Hardware and software setup

A program for recovering data from a non-working flash drive. How to recover your data from a flash drive or memory card

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A person may, for various reasons, have problems with a removable drive that stores important information. The media could stop displaying files or could not be read at all. There are several powerful specialized programs that will help solve this problem.

In what cases is it possible to recover a flash drive

If something happened to your drive, then remember that you can increase the chances of recovery if you do not:

  • re-format;
  • overwrite new data;
  • create new folders.

Answering the question whether it is possible to recover deleted files from a flash drive, it should be understood that immediately after clicking "delete" the documents are not sent entirely to the trash. First, data is erased from the file table of the drive, so using special software, you can return them back. Exactly the same situation occurs with a hard drive on a computer, so reconstruction on it is also possible. There are several common causes of data loss from removable media:

  1. Human factor. In the course of rash actions, you yourself deleted the existing data from the flash drive. Returning them in this case will be the easiest.
  2. Crash in the file system. As a rule, it occurs when the media is not ejected from the slot incorrectly. In many cases, data recovery from a flash drive after this is successful.
  3. Damage to the flash drive controller, electrical, mechanical damage. With such breakdowns, it is necessary to use a complex of software and hardware in the laboratory. On your own on a personal computer, you can’t cope with such a task.

Data recovery by searching for hidden files and checking for viruses

Deletion of data from the media can be done by malicious software viruses, which tend to hide them. Restoring information from a flash drive in this case does not require special utilities, you only need a good antivirus. To display "hidden" data:

  • Go along the path "Start" -> "Control Panel" -> "Appearance and Personalization" -> "Folder Options".
  • Find the "View" section and select the active item "Show hidden files, folders and drives."
  • Open your removable device, if translucent documents, folders appear, copy the ones you need to a safe place on your hard drive.
  • Start your antivirus program.
  • Return the display of hidden folders again to the "Do not show ..." position.

Program for recovering deleted files

You can find many options for different free data recovery software. All of them are able to find documents even if they are erased, but are absolutely useless when the drive is broken. Some programs can find more lost data, others less. Below is a small rating of the most convenient, useful utilities with an overview of their use.

How to recover a flash drive with Undelete 360

A very easy-to-manage utility that finds most of the lost data. It is distributed free of charge, but it must be downloaded from trusted sites, because attackers often plant viruses in the installation file. After downloading and installing, you need to run it. Instructions on how to restore a usb flash drive:

  1. Run a drive test using the Search button.
  2. Next, all found data on the media will be displayed.
  3. Everyone who has “Excellent” written in the “Status” column can be restored without any problems.
  4. Highlight all the necessary items with a checkmark and click "Save".

Recovering deleted files with CardRecovery

A person may unintentionally damage some of the documents on removable media if the device is unsafely removed from the slot. Some viruses that masquerade as a torrent can infiltrate drives and hide the contents of folders. CardRecovery is a shareware utility for recovering lost data. You need to use it like this:

  1. Select the removable drive you want to check.
  2. The next step is to select the data types to be reconstructed. For example, you could have stored a collection of photos, then the utility will search only by graphic resolutions.
  3. Specify the location where to save the recovered files.
  4. Specify the total size of the memory card, start scanning.
  5. All found data can be viewed using the "Preview" button. Select the required information and click "Next".

How to recover a flash drive with Recover My Files

This utility can work and recover deleted files from a flash drive, hard drive. After launch, you can choose which action to take - "Recover a Drive" and "Recover Files". The first returns data from the trash, and the second will help if you formatted the drive. After that you need:

  1. In the menu, select the disk on which the recovery will be carried out.
  2. The utility will offer to conduct an automatic search or manually select the data type.
  3. For optimal performance, the “fastest” search method is enough.
  4. Press the "Start" button.
  5. All found data can be saved on the hard drive.

How to recover deleted files from flash drive using PhotoRec

This is a professional utility for reconstructing photos from removable media. PhotoRec is capable of recognizing over 200 different types of image files. Previously, the utility did not offer a graphical interface, the window was in the form of a DOS window, and selection could only be made with arrows, the English layout must be enabled. Recently, graphic design has been implemented, it has become much easier to work with it. Instructions for use:

  1. Run in the folder with the installed program photorec_win.exe.
  2. Select the drive you want to scan.
  3. If the program shows several partitions, then it is better to select the “No partition” item, press the enter button.
  4. All found data will be stored in the recup_dir.1, recup_dir.2 folders.
  5. If necessary, you can stop the program at any time.

File recovery with Recuva

Some utilities are especially popular because they find lost files more efficiently. An example of this is the Recuva flash drive data recovery program. Among other things, this utility is distinguished by ease of use and versatility, so it will be a suitable solution for most users. It works with all types of data, is distributed free of charge for home use. Downloading and installing Recuva is very simple: everything happens automatically, you just need to specify where to install it.

After starting, you must perform the following steps that will recover data from a USB flash drive:

  1. After starting in the utility window, it is better to select the “Other” item.
  2. Through the "Browse" item, find the desired drive.
  3. To detect the maximum amount of data, select the "in-depth analysis" option, which is able to detect even overwritten files. Keep in mind that it will be possible to find, but not always recover.
  4. After scanning, the program will show all the found data on the media. There will be a colored circle next to them.
  5. A green icon indicates that the file is not damaged, the maximum chance of a full recovery.
  6. A yellow icon indicates partial recovery. If this is a text document, then there may be spaces, only pieces will be displayed.

Advantages

Partition Recovery is a professional utility for recovering photos, documents, music from any media. It can be a hard drive, flash drive, memory card and other removable drives. The program allows you to fix damaged files and entire sectors, returning the original structure of the disk partition table. Thanks to a convenient wizard and the preview function, the entire process of recovering lost files is very simple and intuitive for the user. After launching the application, first of all, you need to select the desired device.

Start Scan

The recovery wizard starts automatically. In the first window, you need to select the type of scan - a full analysis takes longer, but gives more accurate results. Then click "Next" and wait for the process to complete. As a result, the structure of the drive with a list of deleted files will be displayed on the screen. For a more convenient search for the necessary data, you can go to the "Deep analysis" submenu.

Recovery start

Now you need to select a specific file or folder, right-click and select "Restore" from the drop-down list. Specify the method of saving (to a hard disk, CD / DVD, to a virtual image or FTP) and click "Next". Be sure to check that there is enough free disk space.
The final stage - we specify the path to the save folder and some other parameters (restoring the folder structure and alternative data streams, replacing unknown characters). Click the "Restore" button.

Need to recover files from a USB flash drive? Wondering how to recover deleted documents after formatting a USB flash drive?

In today's world, information has become a part of everyone's life. Today, most of the documentation and photographs are stored on electronic media, a computer can replace entire rooms that would be needed to store archives, and even libraries. Increasingly, information refers to something stored in electronic form. All this is convenient, practical and rational.

But just as the data accumulated over the years could be destroyed in an instant, for example, by a fire, today, in even shorter periods of time, tons of information can be destroyed due to a virus attack, hardware failure, or careless disk formatting.

However, if it is not always possible to recover data after a fire, then problems with the disappearance of electronic data are actually easily resolved.

Wherever your information is stored: on a hard drive, on a flash drive or memory card of a camera, or on any other medium, data recovery programs will help you get back all your lost files.

Such software, by the way, can be useful not only in case of loss of a large amount of data due to an electronic “natural disaster”. It is enough to lose one very important document or, say, your favorite photograph, and you cannot do without the help of a data recovery program. Now imagine that the most important document was stored only on your flash drive (USB), and you have not yet managed to transfer that very favorite photograph from the camera's memory card to the computer. The slightest malfunction in the operation of a removable storage medium - and the problem of data recovery from a flash drive becomes your number one problem.

So that this problem does not take you by surprise, consider downloading a recovery program from flash drives.

RS Partition Recovery is a professional file recovery from a flash drive and any other electronic media. The program will return the lost data to you, in whatever format they are stored. Just a few simple steps, which even an inexperienced PC user can master, and the necessary files are again at your disposal.

But remember, in order for data recovery from a flash drive to be really successful, you need to use only proven programs for recovering from flash drives. RS Partition Recovery is trusted by many users. After all, it really restores files from flash drives and USB, camera memory cards (Compact Flash, xD, sD, Memory Stick), hard disk. At the same time, it is focused specifically on working with images, reads information from removable media faster, and therefore recovers data from a flash drive with better quality.

Protect yourself from accidental disappearance of data from a flash drive or from a computer's fixed memory, let the recovery of files from a flash drive and hard drive be a simple and effortless task for you. Download RS Partition Recovery now.

Step by step instructions for USB flash drive recovery in which I will try to answer the question in an accessible language How to recover a flash drive independently and without much effort.

It happens that you help a person, and then he will tell everyone that you are so good and there are already crowds of people who are thirsty for help. Something like this happened when I restored several flash drives colleagues.

Now the people carry not only their flash drives, but also flash drives their friends, acquaintances and relatives. Well, at least someone else dragged a bottle of beer or a cookie - figurines.

It's not difficult for me to help, but when I suggest that you learn how to do all this yourself, you refuse. I'll just make those next time. If you don't want to learn, move on.

With the lyrics, I end here and go directly to the topic of the post ..

If your flash drive stopped determined like a drive, doesn't want to be formatted, does not allow information to be written down or something else happened to it, BUT it does not have mechanical damage, then you should know that not everything is lost. Most likely glitched controller and it will take a little fiddling with it. In time, this procedure takes approximately 5 minutes.

I must say right away that there is no universal programs for recovery all varieties flash drives. You will need to find exactly the one that can work with the controller of your flash drives.

First, we need to define VID and PID non-working flash drives.

Determine VID and PID for flash drive recovery

Plug in flash drive to the computer and run Device Manager. StartRun - mmc devmgmt.msc.


Then go to section USB Universal Serial Bus Controllers.


Find yours in the list flash drive. Usually, everything flash drives have a name USB mass storage device.


Press the right key on the device and open Properties.

Go to tab Intelligence.

In the drop-down list, select the item Instance Code device or Equipment codes (ID).

In this window we see PID and VID.

Finding a flash drive recovery program

We go to the FlashBoot.ru website and enter the received VID and PID.


Click on the button Search.

In the results, we are looking for our manufacturer and model of the flash drive. I have this Kingston DataTraveler 2.0.


In the right column there will be the name of the program we need or a link to it.

Everything. Now search Google for the program by name or download from the link provided. Launch and follow the instructions. Usually, in such programs for recovery there is only one button, so you should not have any questions.

That's all!

Any questions - ask in the comments.

A USB flash drive is not the most suitable device for permanent storage of files, but everything happens in life. And situations where valuable data that was only on it were accidentally erased happen regularly. However, in about half of the cases of grief, you can help - recover deleted files from a flash drive. Under what circumstances is this possible and how to do it, read on.

I won’t give hope in vain: the chances of successful data recovery from USB flash drives are lower than from stationary drives - hard drives of PCs and laptops and permanent memory of mobile devices. The reason is that flash drives are usually used to transfer files from one device to another. And accidentally deleted data most often turns out to be simply overwritten, sometimes even more than once. And overwriting, unfortunately, destroys information irretrievably.

Full or partial file recovery on your own is possible in the following cases:

  • The user deleted them manually.
  • The drive has been formatted using the operating system.
  • The files became inaccessible after a virus attack.
  • Files disappeared after splitting the flash drive into sections.
  • There was a logical failure of the file system: it became defined as RAW - unknown, or Windows and programs consider the entire space of the device to be unallocated.

The chances of recovery are extremely low or zero if:

  • The flash drive is physically defective - it is not detected by the computer at all or is recognized as an unknown device, access to its memory is either completely absent, or the size of the latter is several KB instead of tens of GB. The exception is relatively simple breakdowns that do not affect the controller and device memory.
  • The files were deleted using a shredder program.
  • The flash drive was low-level formatted (in fact, it was repartitioned and overwritten) or flashed (it was overwritten by the controller microcode).
  • The files are encrypted, but there is no decryption key. It may be the result of an attack by an encryption virus or user actions (encrypted, but lost the key). In the first case, it is sometimes possible to recover files if there is a suitable decryptor.

With physical and complex logical malfunctions, data recovery from flash drives is sometimes possible, but it often costs the owner very much - up to several tens of thousands of rubles (not even the result, but an attempt to restore can cost so much). Therefore, in such situations, many prefer to say goodbye to files forever.

How to increase the likelihood of success

Even if your case is classified as simple, in order to increase the chances of a successful recovery, adhere to the following rules:

  • The fewer operations were performed with the file system of the drive, the better the result. Therefore, start restoring as soon as you notice the loss of files.
  • Save the recovered data only to other physical media (computer hard drive, second flash drive, etc.).
  • Try to restore everything in one session. Do not interrupt it unless absolutely necessary.
  • If one recovery program does not help, use others. Sometimes simple free utilities are more effective than expensive paid ones. What will help in your case is impossible to know in advance, so try everything that is available.
  • If the recovery program is able to create and save images of drive file systems, be sure to use this feature. In the event of an unexpected flash drive failure or accidental overwriting before the end of reading, you can restore data from the image.

7 best flash drive data recovery software

Some of the mass storage data recovery programs you may already be familiar with. Our site talked about them in an article about. Today, our collection will be replenished with seven more applications of the same purpose. Maybe just one of them will be saving for you.

R.saver

Wise Data Recovery

Wise Data Recovery is another worthy tool for recovering information from fixed and portable drives. Released in Windows version only. Like its predecessors, it works without installation on a hard drive. It has a high scanning speed and displays the possibility of recovering each found object.

If next to the file is:

  • Red circle - the data is completely overwritten, it will not be possible to restore it.
  • Yellow circle - partial overwrite, success is not guaranteed.
  • Green circle - the file is not overwritten and is recoverable.

When clicking on "green" files, if it is a picture or a document, the program shows their thumbnails (if they are saved). It also has the function of searching for certain types of data by keywords: pictures (imagies), audio (audios), videos (videos), documents (documents), archives (compressed files) and mail (emails).

Wise Data Recovery is a completely free application and, by the way, with Russian language support.

How to use Wise Data Recovery:

  • Unzip the archive with the program to any folder and run the executable file WiseDataRecovery.exe.
  • Select the desired media from the list and click Scan.
  • Select the files you want to recover from the list. Click the "Recover" button.
  • Specify where to save files on your hard drive.

Disk Drill

The Disk Drill utility, well known to many Mac OS X users, appeared in the Windows version some time ago. More precisely, in two: free - free, and paid - pro. Free allows you to recover up to 1 GB of information, paid - without restrictions.

Unlike the previous three applications, Disk Drill requires mandatory installation on a computer (for which it gets a minus, since this simple operation can lead to overwriting the data that the user was just about to recover). But it has a number of benefits that others do not have.

With constant use, Disk Drill keeps a record of deleted files, and also creates backup copies of them, which increases the chances of recovering them even after a while. In addition, it supports any type of storage device and almost all file systems (it knows more than 300 unique file signatures).

Disk Drill does not have Russian localization, but it is quite easy to use.

How to recover deleted files with Disk Drill:

  • Install the application on a PC and run it with administrator rights.
  • Select the USB flash drive with the deleted data from the list of media.
  • Open the drop-down list next to the Recover button, which is located opposite the flash drive, and click the desired scan type: "Run all recovery methods" (use all search and recovery methods), "Quick scan" (quick scan), "Deep scan" (deep scan ) or "Load last scanning session" (load the result of the last scan). Click the "Recover" button (or "Continue" if you have already started working with the media).
  • In the next window that opens after scanning, select the necessary files from the list, specify the location for saving them and click "Recover" again.

RS File Recovery

RS File Recovery is a paid Russian-language application. In addition to the main one - recovering information from physical drives, it is able to save and subsequently work with their images. After creating the image, the physical device with data can be turned off, since the program has already “remembered” all its contents. In addition, the application has a built-in HEX editor for manual byte-by-byte correction of files, as well as an FTP client for uploading recovered files to network resources.

After analyzing the storage device, RS File Recovery displays information about the data on it - when it was created, when it was changed, whether it can be restored. This information is displayed in the bottom pane of the window.

Unfortunately, in the free demo version of the utility, the restore function does not work, only viewing is available. The cost of a license starts from 999 rubles.

Like Disk Drill, RS File Recovery requires installation on a computer.

How to use RS File Recovery:

  • Launch the application. Select a flash drive from the list of media by simply clicking on it. All its contents, including deleted files, will be displayed in the middle part of the window.
  • Click on the item you want to restore. Information about it, including the forecast, will be shown in the panel below.
  • Drag the necessary files to the recovery list on the right side of the window and click the "Restore" button.
  • Select the save method: hard disk, CD/DVD, Internet via FTP, or conversion to a virtual ISO image.

  • Specify the destination folder on the hard drive. If you choose other save methods, follow the instructions of the assistant.

Ontrack EasyRecovery

Ontrack EasyRecovery is one of the most functional and efficient data recovery programs, the main competitor of the industry leader R-Studio. It successfully extracts data even from badly damaged media, supports all types of file systems and more than 250 file formats, creates virtual images of physical storage devices, can boot from DVD and USB flash drives, and also has a lot of other usefulness.

EasyRecovery is available in several paid editions with different feature sets. The most inexpensive - home, will cost the user $ 79 per year. Professional, enterprise and specialized (for servers) cost from $299 to $3000 for an annual license.

Despite the grandeur of the possibilities, even a novice user will be able to use this program, since each stage of work is accompanied by a built-in assistant. It is also impossible to make a mistake because it is fully translated into Russian.

How to use Ontrack EasyRecovery:

  • Run the application (it is available in installation, portable and, as already mentioned, bootable versions). Specify the media type on which the deleted data resides.
  • Select the volume to scan (if it is a flash drive, then it usually has only one volume).
  • Select a recovery scenario. Restore objects after deletion and formatting - different scenarios. First, try the first one - it works faster, and if it doesn't help, the second one.
  • If the data is affected by a logical failure, specify one or more types of file systems that may be on the media.

  • Check again that the conditions are correct and confirm your selection. After that, the program will start scanning the flash drive.
  • After scanning is complete, select the desired objects in the list (to select several, press and hold the Ctrl key). Click the "Save" button in the top bar of the main window and specify the destination folder on your hard drive.

To create an image of a storage device and work with it in the future, after starting the program, select the device in the list of media, open the "File" menu and click "Create Image File".

Active UNDELETE

Active UNDELETE is another paid utility that successfully copes with the recovery of individual deleted objects and entire disk partitions. Supports all types of media, all file systems and over 200 different file formats. In addition to the basic task, it allows you to solve related tasks - fix partition table and boot records errors, create, format and delete disk volumes, etc. Like most paid counterparts, Active UNDELETE supports creating virtual drive images.

The demo version of the program, available for free download, has a full range of functions, but does not allow you to recover files larger than 1 Mb.

The Active UNDELETE interface is exclusively in English, but the utility is easy to use, as each action is accompanied by a wizard.

Unfortunately, it does not have a portable version. Installer only.

How to work with Active UNDELETE:

  • Run the program. Click in the first window that opens "Recover deleted files" (restore deleted files). This will launch the recovery wizard.
  • The first window of the wizard is a brief summary of the program in English. Click "Next" to move to the next step.
  • Next, select one or more devices that contain the files you need. Click "Next" and in the next window - "Scan".
  • After scanning, mark the items you want to restore and proceed to the next step.
  • Set save options - folder, filenames, rename in case of matches, etc. You can leave everything by default.

  • The last step is the restoration itself. To launch it, click the "Recover files and folders" button.

If you want to create a virtual image of a flash drive, open the "Disk image management" section in the main window and run the "Create disk image" wizard.

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