Alas, modern portable information storage devices presented on the market in the form of ordinary flash drives and removable memory cards of various formats, like many other storage media, are prone to failures in their operation, which leads to the inability to access the information available on them and the loss of important data . In Windows systems of any generation, as you know, at least some kind of sensible utility to restore flash drives and memory cards when certain failures occur is not provided at all. Even standard formatting is far from always possible. Therefore, you must perform such actions using third-party software. Next, we consider several basic options for actions and applications that are of the greatest value to the user in terms of functionality.
Key areas related to flash drive recovery
And for starters, you should clearly determine what is usually understood as the restoration of removable drives. On the one hand, everything seems to be reduced to restoring information that was recorded on the device. But this is not quite an accurate definition, since quite often you can encounter problems related to the inability to access the device, for example, due to a malfunction of the built-in microcontrollers, which may be a result of the “gathering” of the original firmware, not to mention more serious cases of data loss due to exposure to viruses or mechanical damage. Thus, when describing any flash drive recovery utility, we will be guided by just two main criteria: restoration of operability (including with the resumption of access) and restoration of information that was previously stored on the medium but was damaged or lost due to some reason.
How to find the best firmware recovery program?
Now a little more about the preliminary steps. As you know, any manufacturer of such devices on its official Internet resource uploads specialized programs for free download and use, which enable it to restore the operability of its device models. In most cases, these are utilities for installing the original firmware, the installation of which allows you to restore the performance of special microcontrollers. And information recovery is usually not a question. We will dwell on the consideration of utilities for recovering data from a flash drive a little later, but for now let's see how to decide on the choice of the necessary program for installing the firmware.
Any equipment, including removable drives, have unique identifiers, by which you can find drivers or other specific software for it. Unfortunately, even in the “Device Manager” the information provided on plug-in drives looks far from complete.
Therefore, identifying the required identifiers is best done using small information utilities like ChipGenius and Flash Drive Information Extractor. They will present VID and PID codes, by which you can find the corresponding firmware on the Internet (provided that you don’t have any “native” flash recovery utility on hand).
So, for example, in Runet the flashboot.ru resource with the iFlash section is quite popular, on which there are two special fields for entering identifier values to search for the necessary software. If one is found, you just need to download it, and then install the appropriate firmware for the connected device.
The best universal and specialized programs
Despite the narrow specialization of some programs from the manufacturers of removable storage devices themselves, today you can find many applications that can be used regardless of the type or model of device. In directions of action, they can also vary quite strongly. But usually there are programs for low-level formatting (including applications for unlocking) and utilities for searching and restoring files.
Among all the utilities, including programs from manufacturers, and general applications, the following should be noted separately:
- JetFlash Recovery Tool;
- Kingston Format Utility;
- Formatter Silicon Power;
- Apacer Flash Drive Repair Tool and Repair Utility;
- ADATA USB Flash Drive Online Recovery;
- D-Soft Flash Doctor;
- HDD Low Level Format Tool;
- SD Memory Card Formatter and many others.
You can list such utilities almost ad infinitum. But here very often in all kinds of forums you can meet questions about finding a utility to restore Qumo flash drives. For them, it is best to use low-level formatting programs, since these devices of the South Korean manufacturer “die” very often and suddenly, and simply cannot be reanimated by other methods. But this is so, by the way. Now let’s dwell on some of the programs from the list, briefly reviewing the main features and methods of use.
Transcend JetFlash Online Recovery Tool flash drive recovery utility
So, this program is designed for Transcend devices and is presented as an application that requires an Internet connection in order to work. There is a similar utility that works without this, but the principle of operation is almost the same.
In any case, after starting the program, you can choose two options: restore functionality by formatting, either with or without data storage. But information will be restored only in the absence of critical damage, so it’s not worth completely relying on this application in this matter.
Kingston Format Utility Flash Drive Recovery Utility
One of the most popular devices are flash drives made by Kingston. For them, too, you can find a lot of programs to bring some kind of device to life. However, it was this Kingston flash drive recovery utility that was originally designed only to return the drive, so to speak, to its original factory state that it had when purchased. As already clear, it is not suitable for searching for deleted, missing or damaged files. But the firmware is restored within a couple of minutes.
Software for Silicon Power Devices
For this category of devices, there are also quite a lot of programs that allow you to perform certain actions. Among the most popular programs, one can single out the Silicon Power Formatter flash drive recovery utility, which is designed to perform low-level formatting, and the Flash Drive Recovery Software application, the capabilities of which are somewhat expanded compared to the first program. In it, you can perform some additional actions, including restoring functionality while maintaining the information available on the drive.
Programs for Apacer and ADATA
For devices of these manufacturers there are also specialized applications, usually including only tools for simple or low-level formatting. In addition, even on the official Apacer website, you can find programs only for some models, and not for all devices. But the inconvenience of using utilities for ADATA is that in the program itself you need to enter the serial number of the device. Without it, the necessary firmware will not be installed, and when installing another flash drive, it may stop working at all. Therefore, as in the case of Qumo drives, it is better to use some other flash drive recovery utility, working with which does not imply a narrow focus on any specific equipment.
D-Soft Flash Doctor App
This program is called by many one of the most unsurpassed software products, because it makes no difference who the manufacturer of the removable device is. With this application, you can really do a lot of necessary operations.
For example, the utility allows you to easily save a disk image, so that after formatting the media, load it or restore information when saving, say, on the computer’s hard drive or in a logical partition. You can also check the removable media for all sorts of errors and correct them when detected. The only minus of the application is the lack of an official website of the developer, although the utility itself is available on many other resources on the Internet.
Low Level Formatting Utilities
Low-level formatting eliminates most of the known problems, even without flashing devices. The most famous of all is the HDD LLFT program.
It is able not only to bring to life almost all known removable or stationary drives, but also to identify connected external devices even if the operating system does not see them. Actually, the use of the program is only to select the desired drive from the list and set the formatting start. No settings need to be changed.
Universal solution for memory cards
By and large, many of the universal programs described above can be used not only for flash drives, but also for memory cards of all standards, which can also be attributed to devices of this class.
However, experts call the use of the SD Memory Card Formatter utility, which, as the name implies, is used exclusively for formatting, but can only work with memory cards inserted directly into card readers, and devices in the form of removable drives on smartphones and tablets when they are connected to the computer refuses to format.
Information Recovery
Finally, with regard to information recovery, you should not trust such procedures with free programs like Recuva, which are so widely advertised and recommended on the Internet. There is no benefit from them, despite the assurances of the developers that such applications are able to recover any files. They still know how to find them after deletion (but not after formatting), but basically most of the objects are marked as unrecoverable.
If you want to get the most effective result, it is better to use the utility to restore files from a USB flash drive, hard drive or any other medium called R-Studio. Nothing better has been created to date (this is recognized by all experts).