different sizes. When searching, pay attention to the UTILS (utilities) field, where you need to look for exactly the result where the name of the utility is displayed. You don’t have to pay attention to the size of the flash drive - this is not a critical parameter. You can also search for a utility by the name of the controller, which can greatly speed up the search for the required utility.
P.S. practice shows that sometimes it is worth trying different versions of utilities for the same controllers.
The search result gave us one more or less suitable option(highlighted in red in the screenshot) – utility SMI SM3257AA.
To download the utility, you can use the same site http://flashboot.ru/files/. In the search bar you need to enter the name of our utility - SMI SM3257AA. As a result, 2 results were found. You need to download both, since there is a chance that one of them will only help solve our problem.
But, there is one thing. We know for sure that the exact name of our controller is slightly different from what we found. On the controller body and program USB Flash Info showed that the correct name of the controller SM3257ENAA, not SM3257AA. To clear our conscience, let’s check the utility database to see if there is a utility for such a modification. Search dropped 2 utility options.
Most likely, the utilities that I found when searching for SM3257AA and ENAA have the same core. In practice, it may turn out that they are no different, but there is still a possibility that you will need to try all 4 specials found. utilities. I recommend downloading all 4 programs at once.
I downloaded all 4 pieces, but decided to start with the utility SMI SM3257ENAA MPTool V2.03.58 v8 K1129 (11/11/29 Build). Let me get ahead of myself - I managed to reflash the flash drive controller with this utility, and I did not check others.
Now I will briefly describe the procedure for flashing the firmware of the SM3257ENAA controller.
— Unpacked the archive and launched the shortcut sm32Xtest_V58-8
We launch the utility and see that our patient flash drive is not visible in it (see screenshot).
— To identify our flash drive in the program, press the button “ Scan USB (F5)”, as a result of which the program “sees” the usb device.
To start the process of flashing the flash drive controller, you need to click the Start button in the utility menu (before clicking, you need to select the desired flash drive). After pressing the button, the firmware process will begin.
After completing the firmware operation, in the upper right corner we will see the word OK on a green background (see screenshot).
This completes the process of flashing the flash drive controller. Within 10-20 seconds, our flash drive will appear in My Computer, clean and without any files, since low-level formatting of the drive occurs during the firmware process.
For any questions regarding this article, write in the comments.
You probably won't find many users personal computer without a flash drive in your pocket, because this device is very convenient, portable, you can quickly write files and today it is inexpensive. But flash drives tend to break, like everyone else electronic devices. Often a flash drive breaks after a month and of course this situation is not very pleasant. Also characteristic flash drive recovery, if you read this article carefully.
The main reasons for the failure of a flash drive are: unsafe removal of it from the USB port, if you do not wait full copy files from hard drive computer to a flash drive or vice versa, viruses and so on. There may be many reasons, but I think this is not important for you, the most main question This flash drive recovery.
Recovering a flash drive by formatting it
If it is possible to format a flash drive and the system does not refuse this action, then it is better to start with formatting. In the operating room Windows system There is a built-in formatting utility. There are also separate utilities for formatting flash drives, for example, .
If this does not help, then you can use the low-level formatting utility. Just don’t get confused when choosing a flash drive HDD, otherwise you can format it. So be careful!!!
If formatting a flash drive fails, do not despair. Perhaps the controller has failed and can be reflashed.
Determining, searching and flashing the flash drive controller
In order to flash the controller you need to find out its model and manufacturer, or rather VID, PID And VendorID. You won’t know it just like that, so you’ll need a utility; if this utility didn’t help, you can also use the utilities USBdeview or ChipGenius. But it seems, no matter how long I haven’t used it, the utility CheckUDisk It works flawlessly and provides the necessary information.
Even if the flash drive is not detected as a drive, but operating system sees it as a device, then the utility determines VID And PID. Therefore, we insert the flash drive into the USB port and run the utility CheckUDisk. We only need VID, PID And VendorID, in my case VID=0951 And PID = 1613, A Vendor ID: Kingston.
Next, you need to look for a utility for flashing the flash drive controller using these attributes. To do this, follow the link and enter the model in the required fields of the site and click on the button Find. Then a list of flash drive models with utilities for flashing the controller firmware will be displayed. And here we need to find a suitable option. I advise you not to close it, but if you close it, run the CheckUDisk utility, so that when searching you can look at other attributes of the flash drive to make your search easier.
In my case, there are quite a few options on the list, so there is a lot of choice. Here you need to choose a more suitable one. We work in two windows, where there is one site flashboot.ru, and the other utility window CheckUDisk. Some utilities for firmware have the same name as different models flash drives, they are just compatible.
Of course, it may not work out right away, but don’t get upset right away. We return to the list of utilities for flash drive controller firmware and we are looking for a similar one. Often there is more than one utility in the database that is suitable specifically for our flash drive. For example, I didn’t succeed the first time either, I had to experiment. Flash drive recovery as I wrote, it requires perseverance and the ability to experiment.
I hope this information will help you and your flash drive will be filled with files again. And you had a blog about.
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