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How to disable bad sectors on a flash drive. usb flash drive recovery

How to restore an SD card or USB flash drive if the computer does not see them, does not read or write data? Problems with flash drives are rarely caused by normal wear and tear. More often, the causes of problems with them are ignoring the rules of safe removal of the device by users, experimenting with various software in which these flash drives are involved, as well as their initially lousy quality. Below is a list of possible actions to be taken in Windows environment, which can solve the problem, unless, of course, the cause lies in a mechanical breakdown. And we, friends, will go from simple to complex.

Recovery of SD cards and USB flash drives in Windows environment

Note: below we will only talk about restoring the performance of flash drives, but not about saving the data stored on them. This is a separate topic, and on this account the site has, you can still use this program for. Most of the methods for recovering SD cards and flash drives suggested below will result in the loss of their data.

1. Hardware lock

SD cards, MicroSD adapters and flash drives can be hardware-protected from writing data or completely blocked even for reading. These devices have a lock switch, which must be set to the "Unlocked" position accordingly.

2. Problems not related to the drives themselves

The cause of problems with SD cards and flash drives can be a policy Windows Security. You need to find out if access to removable drives (in full or in part of writing data to them) is blocked by the computer administrator. You also need to check the card reader or ports Computer USB. If everything is in order with the latter, the card reader reads other SD cards, but there are still problems with the flash drive, no matter how you connect it to others USB ports, move on.

3. Windows Explorer

Standard formatting using Windows Explorer can help in simple cases such as unsuccessful data writing to a USB flash drive. Or when for some reason a smartphone, tablet, camera or other device cannot handle this operation with respect to SD cards. In any of the current Windows versions in the explorer window on the drive, call the context menu, click "Format".

We leave the original file system and first try a quick format.

If it fails, we repeat the operation, but with full formatting (uncheck the quick one).

4. Windows Disk Management

You can try to format the format in disk management. To launch this tool, in the system search field, enter:

diskmgmt.msc

In the disk management window, focusing on the size of the drive, we are looking for it among the drives connected to the computer. And in context menu called on it, we start formatting.

You can immediately choose full formatting.

If your flash drive has a partition structure like a hard drive, you need to delete each of those partitions. This is done using the option in the context menu "Delete volume".

And then, in place of the resulting unallocated space, you need to create a single partition. To do this, in the context menu on this most unallocated space, run the operation “Create new volume” and follow the instructions of the step-by-step wizard.

5. Programs for low-level formatting

Regular formatting tools may not help in difficult cases, for example, when flash drives are displayed (in the same Explorer or Disk Management) as unrecognized devices with a file RAW system. The latter means that either the Windows environment does not understand the file system of the drive, or file system not as such in principle. Actually, this is what causes problems with a flash drive or SD card when it works on other devices, with other operating systems. In such cases, third-party Windows programs designed for the so-called low-level formatting will help restore the USB flash drive.

In fact, low-level formatting is a procedure that is carried out either in the production environment of flash device manufacturers, or in serious narrow-profile services. Various Windows software that claims this kind of operation actually performs the usual full format, but by mechanisms different from those that apply operating system. Such programs are good at dealing with flash drive problems if these problems occur at the file system level. Let's look at two of these programs.

HDD Low Level Format Tool

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

Shareware portable HDD program Low Level Format Tool can format different type storage media such as SD cards and USB sticks. After unpacking the archive with the program, run it, agree to the license terms.

Choose free use.

Directly in the program window, specify the problematic drive and click "Continue".

We confirm the decision.

We are waiting for the operation to complete and check the operation of the media.

SDFormatter

http://flashboot.ru/files/file/355

The completely free little program SDFormatter is another tool for so-called low-level formatting. Works with both SD cards and USB sticks. We install SDFormatter into the system, launch it, in the "Drive" column we indicate the problematic flash drive. Click "Format".

The program wants to make sure the seriousness of our intentions, click "OK.

Asks not to touch the drive while the operation is being carried out.

Upon completion, we test a USB flash drive or SD card. If it doesn’t help, repeat the operation with the settings for a complete rewriting of sectors (nothing more than a full format). Press "Option", select "Full (OverWrite)". And also click on "Format" at the bottom.

If using the above methods it was not possible to reanimate the flash drive, and it is still under warranty, you need to stop at this stage. And take no further action, except to contact the seller with a request to replace the device. All the actions that are described below should be resorted to only when, in fact, there is nothing to lose. The instructions below apply to USB sticks, SD cards, and MicroSD cards. However, in the case of the latter, the probability of recovery is extremely small.

6. D-Soft Flash Doctor

D-Soft Flash Doctor performs the so-called low-level formatting, and along the way it also detects bad sectors (cells). Well, and, accordingly, knows how to block them and replace them with backup ones. The program can help when flash drives or SD cards have difficulty reading individual files that fell on the damaged sectors. The program is free and portable. I did not find the official site, but it can be freely downloaded on the Internet.

In the D-Soft Flash Doctor window, the first thing to do is run a scan for errors.

In my case, there were no damaged (broken) sectors.

But if in your case, friends, the scan results are different, and bad sectors are found, we start the recovery process.

The window for this operation promises that the process will not last longer than 10 minutes, but in fact, remapping bad sectors on a drive with a capacity of more than 4 GB can take quite a long time. So it is better to run the recovery operation at night.

7. Flashing the memory controller

Programs for the so-called low-level formatting or their analogues, in any other form declaring the function of resuscitation of all types of SD cards and / or USB flash drives, turn out to be powerless in the event of a software failure of the controller when it needs to be flashed. This problem may have different symptoms, but more often it is either the computer does not completely see the drive, or it sees, it can even read data, but cannot format it by any means. In particular, due to write protection, despite the fact that the drive is not blocked by hardware.

How to restore an SD card or USB flash drive if the computer does not see them, does not read or write data? Problems with flash drives are rarely caused by normal wear and tear. More often, the causes of problems with them are ignoring the rules of safe removal of the device by users, experimenting with various software in which these flash drives are involved, as well as their initially lousy quality. Below we will consider a list of possible actions carried out in the Windows environment that can solve the problem, unless, of course, the cause lies in a mechanical breakdown. And we, friends, will go from simple to complex.

Recovery of SD cards and USB flash drives in Windows environment

Note: below we will only talk about restoring the performance of flash drives, but not about saving the data stored on them. This is a separate topic, and on this account the site has, you can still use this program for. Most of the methods for recovering SD cards and flash drives suggested below will result in the loss of their data.

1. Hardware lock

2. Problems not related to the drives themselves

The cause of problems with SD cards and flash drives can be the Windows security policy. You need to find out if access to removable drives (in full or in part of writing data to them) is blocked by the computer administrator. You also need to check the card reader or USB ports of the computer. If everything is in order with the latter - the card reader reads other SD cards, but there are still problems with the flash drive, no matter how you connect it to other USB ports, let's move on.

3. Windows Explorer

Standard formatting using Windows Explorer can help in simple cases such as unsuccessful data writing to a USB flash drive. Or when for some reason a smartphone, tablet, camera or other device cannot handle this operation with respect to SD cards. In any of current versions Windows in the Explorer window on the drive, call the context menu, click "Format".

We leave the original file system and first try a quick format.

If it fails, we repeat the operation, but with full formatting (uncheck the quick one).

4. Windows Disk Management

You can try to format the format in disk management. To launch this tool, in the system search field, enter:

diskmgmt.msc

In the disk management window, focusing on the size of the drive, we are looking for it among the drives connected to the computer. And in the context menu called on it, we start formatting.

You can immediately choose full formatting.

If your flash drive has a partition structure like a hard drive, you need to delete each of those partitions. This is done using the option in the context menu "Delete volume".

And then, in place of the resulting unallocated space, you need to create a single partition. To do this, in the context menu on this very unallocated space, we launch the “Create a new volume” operation and follow the instructions of the step-by-step wizard.

5. Programs for low-level formatting

Regular formatting tools may not help in difficult cases, for example, when flash drives are displayed (in the same Explorer or Disk Management) as unrecognized devices with the RAW file system. The latter means that either the Windows environment does not understand the file system of the drive, or there is no file system as such in principle. Actually, this is what causes problems with a flash drive or SD card when it works on other devices, with other operating systems. In such cases, third-party Windows programs designed for the so-called low-level formatting will help restore the USB flash drive.

In fact, low-level formatting is a procedure that is carried out either in the production environment of flash device manufacturers, or in serious narrow-profile services. Various Windows software that claims this kind of operation actually performs the usual full format, but by mechanisms different from those used by the operating system. Such programs are good at dealing with flash drive problems if these problems occur at the file system level. Let's look at two of these programs.

HDD Low Level Format Tool

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

The shareware portable program HDD Low Level Format Tool can format various types of storage media, in particular, SD cards and USB flash drives. After unpacking the archive with the program, run it, agree to the license terms.

Choose free use.

Directly in the program window, specify the problematic drive and click "Continue".

We confirm the decision.

We are waiting for the operation to complete and check the operation of the media.

SDFormatter

http://flashboot.ru/files/file/355

The program wants to make sure the seriousness of our intentions, click "OK.

Asks not to touch the drive while the operation is being carried out.

6. D-Soft Flash Doctor

D-Soft Flash Doctor performs the so-called low-level formatting, and along the way it also detects bad sectors (cells). Well, and, accordingly, knows how to block them and replace them with backup ones. The program can help when flash drives or SD cards have difficulty reading individual files that have fallen on bad sectors. The program is free and portable. I did not find the official site, but it can be freely downloaded on the Internet.

In the D-Soft Flash Doctor window, the first thing to do is run a scan for errors.

In my case, there were no damaged (broken) sectors.

But if in your case, friends, the scan results are different, and bad sectors are found, we start the recovery process.

7. Flashing the memory controller

Broken sectors are an integral part of our digital life. Many of us are already accustomed to such failures that occur from time to time, but a new user who sees an error message at the time of connecting a removable drive to a computer can lead to panic. Removable drives store a small amount of data on each of their sectors and sometimes it happens that one of them gets damaged. Such sectors are called broken.

In this article, we'll walk you through the steps needed to fix bad sectors on a flash drive or any larger storage media connected to your computer. This method will require the use of a device with a Windows operating system installed on it.

Logical- drive space that is not working properly. The operating system, in an attempt to read the sector data, receives an adjustment error code that does not match the content. Further, the system marks it as broken and stops using it for storing information. Such drives can be recovered by overwriting the drive (low-level formatting).
Physical- space of the carrier, physically damaged. Such damage cannot be repaired.

So how do you eliminate bad sectors in removable storage? Fortunately, there are several ways to help you deal with this crisis.

Removing bad sectors using Windows Explorer

The first and most important troubleshooting method is Windows Explorer . An easy-to-use interface will check the media connected to your computer for bad sectors and fix them.

Note: We used Windows 10 to run the disk analysis utility. The user interface of Windows 8.1 is similar, but may differ from Windows 7.

Troubleshooting steps:

Recovery of bad sectors using CMD in Windows

If the UI-based utility did not resolve the issue, try using the command Windows string. Check Disk is used to perform an operation to check the connected media for errors. To open CMD in administrator mode, right click on the start button and select “ Command line(administrator)".

Use the following command to check the drive:

chkdsk C:

Here C is the path/drive letter assigned to your media. You will need to write the symbol corresponding to your drive (in our case it is E). Open "My Computer" to see the correct drive letter.

To fix media errors, type the following:

chkdsk /fE:

The following command will help you find and fix bad sectors:

chkdsk /f /RE:

The Check Disk utility will restore you any “logical” bad sector present on a removable drive. Restart your computer when the recovery process is complete.

The above methods will work for SD cards, MicroSD cards (attached with an adapter) and external/internal hard drives.

If you need to restore and save information in advance, the recovery tools of Starus Recovery will help you. You can download and try programs for recovering deleted data on a removable drive for free! The functionality of each program has a preview window. This function will help make sure that a specific file is not damaged or overwritten, which means it will be successfully restored.

Do you have an inoperable USB flash drive or other media and you are 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 a 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 data recovery algorithm. Your files will be found and copied even when the FS of the media is no longer available or it is damaged.

Jet Flash Recovery Tool - then proprietary utility, which has the maximum simple interface and support for working with Transcend drives, JetFlash and A-DATA. Management of only two buttons, obviously you will like it. Do not forget that the cleared data cannot be restored, so saving information from a USB flash drive will not be superfluous.

If you have a need to always have with you universal program, which can be conveniently applied to home computer, and beyond, we recommend D-Soft Flash Doctor, its platform does not require pre-installation, it starts instantly on any PC. Software suitable for repair, unlock,
restore the volume of the flash drive and its performance.

If you need to recover SD cards, we advise you to download F-Recovery SD, which has an effective set of simple options for working with damaged flash drives from digital cameras and others. 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.

Recognize the maximum number various types flash drives flash drive, among the above utilities, as well as quickly reanimate the performance of drives, the USB Disk Storage Format Tool formatting and recovery utility, which has a very clear and convenient interface, can be used. The USB Disk Storage flash drive repair program will be able to quickly recover data from damaged partitions hard drive even if flash drive firmware problems are detected.

If no flash drive recovery program has 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 manufacturers, Silicon power, Transcend, Adata, PQI. Further actions to correct errors, restore lost data are only advisable if
flash drive is defined in Chip Genius.

No computer owner can imagine life without removable storage media. There is a lot of information, why overload the computer with all sorts of data, if it is possible to save everything on a USB flash drive? The more unpleasant is the moment when necessary information on the carrier suddenly appears .

Broken sectors are called sectors of the storage medium, which, due to damage or system failures, the computer cannot read.

There are two types of bad sectors:

logical. A data playback error occurs as a result of system failures. Such incidents can be corrected and after correction the computer will read everything;
physical. The readable area of the card is so damaged that it is not possible to read information from it.

It is important to understand what led or could lead to such an incident.

Where do they come from?

The reasons that the computer does not like certain areas on the flash card lie in:

system failures;
viral infection;
physical damage (crack, scratches);
incorrect termination of work with the media (rough pulling out of the port immediately, as soon as the card is no longer needed);
the initial presence of defects on the machine heads.

All these incidents lead to the fact that the operating system receives an adjustment error code instead of the contents of the sector. From that moment on, the volume is closed to her, she ceases to perceive it as a potential repository of information.

Is it always possible to restore them?

Logical broken sections can be corrected. If the failure is caused by physical wear and tear, serious damage to the media, then even flash card repair is often useless.

In any case, you should still try to restore the broken sector. To do this, there are internal and external applications of the system, for example:

conductor;
check disk;
Hetman Partition Recovery;
jet flash recovery tool;
Storage Format Tool;
Partition Guru.

All external utilities can be downloaded from the web for free. They are easy to use, which is facilitated by the Russian interface. Hetman Partition Recovery is the most popular - according to user reviews, this utility revives data on an almost completely “killed” media. Each program is accompanied by instructions. After launching, the utility scans and evaluates the state of the media, then fixes the damage - of course, only those that are possible.

After that, it remains to restart the computer. The drive is working properly.

Solutions

Windows Explorer

Usually, the system, having noticed the "guest", offers to check and restore it. This happens in Windows as well (since Windows 7). It is enough to insert a removable media into the port, then a notification will appear that the operating system has noticed the device and does not like it for some reason.

However, the PC does not always offer such a service immediately. For many reasons ( outdated version, data congestion) it may not respond immediately. In this case, you can:

If after that the work of the removable media has become satisfactory, you can simply return to it. As a last resort, you should restart your computer. However, this service is only good for minor damage.

Check Disk

The built-in Check Disk application will detect damage on the flash card and, if possible, fix them. Of course, not all of them either, but in many cases it turns out to be a good help.

It is also very easy to use:

On a note!"E:" - indicates the identifier of the flash drive, you can insert another identifier instead.

Further, the system itself will evaluate the state of the removable drive and reanimate the broken sections. True, only logical. And that's not all. After the work is completed, the system will provide a report on which broken sections were found and whether they were able to be reanimated.

After rebooting the machine, removable media should start working in the same mode as it was before the damage. In other cases, it is better to use other utilities, such as Hetman Partition or Partition Guru.

Hetman Partition Recovery

The Hetman Partition Recovery utility can find and repair corrupted or deleted files regardless of the method. For this:

Go to the official website of the utility developers, select the file download option and click "Download file".
Google Chrome browser will prompt you to select a folder to download the file on your computer, we recommend that you select the "Downloads" or "Desktop" folder, click "Save". Sometimes the file is loaded automatically.
Run the installation file of the program from the Downloads folder or from the bottom bar of the download browser by double-left clicking the mouse.
The familiar "Setup Wizard" will open, read the information and click "Next".
Click on the "Accept" button, if you wish, read the terms of the license agreement.
Click next.
Tick the required items, click "Install". Wait for the installation process to complete and auto start programs.
After starting the program, the "File Recovery Wizard" window will appear, read the text, click "Next".
Select with the left mouse button. The utility will provide two scanning options, we recommend that you select "Full analysis", ticking the appropriate item, click "Next".
After the scanning process is completed, click on the "Finish" button.
Drag the necessary files to the recovery field, click on the "Restore" option.
Check the box for saving files, click Next.
Wait for the process to complete and navigate to the selected drive to view the recovered data.

The carrier is infected with a virus

Sometimes the reason lies in the fact that the removable drive suffered from "saboteurs" who arrived from the Web. Such a threat lurks, for example, on photo hosting sites.

An inexperienced user can also cope with this. Free anti-virus "cleaners" will come to the rescue, for example:

Dr. Web cure;
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.

It's easier to use Doctor Web, which can also be downloaded from the Web. This service is good because the virus databases are constantly updated and the protector program in its development keeps up with viruses faster than many other analogues.

If the reason for the appearance of broken sections was associated with viruses, this will become clear from the report.

Thus, it turns out that bad sectors on a removable drive are not a fatal problem; in most cases, it is possible to fix it. In some cases, you will have to contact the service center to restore the flash card.