Unfortunately, removable drives in the form of conventional flash drives and memory cards from the manufacturer SanDisk are the most problematic devices, which are most susceptible to damage of both physical and software nature among all equipment of this type. In this regard, many owners of such devices often have to search through tons of material on the Internet to find suitable utilities for restoring the drive or information that could be damaged or deleted due to malfunctions. For some reason, the manufacturer itself does not offer anything specific to restore SanDisk flash drives, so quite often you have to use third-party utilities that focus on other devices. But they may not always work. Despite this, there are still several ways to help solve this problem.
Key SanDisk Drive Issues
So, why exactly are these drives considered the most problematic? As far as one can judge from the reviews of experts, they do not quite successfully implement the algorithms of the built-in controllers themselves, because of which failures constantly occur, leading to a “fly-off” of the firmware, spontaneous change of the file system, and the inability to access devices in the environment of almost all known today day of operating systems and, ultimately, the loss of important information that was stored on them. As you can see, such problems can occur with almost all media belonging to the class of flash drives and removable memory cards, but they appear most often with this manufacturer, and often enough for no apparent reason.
SanDisk Flash Drive Recovery: Key Actions
Thus, based on which particular situations may arise, we will seek the most optimal solution. But here it is necessary to clearly distinguish between certain areas of action.
For the most part, programs that allow, for example, restoring a SanDisk Ultra 64 Gb flash drive related to the category of memory cards, which is considered the leader in the number and frequency of occurrence of malfunctions, are focused on the ability to specify the formatting of the drive, which allows you to restore the integrity of the file structure of the drive. There is no single application that could be used to tidy microcontroller firmware. Nevertheless, even after full formatting, it is often enough to “fetch” previously recorded information from a flash drive on it (no matter what they say). The main thing is to choose the appropriate software, which will be described a little later.
SanDisk RescuePRO Flash Drive Recovery Utility
In the meantime, let's return directly to bringing the drives to life. What can I recommend for use? First of all, you should pay attention to the small SanDisk RescuePRO flash drive recovery program.
At least this is the only application that can be found on the Internet when submitting a request. However, the developer himself and even the name of the program, in general, has nothing to do with the manufacturer of SanDisk flash drives. The application itself can be downloaded directly on the developer's resource - LC Technology International. True, the user will immediately encounter some inconvenience, since the site will have to fill out a special form indicating personal data, and only then an email containing a download link will be sent to the provided email address.
The second point is that the application does not have a Russian-language interface, so SanDisk flash drives will have to be restored, focusing exclusively on English names and terms. But do not despair! In the program itself, to start the recovery process, you just need to click the Wipe Media button and wait for the formatting to complete. True, the use of such a program to restore a SanDisk flash drive raises legitimate doubts, because, judging by the interface, the application is not focused on formatting, but on searching for deleted media files, and on SanDisk media all information is simply deleted.
Note: the process start button can sometimes be inactive, so it’s just not possible to perform any actions with SanDisk flash drives. And until now, no one can give an intelligible explanation of why some people use the application, while others do not.
Formatter Silicon Power Program
You can restore the SanDisk flash drive using a similar approach using the described application, which, as the name implies, is designed for devices from another manufacturer, but, according to most experts and users, it works quite well for SanDisk devices (especially for those equipped with PS2251-03 controllers).
The actions in the application are at a minimum. You need to start the program, insert the USB flash drive into the port and press the format start button. If for some reason an error is generated (which is unlikely), it appears that your device will not be compatible with this program. But allegedly worth a try.
USB Disk Storage Format Tool
But the restoration of SanDisk flash drives in this program looks very decent. True, you first need to pay attention to the fact that this utility is designed to perform low-level formatting and works like another well-known application - HDD Low Level Format Tool.
In the program, you need to select your media in the drop-down list (of course, if it is defined, be sure to tick off the items for correcting errors (Scan errors), scanning the media (Scan drive) and testing if the device is damaged (Check if dirty), and then click check (Check disk). It is possible that this method will restore the device’s working ability. If there is no effect, use the format button. After that, the USB flash drive can be used again (but without previously recorded on it) information).
Other utilities
Finally, another, according to many, a suitable utility designed for formatting and working similarly to the previous one, MPTool, despite the fact that it is mainly applied to Silicon Power devices, in some cases this application allows you to restore the work of SanDisk flash drives.
On the Internet, you can find posts that somewhere there is supposedly some kind of non-proprietary program developed specifically for SanDisk devices, called Format and Read / Write Check Utility.
But its use is controversial, since it is impossible to find any intelligible link to download on the Internet, in the archives that are available for download, there is a completely different utility - the USB Test Tool, which is also completely inoperative.
Can I restore controllers to work manually?
In principle, you can try to find an application for flashing SanDisk flash drives yourself.
To do this, use the ChipGenius utility to determine the identifiers of the problem device VID and PID, and then search for them. There is little hope that there will be some kind of application suitable specifically for this type of device, anyway a list of programs can be issued that at least somehow allows you to restore the operation of the controllers (the main ones were described above).
What to use to recover damaged or deleted data?
Finally, if everything is in order with the drive itself, but you only need to restore data from the USB flash drive, there’s nothing to think about! According to most experts, the best program in this regard is R-Studio, which recovers information even after full formatting. Everything is simple here!
First, you need to insert a USB flash drive into the port, start the program, select the drive from the list of available devices and partitions, press the scan button, and then save the results found on the hard drive, in a logical partition or on another removable device. However, after restoring the information of folders with previously present names, you will not see, so you will have to browse each renamed directory in search of the desired file.
If you do not like this approach, you can use a simpler program - R.Saver. It is also possible to restore directories and files in it, but the result will be slightly worse than in the R-Studio package.
Summary
Summing up, it remains to note that manual search for the most suitable application for recovering SanDisk drives, in general, can not be dealt with. The easiest way is to use one or more utilities presented to users for review above. In theory, at least one, but will give the necessary result. But if you consider all the described applications from a practical point of view, it is best to try to restore the device’s performance in the Disk Storage Format Tool application, since it is in it that you can perform two types of actions: both checking and formatting if the first action does not take effect.