Toshiba 8gb flash drive recovery. Instructions for restoring flash drives

Hi all! It’s not for nothing that I decided to write an article on how to flash a flash drive – I have experience. Yesterday I restored my flash drive Kingston DT Elite 3.0 16GB. Everything worked out, and I thought, why not write similar instructions, and tell me what to do and how to do it, in order to give the flash drive a new life :).

Nowadays, probably every house has a flash drive and very rarely just one. It’s convenient to transfer information onto them, they’re beautiful, and besides, they’re not expensive these days. But very often USB drives fail. If we talk about why this happens, then we ourselves are in first place. Do you always do a safe removal of your flash drive? So I rarely do. There may, of course, be other reasons why flash drives simply “die”.

One point needs to be clarified here. It happens that the flash drive really “dies”. In this case, it is impossible to restore it. At least at home. But if the USB drive shows at least some signs of life when connected to the computer, then you can try to restore its operation using the controller firmware.

What signs of life might there be? USB storage?

• When you connect the flash drive to the computer, the computer signals that the device is connected - that’s good.
• At Windows connection ask to format the removable drive (but during the formatting process there are problems and errors such as “Windows cannot complete formatting”).
• The flash drive is detected and visible in Explorer, but when you try to open it, the message “Insert disk...” appears.
• Errors occur when copying information.
• Very slow speed of writing/reading information.

If there is valuable information on the flash drive, then you can try to restore it before and after the firmware. This can be done using different programs. I advice Recuva, here is the article but there are many other good programs.

If the information is very valuable, then it is better not to do anything yourself so as not to make it worse. Contact special service centers who are engaged in information recovery.

Let's now look at the entire process of flashing the controller using a real example, using my flash drive as an example Kingston DataTraveler Elite 3.0 16GB. My flash drive broke down. It’s interesting. I needed to upload files to it and delete those that had already been recorded. I connected it to the computer and started deleting the folder. But the folder was deleted very slowly. I unplugged and plugged this flash drive back in, a message appeared that the disk needs to be formatted “Before using the disk...”.

Since it was not on the flash drive Important files, I didn’t hesitate to start formatting.

But the process itself lasted a very long time and never ended, I forcibly stopped it. The message “Windows could not complete formatting” may also appear.

But still, I formatted it, the tenth time, and only in FAT 32. After which the USB drive was detected normally and I was even happy. But it was not there. I started copying files onto it, and the recording speed was approximately 100 kb/s. I decided to flash it, which I did.

Determining the VID and PID of the USB controller

First we need determine VID and PID. This is data about the model and manufacturer of the controller, which is located in our drive. Using this data, we will look for a utility for the firmware. There are many different programs, with which you can determine the VID and PID. I recommend the utility Flash Drive Information Extractor You can download it from the link.

Connect the USB flash drive to your computer and run the Flash Drive Information Extractor program (extract the program folder from the archive and run the GetFlashInfo.exe file).

Click the button at the top of the program “Get data about the flash drive”.

The program will give us the result. We look at the information that is located opposite VID and PID.

You can copy these numbers, or leave the utility window open, we will now need the received data.

We are looking for a utility for flashing a flash drive

Based on the VID and PID data, we need to find the utility with which we will flash the controller. There is a good website flashboot.ru, which contains a database of flash drives and utilities for their recovery.

In the search results we look for a flash drive similar to ours. The list may include devices from other manufacturers. They just have the same controller, it was identified by VID and PID. You may have noticed that I have a 16 GB flash drive, but in the list I highlighted 32 GB. I think there's nothing wrong with that (just where the name of the utility is not indicated on 16 GB). You try to choose a more similar device from the list.

We are interested in the field UTILS(utility), copy its name in full.

Unfortunately, the utility that I need was not found on this site. Perhaps you will have better luck and you will see something in the search results. Download the utility to your computer.

But I didn’t stop there and started Googling. I just asked “SK6221 MPTool 2013-04-25” and found this utility on some other site. If you have the same flash drive, then this utility is . True, the name of the archive is different, but this did not stop me from successfully curing my flash drive.

USB drive recovery process

Disconnect the flash drive. Extract the folder with the utility from the archive and run .exe file. In my case it is the MPTool.exe file. Also look at the text file readme.txt. Perhaps there are instructions there, or a link to a site with instructions. If the instructions are in English, then translate it using the same translate.google.ru.

I'll tell you how I did it (you just may have a different utility and everything may be different there, but it shouldn’t be very different).

The utility is running. We connect the flash drive. I have information about the flash drive in two lines in the program. Press the button Start. In my case, the yellow strip signaled the firmware process. We wait.

When the process ended, I saw green color, everything seems to be fine.

Should appear immediately Windows message prompting you to format the disk. But most likely nothing will work out the first time. Unplug the flash drive and plug it back in. The driver should be installed and the removable drive should appear in Explorer. You can format it.

I checked the recording speed, everything is as it should be for USB 3.0, everything is fine!

You need to be prepared for the fact that the actions may differ from those I described. And not everything can work out the first time. The main thing is not to give up and everything will work out!

Restoring USB flash drives has its own characteristics. The good news is that these devices, unlike SD cards, are repairable. Therefore, if you cannot exchange a flash drive under warranty, why not take advantage of the 60-70% chance to have it repaired.

The article will discuss various cases, typical problems problems associated with the failure of flash drives, and solutions for them.

Recover data or repair a flash drive?

These are not the same thing, although the concepts are interrelated.

The main task that the repair solves is to restore the functionality of the flash drive so that it:

• was defined as a storage device in Disk Management,
• was correctly defined in Explorer,
• read and wrote data.

As a result usb repair A flash drive can easily lose all the data on it, but it will still be available for writing and reading.

File recovery is only possible on a working USB flash drive.

The main reasons for failure of a USB flash drive

How to understand that a USB flash drive needs repair:

• When a flash drive is connected, the LED on its case does not light up;
• The device is not recognized on another computer/laptop;
• The flash drive is detected as an unidentified usb device.

Damaging a USB drive is as easy as shelling pears. Like any physical device, flash memory is susceptible external influences(impact, thermal impact, water ingress, etc.). In addition, there are a number of software errors due to which the flash drive does not work.

The contacts of the USB connector are damaged

Often, the problem lies in a damaged contact between the controller and the USB connector.

How to check. To check the flash drive for this problem, test it on another computer. Alternatively, insert another flash drive (if available) into the USB port of the same computer.

If other flash drives can be read on a PC without problems, the problem is probably in the current storage medium.

If you are unable to read data from a flash drive only on this computer, the problem may be in the USB sockets motherboard PC or laptop.

How to fix.

1. Here is a link to a third-party guide on how to repair a USB connector: DIY USB connector repair on a laptop.
2. If you don't want to fiddle with wires, it's better to give away a PC or flash drive with a broken usb port for repairs. The approximate cost of USB replacement is $20–50.

Hardware/mechanical problem: controller damaged

Most often, everything depends on the flash drive controller, which is the main link in the operation of the drive. The controller contains important microcircuits, and disconnecting a contact or burning out a leg will make data recovery on a flash drive very problematic.

How to fix a flash drive.

1. Replace the controller yourself (which is unrealistic at home).
2. Take the USB drive to a service center - but repairing the flash memory will cost a lot of money. You won't find a controller for a USB flash drive on sale. The laboratory can find a donor flash drive and “transplant” the faulty controller.
3. If the data stored on a flash drive is vital and you would like to recover it, the laboratory may use an expensive hardware and software system to retrieve the data bypassing the hardware controller.

You can find out the cost of services directly from specialists at a company that repairs flash drives in your city. It can start from $30 and go up to $500 - 1000.

Reflashing a damaged flash drive

The USB flash drive contains firmware - microcode with service data. If the USB firmware is damaged, the USB flash drive will inevitably stop working.

How to fix. Such a flash drive cannot be formatted using ordinary universal software like SDFormatter; it will require complete “trephination” - flashing. This will require proprietary utility from the manufacturer.

However, you can reflash the flash drive only by finding out the name of the controller. The difficulty is that manufacturers, as a rule, use different types and models of controllers and can implement not only their own, but also other people’s developments. Therefore, it is not always possible to immediately determine the type of flash memory controller.

Fortunately, there are special programs that allow you to determine the VID&PID* type for Transcend drives, Silicon Power and etc.; We will list them with a link to the installers.

(* VID – manufacturer identifier, PID – device identifier.)

After the warranty repair, all the photos on the smartphone and on the SD card disappeared.

Answer. A very vague question. Warranty repairs were carried out on what - mobile device or memory cards? All your claims against the performers are governed by your contract.

As for data recovery on an SD card, use specialized applications, which, in fact, are what this site is dedicated to.

A 2GB flash card from an old Nokia phone, the phone sees the flash drive perfectly, the tablet and other phones do not see it. My equipment sees other people's flash cards.

Answer. If other flash cards do not open on your, as you say, old Nokia, it is most likely because the phone simply does not support new technologies. Review the documentation and specifications for your device. Perhaps it's time to upgrade your hardware?

My 32GB micro flash drive broke in half. How can I recover information on this flash drive? Please tell me where and who can help me, how to fix the flash drive?

Answer. Alas, this flash drive cannot be repaired or at least somehow reanimated. If the firmware on your flash drive crashed, then you could give it some chance of recovery. As for physical damage, it all depends on the damage. If the flash memory chips are intact, you can read the data through a PC 3000 Flash reader, etc.

Only Possible Solution(if the files are not particularly important) – purchase a new microSD card.

The flash drive does not open, does not appear as a removable disk, and does not appear in the device manager. Physical impact is excluded, because There are three such flash drives, different people worked with them.

Answer. You haven't specified the type of memory you are working with. In any case, if a flash drive or SD card does not open, I would advise checking the operation of the flash card on other devices. Test it on other phones or devices that you can connect it to. If it is an SD card, try connecting it to your PC via a card reader.

Check if the connected device is detected in Device Manager. If yes, use any disk partitioning program or standard using Windows, or proprietary software available on the flash drive developer’s website to format the flash drive in NTFS or FAT.

While formatting the flash drive (transcend), the flash drive was pulled out from the PC. It was clear that it would no longer work, a check confirmed this. The computer does not detect the flash drive, the indicator blinks all the time, it is not in “my computer”, it is in the device manager, it says that it works fine, it is defined as a storage device. Help me restore the transcend flash drive!

Answer. The file table on your flash drive is probably damaged. You can still restore the operation of a flash drive if you create a partition on it and format it. You can revive a flash drive, as already mentioned, using specialized utilities like Acronis Disc Director, etc., but it is best to use the TestDisk application to partition and restore a transcend flash drive.

The flash drive was encrypted in TrueCrypt, I reinstalled the OS, mounted the flash drive, the files were displayed, but when I tried to open them, it gave me an error - access denied. Tell me, is it possible to save information if the flash drive is not detected after encryption?

Answer. You will need a client program to work with Truecrypt. Alas, on this moment The truecrypt.org website is unavailable and the project itself is closed. So try to find the application somewhere on the Internet. After this, when opening files, you will be required to enter a password to access your files.

The flash drive is reset and the system requires formatting the flash drive, but I need to save very important and expensive files. Help!

Answer. Under no circumstances agree to format your flash drive! Instead, use data recovery software and try to recover the missing partition on your storage device. You can safely copy all saved information to HDD and then search among these rubble for exactly what you need.

There is a JetFlash Transcend 8GB flash drive. No longer determined by the system. Formatted it with JetFlash Online Recovery and she deleted all data from the flash drive. Is it now possible to recover the Transcend flash drive, that is, the data on it?

Answer. The Unformat program is suitable for restoring a Transcend flash drive. The chances of recovery depend on the depth of formatting. Anyway, use the deep scan option. Alternatively, try Recuva with a similar scanning option.

The South Korean-Hong Kong company Qumo is a popular manufacturer of flash drives, multimedia devices, tablets and other electronics. The products of this company have gained popularity due to their low price and good quality. The company's production lines are located both in Korea and in Taiwan and China.

Flash drives and memory cards produced by Qumo 32gb, 8gb, 4gb fail quite often. This happens due to software failures, aging and imperfect equipment, getting wet, etc.

Flash memory, like memory cards, has a certain number of write/read cycles. If the flash drive is used for a long enough time, then broken clusters may well appear. Errors are also often the cause of failures. file system. They appear during an incorrect shutdown (pulling out the flash drive) or during a power outage.

What to do if flash drives are not detected?

In cases where a flash drive or card is not detected when connected, shows zero memory or is defined as unknown device— their restoration is required. For some brands there are special utilities recovery, but Qumo is not one of them. Therefore, to “treat” them you need to use universal programs low-level programming.

1. Recovering and saving information stored on damaged media. After running any recovery program, all data on the flash drive or memory card will be lost. Therefore, if this information is important, use the R-Studio program or another similar program before repairing. Use it to create a disk image, scan the amount of information, and then restore everything that can be recovered. R-Studio is a program that is not the fastest in operation, but is capable of restoring as much information as possible on damaged media.
2. Use a utility program suitable for restoring Qumo cards and flash drives:

• USB Disk Storage Format Tool. An HP program that is perfect for formatting Qumo storage devices.
• EzRecover– universal software tool, among others, capable of repairing the Qumo drive. After installing the program, insert the broken flash drive into your computer and run EzRecover. The program will give an error the first time you run it, but the next time it will definitely detect a flash drive or card and give you the opportunity to restore it.
• Flashnul. This program does not eliminate errors, but simply identifies defective parts of the device and resets the information.

Tips: In fifty percent of cases, an SD card that cannot be formatted on a computer can be formatted perfectly on another device. Try formatting using your phone, camera, or something else. If this works and you can read and format the flash drive in this way, then repeat the formatting on your PC after that.

In especially difficult cases, to restore a flash drive or 32gb, 8gb, 4gb cards, you need to open the media case and close the chip contacts. If you do not have such skills, then it is better to leave this work to specialists.

Flash cards have become an excellent substitute for disks; they are characterized by low cost, but they contain a lot of information and are easy to use. The most popular are drives ranging in size from 4 to 32 Gb. This amount of memory reserve is enough to store programs, libraries and even databases. Despite the low price, such products are often counterfeited, resulting in incompatibility with the PC or other problems with interaction.

Causes of flash drive malfunctions

• Manufacturing defects. In this case, it is difficult to do anything to recover information. The easiest way is to throw away such an accessory and buy another one, not forgetting to check it on the spot;
• Lack of necessary drivers. Often drives are defined as an “unidentified device”, as a result of which it is impossible to work with them normally. Installing utilities from the disk included with the flash drive or downloading them from the Toshiba official website will help here. After installation, you need to reboot the system and try to restart the device;
• Incompatibility of the file system of the USB gadget with the PC OS. Many Windows versions categorically do not interact with the RAW system, and this is what Toshiba drives of 8 Gb and 16 Gb in size are based on. Here it is necessary to completely format the memory card and change the file system type. For this you will need special programs, which will be discussed below;
• There is a problem with the software of the drive itself. Incorrect formatting, removing the flash drive from the connector during data transfer and careless handling (rinsing in a washing machine) can affect the quality of the device’s functioning. Restoration is carried out in the same way as in the paragraph above;
• Damaged controller. It can be rehabilitated through the use of special utilities. So, for a Toshiba 8 Gb drive (controller type AB 8028-K/L716/CE7106.0, memory type iFLASH/ISF0032MUDC/0530) you will need the PDx8 v3.27 program. It is also suitable for other flash drives from this manufacturer.

How to restore a Toshiba drive

The flash drive is new and there is no data on it, but it does not interact correctly with the system or the information contained on the device can be deleted without consequences

If the gadget is detected by the PC system, then it needs to be formatted. For this operation there is no need to download third-party application software; the built-in functions of your computer will be sufficient.

Open the “My Computer” tab and find the flash drive. It is displayed under the main drives and is indicated by the letters G or F. Right-click on it and select the “Format” option.

All settings can be left as default. The file system type must be set to FAT32 or NTFS.

To see more information about removable disk, activate the “Start” button, then “Control Panel”, in the window that appears, select “Administrative Tools”, go to “Computer Management”, and from there to “Disk Management”. You can do formatting from the same tab.

A non-functioning flash drive with important data remaining on it

It doesn’t matter what exactly caused the device to not work. If you try to format it, you risk losing all the accumulated information, so here they use additional programs. The most popular are:

• Arconis;
• Recuva;
• R-Stadio;
• GetDataBack.

In essence, they perform the same process - sector-by-sector data recovery on the media. Utilities differ in interface and number of options. Among the general advantages we can note the presence free versions developments, the ability to integrate with everything nearby Windows systems, a relatively simple user experience panel. No programming skills are required to work with the utilities, but you need to know exactly what changing this or that option will lead to before activating it.

You can independently select the type of files to be restored, as well as their size and the approximate date of copying to the media. The fewer overwrites there were on the Toshiba flash drive, the faster and easier the recovery process will be. The time of the latter also depends on the volume of the media. Transferring files from a 16 Gb card sometimes takes up to several hours.

Defective memory card with recovered data

You "pulled" necessary information from the media, but its performance has not improved, so you need to resort to using other programs that are designed to correct errors on flash drives.

These include EzRecover and F-Recovery (Toshiba version). The first is useful in cases where operating system does not see the media or its volume has sharply decreased from 8Gb to 0 bytes. It is not necessary to change the file system here, but for better interaction the user can set it to NTFS.

The second utility is used in all other cases, including in case of minor lags of the device. It performs low-level formatting, restores track zero, and copes with problems with recording media files to the device.

Despite the wide selection of utilities and their versatility, it is best to use those programs that come in the accompanying disk or developments posted on the manufacturer’s official website. Drivers for each controller and individual flash drive can be found here. Here you need to indicate the full name of your PC, including model and production series.

For those who are new to English, it will be easier to use a search engine and download the updated Russian-language driver installer.

The SmartBuy flash drive is a common removable storage device that many modern users use with great pleasure. The manufacturer has been successfully producing high-quality optical media for many years. Combined with an acceptable price, attention to such a product increases several times.

Restoring the functionality of a SmartBuy flash drive is within the capabilities of a PC user.

In addition to an acceptable cost, such flash drives are accompanied by excellent quality, although this does not at all guarantee that during the operation of the media it is impossible for unforeseen situations to arise. SmartBuy flash drives can also fail, but you shouldn’t immediately say goodbye to them, sending them off to a “well-deserved rest.”

You can try to do some manipulations to restore the functionality of the removable drive. In most cases, users manage to restore “life” to the drive, so it will be able to serve for several more years and technically justify its repeated “resurrection”.

If your digital drive has stopped showing “signs of life,” it means that circumstances have occurred that impede its normal functioning. Sometimes you yourself can act as the culprit of such troubles. This happens when you completely ignore the rules for removing removable media. Also, such software failures can occur when a flash drive is actively used, subjecting it to constant writing, reading and rewriting.

A flash drive may stop working if an unexpected guest in the form of a virus penetrates it and makes adjustments to its settings. Even a simple drop of a flash drive can cause its premature failure, since in this case mechanical damage to the removable drive is quite often observed. It is especially difficult to accept when the MicroSD SmartBuy, on which numerous unique photographs are stored, stops functioning.

However, you should not hang your nose; you can use existing utilities that allow you to restore the SmartBuy flash drive, as well as successfully restore all the content that was previously stored on the drive.

Let's compile all of the above. Problems with the storage device in question may arise due to the following reasons:

• a large number of rewrite cycles;
• incorrect extraction;
• infection by virus software;
• overheat;
• software errors;
• static voltage;
• malfunction of the controller;
• mechanical damage.

Based on current practice, most problems are characterized by a failure of the controller, which communicates between the flash drive itself and the computer interfaces.

It should be noted right away that, unfortunately, one can only hope to successfully restore the functionality of this media if its inoperability is caused by software problems, but not mechanical damage. Yes, of course, someone will say that even “mechanics” can be cured, but for this you need to have sufficient skills and specialized devices, which not everyone has.

In addition, solving software errors also requires certain knowledge, skills in searching for information and working with specialized software.

The essence of restoring functionality is to reflash the controller chip. The difficulty is that each type of controller requires a specific utility, errors in the selection of which can completely neutralize all attempts to return the flash drive to functionality and, more importantly, to obtain the information stored on it.

Therefore, the first thing you should do is try to save everything possible files, and only then resort to radical measures.

Let’s focus on file recovery for now and then return to “revitalizing” the flash drive.

File recovery programs

If your flash drive shows no signs of life, use any SmartBuy MicroSD flash drive recovery program. There are several such programs, so you can choose the option that is most accessible to understanding.

You can try using the CardRecovery utility. It works great with SmartBuy removable media, and it can also restore mobile phone memory cards very well.

So, find the CardRecovery utility on the Internet, download it and install it. After that, run the program, in the “Drive letter” section, select the flash drive that you are going to restore, as well as restore the content that was recorded on it.

Be sure to indicate what file format you would like to restore. The program will ask you to specify the folder in which the recovered files will be saved. You can create such a folder in advance, and then specify the path to it in the program.

After this preliminary work, you can start clicking on the “Next” button. All you have to do is wait until the program finishes, and then look at the list of all recovered files.

You can use some other similar program. For example, modern and multifunctional utility PC Inspector Smart Recovery. It will ask the user to indicate the drive where the files that are now important to recover were stored. You can also use programs such as R-Studio, Easy Recovery and Flash Memory Toolkit.

Restoring the flash drive

If you are faced with a slightly different task than simply recovering lost files, then resuscitation actions may be different. In particular, if you have a non-working SmartBuy flash drive, the DiskInternals Uneraser recovery program will help you successfully solve this problem.

ADVICE. By the way, some experienced users claim that SmartBuy flash drives have one unique characteristic. You can simply put a “dead” flash drive in a safe place and “forget” about it for several years.

After this decent period of time removable storage may begin to function again on its own, as if no system failure had occurred. Of course, this option is unlikely to suit anyone. No one wants to wait several years, especially since there is no 100% information on when the period of such “waiting” will definitely end. It is for this reason that it is easier to use utilities that immediately help restore the functionality of removable media.

Working with DiskInternals Uneraser is very simple. After launching it, a dialog box opens in which you should find the “Recover” option located in the top row of the menu. Next, the program will independently take care of performing all the necessary actions. You just have to sit and wait quietly. The program will not only return the flash drive to functionality, but will also offer to return important files that were deleted during recovery, since the process involves formatting.

Reflashing the controller

Have you recovered your files? Okay, we can start working with the controller.

Important point! The target/repaired flash drive must be at least somehow determined by the system. If you insert the media, and there is silence in response (the indicator does not light up, the system does not emit the characteristic connection sound, “Disk Management” and file managers do not see the device, the BIOS ignores the connection), then using this method will not work. And such an outcome of events is extremely deplorable, since it will require physical intervention, with an appeal to the appropriate specialist.

Otherwise, if the flash drive is recognized by the system, but simply refuses to work, do the following:

IMPORTANT. Pay special attention to the correspondence of the values, since an incorrectly selected one can lead to complete inoperability of the device.

If in doubt, try additionally using the “Flash Drive Information Extractor” program, which will provide the most complete information about the selected device.

Once compliance is confirmed, download the proposed software and follow the utility's recommendations. In most cases, you only need to click on the “Restore” button.

Conclusion

Experienced users recommend not to wait for the flash drive to present such an unpleasant surprise, but to carry out preventive measures in a timely manner. In particular, when actively using removable media, it is recommended to perform defragmentation and periodically make backups.

It is also important to remember that you cannot download removable media completely, you need to always remain on it free place. Of course, it is very important to remove the media from the computer correctly, not to drop it, or to avoid other mechanical damage.

So, if you carry out such simple preventive measures, removable media can last quite a long time. If trouble happens and the flash drive stops working, you can use utilities and professionally “breathe” new “vitality” into it.