But before you do anything, think about how valuable information is stored on it? If the data is important, then it would be better to try to recover it before and after the firmware. To do this, you can use the Recuva program, or another similar one. And if super important data is stored there, which is very important and valuable, then in this case, it is better not to do anything on your own. Take the flash drive to a specialized service center, where specialists can restore it with less risk to your data.

Recovering a USB flash drive using the example of Kingston DT

In our example, we will use a Kingston DataTraveler Elite 3.0 16GB flash drive. She worked for the time being, normally for the time being, but then the oddities began. When you try to delete or write data, the whole process is so slow that you can say it did not move at all. After reconnecting, the system issued a message asking you to format the disk.

Given the low importance of the data on the device, it was decided to format it. The formatting process took a long time and was not completed. There was only a message saying that the formatting attempt was unsuccessful.

After many attempts, they still managed to do it. After successful completion of copying, the device start will be detected normally. But here's the catch, data can be copied to a USB flash drive, only the speed is not higher than 100 kb / s. And this is an eternity and it is clear that nothing was recorded on it. After that, it was decided to reflash the drive controller.

Preparing for flashing

First of all, you should find out the VID and PID. These parameters determine the type and manufacturer of the controller. According to them, in the future, we will determine the utility for the flashing procedure. You can find out the VID and PID using any small program designed for this. We'll use Flash Drive Information Extractor.

We connect our faulty flash drive and run the utility. At the top of the program window there will be a button for receiving data, click on it. After that we will see all the information on the device. Pay attention to the values ​​next to VID and PID.

They will be useful to us, so either do not close this window, or copy them somewhere.

Utility for flashing a flash drive

Now we need to find a suitable utility that can reflash the controller type for our case. For this, there is a special resource flashboot.ru, where you can find data for many drives. Go to this site and click on the iFlash link in the top menu. Next there will be a page with fields for VID and PID. Enter our values ​​and click on the "Search" button.

The search can produce several different types of flash drives at once. We need to find one that has a similar name. Perhaps there will be a slight difference in the volume of the device, but I think it's not scary.

Once you have found a suitable device, take a look at the "UTILS" column. There will be the name of the utility we need for flashing. Copy it, then follow this link http://flashboot.ru/files/. Enter this name there and click on the search button.

Alas, in our case, this utility was not found on this site. But this does not mean that you should not try to find her there. In your case, success is quite possible. After you find the program you need, you need to download it to your computer. Well, in our case, we resorted to the help of the omniscient Google. Thanks to his help, she was found on another site. You can download it.

Reflashing a faulty kingston flash drive

For now, turn off the drive. We run the utility for flashing (our program is called MPTool.exe). If the application comes with a file named readme.txt then take a look at it. Most likely there is an instruction there. Note that utilities are different and you may have a slightly different look. But in general, the interface and the principle of operation should be similar.

After starting the flashing program, you need to reconnect the USB flash drive. After that, the utility will detect the device. Now you just have to click on the start button for flashing the firmware. Let's wait a bit until the process completes.

Upon completion, the program will let you know that everything went well.

Then the system message will immediately appear that it needs to be formatted before working with the device. But it's better to unplug the flash drive right away and then plug it back in. And only after that, start the formatting process. After completing all these procedures, you can check the operation of the flash drive. Everything works as fast as it should and the files are copied and read adequately. Do not forget that some steps may be slightly different from those described in this article. But in general, the whole process looks like this.

That's all. Take care of your flash drives, safely remove the device.

This might come in handy.

I had a little trouble. A 32 gigabyte flash drive from transcend has stopped working. That is, the operating system does not see it. And not that there would be very valuable information, but because of the large volume, it became a pity to throw the flash drive away "without a fight."

It was not possible to reanimate the device using the standard JetFlash Recovery Tool. I had to look for another way. A little "googling" on the topic of how to restore a USB flash drive, I found an online service for firmware directly from the manufacturer.

The service only supports, for obvious reasons, devices manufactured by Transcend. If it happens to your flash drive that it refuses to be detected in the system or some other malfunction has occurred. Do not rush to throw it away, but try to restore it using the online recovery service.

It was with the help of it that I was able to restore the performance of my flash drive.

For greater clarity, I recorded a video on how to restore a USB flash drive using the transcend service:

To use the transcend flash drive recovery service, you need to go to the site by entering the following address in the address bar of your browser: http://ru.transcend-info.com/support/DlCenter/DLSoftware.asp?SID=3

So, we go to the service page. We select the type of your device.

To download the program, you will need to register.

You will be prompted to download the OnlineRecovery program. It should be noted here that for the program to work, you will need administrator rights! Therefore, you need to run the utility as an administrator.

After starting the program, you must select the volume of the restored drive. In my case, this is 4 gigabytes, and click "Ok"

While the program is running, do not disconnect the Internet connection!

After the program checks the USB flash drive, you will be prompted to restore the device without saving the data, or you can try to restore the information.

We press start.

That's all. We are waiting for the end of the process, after which we remove the USB flash drive and check the performance.

In this article, I wrote how to restore a transcend flash drive using the manufacturer's standard service.

Thus, I was able to recover two flash drives for 32 and 4 gigabytes. I hope this method will help you too. Good luck.

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. In combination with an acceptable cost, attention to such a product increases several times.

Recovery of the SmartBuy flash drive is within the power of a PC user.

In addition to the acceptable cost, such flash drives are accompanied by excellent quality, although this does not at all guarantee that unforeseen situations cannot occur during the operation of the carrier. SmartBuy flash drives can also fail, but you should not immediately say goodbye to them, sending them on a "well-deserved rest."

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

If your digital storage device has ceased to show "signs of life", then there have been circumstances that prevent 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 the flash drive is actively used, exposing it to permanent recording, reading and rewriting.

A flash drive may stop working if an unexpected guest in the form of a virus enters it and makes adjustments to its settings. Even a simple fall of a flash drive can provoke its premature failure, since in this case, mechanical damage to the removable drive is quite often observed. It is especially hard to come to terms when the MicroSD SmartBuy, on which numerous unique photographs are stored, ceases to function.

However, you should not hang your nose, you can use the 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 rewriting cycles;
• incorrect extraction;
• infection with viral software;
• overheat;
• software errors;
• static stress;
• disruption of the controller;
• mechanical damage.

Based on the established practice, most of the problems are characterized by the failure of the controller, which provides communication between the flash drive itself and the computer interfaces.

It should be noted right away that, unfortunately, it is possible to hope for a successful restoration of the performance of this medium only if its inoperability is caused by software problems, and 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 to find information and work with specialized software.

The essence of the restoration of operability is to reflash the controller microcircuit. The difficulty is that for each type of controllers a certain utility is needed, errors in the selection of which can completely neutralize all attempts to return the USB flash drive to operability and, more importantly, get the information stored on it.

Therefore, the first step is to try to save all possible files, and only then resort to drastic measures.

Let's stop at file recovery for now and then return to the "revitalization" of the flash drive.

File recovery software

If your flash drive does not show signs of life, use any SmartBuy MicroSD flash drive recovery program. There are several such programs, so you can opt for the option that is as easy to understand as possible.

You can try using the CardRecovery utility. It works great with removable SmartBuy media, and memory cards of mobile phones are perfectly restored with it.

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 USB flash drive that you are going to restore, as well as restore the content that was recorded on it.

Be sure to indicate which file format you would like to recover. 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 such preliminary work, you can start clicking on the "Next" button. All that remains is to wait until the program finishes, after which you can familiarize yourself with the list of all recovered files.

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

Restoring the performance of the flash drive

If you are faced with a slightly different task than just recovering lost files, then resuscitation actions may be different. In particular, if you have a non-working SmartBuy flash drive, DiskInternals Uneraser recovery software 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 the "failed" USB flash drive in a safe place and "forget" about it for several years.

After this decent period, the removable drive can start functioning again by itself, as if there was no system failure. Of course, this option is unlikely to suit anyone. Nobody wants to wait for several years, especially since there is no one hundred percent information when the period of such a "waiting" is exactly over. It is for this reason that it is easier to use utilities that immediately help restore removable media to work.

DiskInternals Uneraser is easy to use. After its launch, a dialog box opens, in which you should find the "Recover" parameter located in the top row of the menu. Then the program will take care of all the necessary actions on its own. You just have to sit and wait quietly. The program will not only restore the operation of the flash drive, but also offer to return important files for you that were deleted during recovery, since the process involves formatting.

Re-flashing the controller

Have you restored your files? Okay, you can get started with the controller.

An important point! The target / flash drive to be repaired must somehow be determined by the system. If you inserted a media, and in response there is silence (the indicator does not light up, the system does not emit a typical connection sound, "Disk Management" and file managers do not see the device, the BIOS ignores the connection), then you will not be able to use this method. Yes, and such an outcome of events is extremely deplorable, since physical intervention will be required here, 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 a complete inoperability of the device.

If in doubt, try to additionally use the program - "Flash Drive Information Extractor", which will provide the most complete information about the selected device.

After the compliance is confirmed, download the proposed software and follow the recommendations of the utility. 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 take preventive measures in a timely manner. In particular, with the active use of removable media, it is recommended to perform defragmentation, periodically make a backup.

It is also important to remember that you cannot load removable media completely, you need to always have free space on it. Of course, it is very important to correctly remove the media from the computer, not to drop it, and not to allow other mechanical damage.

So, if you perform such simple preventive measures, the removable media will be able to serve for a fairly long time. If something goes wrong and the flash drive stops working, you can use the utilities and professionally "breathe" new "vitality" into it.

Many users neglect the safe removal of flash drives, as a result of which the drives stop working correctly: they are not recognized by the system, require formatting, does not read / write data, shows the wrong size (for example, 14 Gb instead of 16 Gb). If you are faced with a similar problem, then the question of how to restore a USB flash drive will probably become relevant for you.

Is it possible to restore the performance of a flash drive?

It may seem to some that restoring a flash drive is a pointless exercise. Drives from Transcend, Kingston, A-Data, and others have flooded the market by making flash memory cheap. Memory cards and flash drives from 8 Gb to 32 Gb are not so expensive that you cannot safely throw them away and buy new media. However, old flash drives and Micro SD memory cards are usually not thrown away at all: they lie on the table and wait to be restored.

Recovery is possible if the flash drive or memory card has not "died" completely (usually death occurs when the controller burns out).

But if the drive is simply not detected or shows the wrong volume, then the reason for this behavior is most often the failure of the controller firmware. How to recover a USB flash drive after such a failure, we will analyze in detail below.

Saving information and finding the right software

If important information is stored on a USB flash drive or SD card, then before flashing and restoring the controller (and with it the drive's performance), you need to extract the data. This can be done using the Photorec utility, which can work with media that does not have a file system detected.

After extracting the necessary information from the SD card or flash drive, you can start looking for a utility for flashing the controller. But in order to flash a controller, you first need to determine its model. To do this, we use the CheckUDisk utility (distributed free of charge) and the flashboot.ru website:

After completing the check and obtaining the necessary information (VID PID of the drive), you need to download the utility to restore the operability of the flash drive or SD drive. Go to flashboot.ru and open the iFlash tab. Here you need to enter the VID PID values ​​and find the correct manufacturer of the memory card or flash drive (HP, Generic Flash Disk, Protex, Oltramax, Smartbuy, etc.).

If your model of a flash drive or SD memory card is not in the online service database, then it's okay: the main thing is that the VID PID and the manufacturer match. If the necessary data match, then you need to get information about the exact model of the controller for flashing and restoring it, as well as the name of the appropriate utility.

The table has columns "Controller" and "Utility". You need to pay attention to the volume - the controllers of flash drives and SD cards for 16 Gb and 32 Gb may differ. You need to copy the full name of the utility and download it through the "Files" section on the flashboot.ru website or from another source. Often, along with the recovery program, instructions for its use are downloaded, which it is advisable to carefully read.

Controller firmware

Let's say you have a 16 Gb Protec flash drive. You find it by VID PID through the iFlash online service and download the controller firmware utility for free. What to do next? Carry out measures to restore a flash drive (SD memory card).

Universal instructions for restoring all flash drives:

If the firmware is successful, then you should see a positive status of the flash drive - "OK" or "Good". If during the operation there are problems, an error code will appear: its decryption can be found in the help of the utility found by VID PID, or on other online services.

Restoring any flash drives (SD cards) is done in approximately the same way, however, the instructions may differ slightly for different utilities: you need to find the program for flashing the controller using the VID PID and start restoring the USB drive.

To restore a flash drive, you must additionally format it. It can be executed using standard Windows tools or using special programs. It is recommended to run full format rather than quick format. It will take a little longer (especially if the storage capacity exceeds 16 Gb), but you will be sure that the flash drive is now completely clean and functional.

ADATA Technology Software for USB Flash build - a collection of proprietary utilities for restoring the performance of almost all flash drives from ADATA Technology Co., Ltd., collected by me for convenience. Find your flash drive model here and use the corresponding utility.
iStar v1.9H: Superior Series RB19; Classic Series C801; Nobility Series PD4.
USB Flash Disk Format Tool 3.0.9.0: Disney Series (3; T703; Cars Flash Disk; PD0-Donald; PD0-Mickey; PD0-Winnie; PD3-Classic Mickey); Theme Series (RB2; RB4); Nobility Series (PD7; PD19); Classic Series (PD2; PD15).
USB Flash Disk Format Tool 3.1.1.0: Disney Series (T801; T802 Mickey; T807; Mickey Sports Collection); Theme Series (PD3; RB3; T806; T809; T001 Soccer Jersey); Superior Series (C702; C903; C905; RB1 JOGR; RB19); Nobility Series (S805 Sports; FP2; PD4; PD10; PD14; PD17); Classic Series (C701; C801; C802; C803; C906; PD0 mini; PD1; PD8; PD9; PD18).
USB Flash Disk Utility 2.04: Disney Series (T703; T802 Mickey); Superior Series (C702; C903; C905); Nobility Series (PD7; PD17; PD19); Classic Series (C801; PD2; PD9; PD18).
USB Flash Disk Utility 2.16.1.9: Nobility Series (PD7; PD8).

interface: English; size: 5 540 613 bytes

Apacer Technology USB Flash build software - drivers and software to restore the performance of almost all flash drives from Apacer. I collected it myself. Find your flash drive model here and use the corresponding utility. For the history of changes to the collection, see the readme.txt located inside the archive.
Repair_v2.9.0.4.zip: Handy Steno AH161 plus; AH221; AH222; AH223; AH225; AH321; AH322; AH323; AH326.
Repair_v2.9.1.1.zip: Handy Steno AH123; AH124; AH125; AH160; AH220; AH320; HC202; HC212; HA202; HN202; HN212; HT202; HT203 200X; HS120.
Repair_v2.9.1.8A.zip: Handy Steno AH522 200X.
Repair_v2.10.1.1.zip: Handy Steno AH223 Colorful; AH328; AH332.
Repair_tool_V1.65.zip: Handy Steno AH110; AH127 copy; AH128; AH129; AH422.
WIN98DRV.zip: Handy Steno AH123; AH124; AH125; AH160; AH161 plus; AH162 Colorful; AH220; AH221; AH222; AH223; AH225; AH320; AH321; AH322; AH323; AH324; AH325; AH326; AH421; AH520; AH522 200X; HA202; HC110; HC202; HC212; HF202; HL202; HN202; HN212; HT202; HT203 200X; HS120; SL101; SL102; SL201; SL202; TN101; TN202.
AH320_Utility_LFormat.zip: Handy Steno AH320.
AH422_Win98_Driver.zip: Handy Steno AH422.
HS2.0_Utility_FDU1.20.zip: Handy Steno AH123.
Format_ NTFS_64GB.zip: Handy Steno AH224.
AHFTool_v1.2.0.zip: Handy Steno AH224.

interface: English (english); size: 10 395 628 bytes

Imation USB Flash build software - a collection of proprietary utilities to restore the performance of flash drives produced Imation Corp. collected by me for convenience. Find your flash drive model here and use the corresponding utility.
– Swivel Pro Flash Drive(OS: Win 2000 \ XP \ Vista | Version: 1.015)
– FlashGO! Micro
– Swivel Pro 2 Flash Drive(OS: Win 98SE \ ME \ 2000 \ XP | Version: 1.06 & 1.015)
– Mini Flash Drive(OS: Win 98SE \ ME \ 2000 \ XP | Version: 1.05)
– Bio-Swipe(OS: Win 2000 \ XP | Version: 3.1.2.1)
– Cool, Nano (Red Color) & Pocket(OS: Win 2000 \ XP \ Vista | Version: 2.09)
– Pivot(OS: Win 98SE \ ME \ 2000 \ XP)
– Swivel Flash Drive(OS: Win 98SE \ ME \ 2000 \ XP)

interface: English (english); size: 19 934 936 bytes