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Kingston 8gb flash drive recovery software. Re-flashing a USB flash drive

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.

It seems that everything is fine, but flash drives have one significant drawback - if used incorrectly, they often fail ... The most typical breakdown is when the computer detects the drive as 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 it was determined removable media, launch 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 enabled, 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 neglected 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 can help. 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, the 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 of the "My Computer" icon - "Properties" - "Device Manager"), select our drive from the list, call its properties and select the "Hardware ID" property in the "Details" tab:

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 PIDs and VID, 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 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 drop the memory chip and transplant it to new fee. 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 service center things don't work out. 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. Permission is granted to freely copy and quote this article, provided that the open active link on the source and preservation of the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny.

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. The software is 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 formatting utility and USB recovery Disk Storage Format Tool, which has a very clear and user-friendly interface. 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, Silicon Power, Transcend, Adata, PQI. Further actions to correct errors, restore lost data are only advisable if
flash drive is defined in Chip Genius.

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 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 failure. 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 the removable drives(in whole or in part of writing data to them) 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 tools 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 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 either 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 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.

Greetings to all blog readers!

Probably the majority of those who more or less often work with a computer have a flash drive (or even more than one). Sometimes it happens that the flash drive stops working normally, for example, when formatting is unsuccessful or as a result of any errors.

Quite often, the file system can be recognized in such cases as RAW, the flash drive cannot be formatted, go to it too ... What to do in this case? Check out this little guide!

This instruction for restoring the performance of a flash drive is designed for a variety of problems with USB media, Besides mechanical damage(the manufacturer of a flash drive can, in principle, be anything: kingston, silicon-power, transced, Data traveler, A-Data, etc.).

And so ... let's get started. All actions will be listed in steps.

1. Determining the parameters of the flash drive (manufacturer, controller brand, amount of memory).

It would seem that it is difficult to determine the parameters of a flash drive, especially since the manufacturer and the amount of memory are almost always indicated on the body of the flash drive. The point here is that USB drives of even one model range and one manufacturer can be with different controllers. A simple conclusion follows from this - in order to restore the performance of a flash drive, you must first accurately determine the brand of the controller in order to choose the right utility for treatment.

A typical type of flash drive (from the inside) is a board with a microcircuit.

To determine the brand of the controller, there are special alphanumeric values specified by the VID and PID parameters.

VID - vendor ID
PID - Product ID

For different controllers, they will be different!

If you don't want to kill the flash drive, then by no means use utilities that are not designed for your VID / PID. Very often, due to an incorrectly selected utility, the flash drive becomes unusable.

How to determine VID and PID?

The easiest option is to run a small free utility CheckUDisk and select your flash drive in the list of devices. Next, you will see all the necessary parameters for flash drive recovery. See screenshot below.

VID / PID can be found out without using the utility.

To do this, you need to go to Device Manager. In Windows 7/8, it is convenient to do this through the search in the control panel (see screenshot below).

In the device manager, the flash drive is usually marked as "USB mass storage device", you need to right-click on this device and go to its properties (as in the picture below).

On the Details tab, select the Hardware ID option - VID / PID will appear in front of you. In my case (in the screenshot below), these parameters are equal:

2. Search for the necessary utility for treatment (low-level formatting)

Knowing the VID and PID, we need to find a special utility suitable for restoring our flash drive. It is very convenient to do this, for example, on the site: flashboot.ru/iflash/

If suddenly nothing is found on the site for your model, it is best to use a search engine: Google or Yandex (request, type: silicon power VID 13FE PID 3600).

In my case, the Formatter SiliconPower utility was recommended for a flash drive on the flashboot.ru website.

Actually, that's all. Of course, this recovery instruction is not the easiest (not 1-2 buttons to press), but it can be used in many cases, for almost all manufacturers and types of flash drives ...

All the best!

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 cover a few effective ways to recover 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 be mistaken and download the right program, you need to know the controller model.

One way to get the information you need is Flash program Drive Information Extractor.

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 the 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 required 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 a 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 at the present time, which, 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, consuming a minimum amount of RAM 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, which 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: