Programs for recovering deleted files on a flash drive. DiscDigger and Recuva are programs for recovering deleted files from a flash drive or hard drive. File recovery with Recuva

Do you have an inoperable USB flash drive or other media and you are wondering which program to choose for recovery?

We have reviewed the most popular utilities. Which of the above programs is right for you and will restore a flash drive with a 100% guarantee?

A one-of-a-kind program will help you pull out all the data Hetman Partition Recovery. It is loved by both beginners and pros for its convenience, speed and advanced data recovery algorithm. Your files will be found and copied even when the FS of the media is no longer available or it is damaged.

JetFlash Recovery Tool is a proprietary utility that has the simplest interface and support for working with Transcend, JetFlash and A-DATA drives. Management of only two buttons, obviously you will like it. Do not forget that the cleared data cannot be restored, so saving information from a USB flash drive will not be superfluous.

If you need to always have a universal program with you, which is convenient to use both on your home computer and outside it, we recommend D-Soft Flash Doctor, its platform does not require pre-installation, it starts instantly on any PC. The software is suitable for repair, unlock,
restore the volume of the flash drive and its performance.

If you need to recover SD cards, we advise you to download F-Recovery SD, which has an effective set of simple options for working with damaged flash drives from digital cameras and other portable devices. From the point of view of a professional approach to Flash drives, it will be interesting to use the Flash Memory Toolkit, the application contains a whole range of additional functionality that can test flash drives, in addition, the program works with any version of the OS from Microsoft.

To recognize the maximum number of different types of Flash Drives, among the above utilities, as well as quickly reanimate the performance of drives, the USB Disk Storage Format Tool formatting and recovery utility, which has a very clear and convenient interface, can be used. The USB Disk Storage flash drive repair program will be able to quickly restore data from damaged hard disk partitions even if flash drive firmware problems are detected.

If no flash drive recovery program has helped, we recommend checking the status of the memory controller using the ChipGenius utility. The program works with USB, micro sd, SD, SDHC and USB-Mpz players from Kingston, Silicon Power, Transcend, Adata, PQI. Further actions to correct errors, restore lost data are only advisable if
flash drive is defined in Chip Genius.

When an important file is lost, a document you spent a week working on is erased, and photos have disappeared from a suddenly formatted memory card, there is no need to worry ahead of time. Deleting a file from a disk erases its description in the system. The set of bytes that made up the file stays in place until something else is written over it. So you can try to recover data using any of these applications.

Be careful if you install applications on the drive where the deleted files were located. There is a risk that the application files will be overwritten during installation. It is better to choose another partition or physical disk for installation.

Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.95 for the extended version.

Recuva is able to recover data lost by mistake, for example from an accidentally emptied Recycle Bin. The program can recover photos from an accidentally formatted memory card in a camera, or music from an empty MP3 player. Any media is supported, even iPod memory.

Platform: Windows, Mac.
Price: free, $89 for the extended version.

Disk Drill is a data recovery application for Mac, but there is also a version for Windows. This program supports most types of disks, files and file systems. With its help, you can recover deleted files due to the Recovery Protection function, as well as find and clean the disk. However, the free version does not allow you to recover files lost before installing Disk Drill.

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS, DOS.
Price: is free.

A very functional and versatile open source application. It has a text interface, but it's easy to understand.

TestDisk supports a huge number of file formats. In addition, the program can be written to a LiveCD to recover data from a disk that does not boot the system. The utility can recover a damaged boot sector or lost data.

TestDisk comes with PhotoRec, which recovers deleted files, photos, music and videos.

4.R-Undelete

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Price: the free version recovers files up to 256 KB in size; $79.99 for the full version.

R-Undelete is part of R-Studio. This is a whole family of powerful data recovery software. Supported file systems are FAT12/16/32/exFAT, NTFS, NTFS5, HFS/HFS+, UFS1/UFS2 and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4.

R-Studio applications can recover deleted data both on local drives and over the network. In addition to data recovery, the utilities provide tools for advanced partition copying and searching for bad blocks on disks.

Platform: Windows.
Price: free in trial mode with recovery up to 1 GB of data; $69.95 for the full version.

Eassos Recovery recovers deleted files, photos, text documents and more than 550 file formats. The application has a very simple and intuitive interface.

Platform: Windows.
Price: the free version does not save found files; $37.95 for the full version.

Developer Hetman provides a set of utilities for recovering various types of data: entire partitions or individual photos and documents. The program supports all hard drives, flash cards, SD and microSD.

Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.97 as part of Glary Utilities.

Glary Undelete can recover any deleted files, including compressed, fragmented or encrypted ones. Filtering of recovered data is supported.

Do you know more convenient and functional data recovery applications? Tell us about them in the comments.

Recovering deleted data is the process of extracting information from a storage medium that cannot be accessed by a standard method. If the Windows operating system is unable to read any files due to damage to the file system, the presence of logical or physical errors on the media (hard, solid state, removable disk), then you will have to resort to using utilities to restore access to the files located on it.

What does the impossibility of obtaining access to information by the standard method mean? Probably, everyone noticed that during the deletion of even huge amounts of data, the process of erasing them takes place in a matter of seconds, while copying this information requires a significant amount of time. For example, copying or moving a movie takes tens of seconds or even several minutes, and its deletion is carried out instantly. The whole secret lies in the fact that when copying to media, the file is transferred sector by sector, and during its deletion, a completely different process takes place.

Storage of information on flash drives and hard drives is organized in the form of a book with a table of contents. The table of contents is a section file table containing file names, their attributes and paths, as well as addresses of sectors with all document fragments, and pages are the files themselves. The content of the book, in this case, is the content of the document (text, video, sound, etc.). Before accessing a file, the operating system first accesses the partition table. Having received the necessary information, the operating system or application starts reading the file, starting from the starting sector that stores the first fragment of the document. If the file is stored in a fragmented form, that is, the sectors with its contents are not in a row, but are scattered throughout the disk, then the file table contains the addresses of all its fragments in the order they are read. When performing operations with files within the same logical disk, all actions are performed not on the document physically (not on sectors with its contents), but with the file table information that relates to this document.

During deletion of documents or formatting of the media, the same processes take place - work with the disk partition table. When a document is deleted, the corresponding areas of the drive (or the entire disk/partition during formatting) are marked as free. Physically, the information does not go anywhere, and with the appropriate software, it is quite possible to gain access to it. The only thing worth paying attention to is overwriting sectors with deleted data. Since these sectors are marked free in the file table, when new information is written, it is written to free cells over the files marked as deleted. Thus, there is already a physical deletion of documents or their fragments. Analogy: The book remains as it is, but its table of contents is partially cleared, telling the reader that part of the book contains blank pages. It is this algorithm for working with data that allows you to restore them - to access files using non-standard methods.

Before recovering deleted files from a flash drive

Immediately take note of the important point! Do not write anything to a USB flash drive until the information you need has been extracted from it. As mentioned earlier: during recording, your files, physically untouched, but marked as deleted, can be overwritten with new ones. In this case, the chances of restoring them will drop sharply, or even equate to zero. This is especially true for archives, text documents and programs. For audio, video and image files, overwriting a few sectors is not critical - they will play and/or display, but with minor artifacts. Before you start restoring information, close all applications that can work with a flash drive in write mode in order to minimize the loss of information that can still be restored.

It is also important to check whether the information is really deleted, and not hidden on the flash drive. To do this, you need to make visible files with the "Hidden" attribute. This stage is described in detail below, in the paragraph “Checking for hidden files”, so there is no point in dwelling on it.

You should also know what file system you are dealing with. The procedures for recovering files from FAT and NTSF are similar for the user, but the results of the work of recovery programs may differ significantly in the efficiency of the data obtained.

The FAT file system and its subsequent version FAT32 store file data in several areas of the media. The document descriptor, including its name, size, and attributes, is located in the directory. The file location table also stores the list of clusters belonging to the file in the order in which they are accessed. Such a system for organizing data storage on a device has a significant drawback - during its partial or complete destruction, data on clusters allocated to files also disappear. In this case, information recovery is possible, but on the condition that the utility accurately determines its contents and collects the clusters belonging to the file in the correct order. And the recovery process in this case will take a long time.

The loss of directories leads to the impossibility of accurately determining the 1st sector, where the file begins, as well as its name (path to the file) and the space it occupies. In such a situation, you can collect documents from chains of clusters that are in the file table. The names of such documents will contain a random set of characters or be generated by the recovery program, for example, based on user settings. Only knowing what type of file we are recovering, for example, based on its size, you can access it by changing the extension manually or using a program to determine the contents of the document by its signature (more on this later). Resuscitation of a large number of different types of files in this case will turn into a very laborious and lengthy process for the user.

In NTFS, all data about the file is written to the main partition table - MFT. Each of its entries contains the name of the document, its attributes, security settings, and, most importantly, the chain of clusters that host the file itself, in the order they are read. Therefore, the quality of recovering files from disks formatted in NTFS directly depends on the degree of damage to the partition table and its backup.

This difference should be understood and taken for granted, especially when recovering information from a formatted or damaged flash drive.

Where did the files from the flash drive go?

If you didn’t delete anything from a removable drive, but some file or a lot of them disappeared from it, then someone else, for example, a friend, is guilty of this. Other people used the flash drive - they could destroy all the data on it, for example, by formatting it before use or deleting unnecessary information. A virus or antivirus program could also be the culprit.

Many have come across a virus that changes the attributes of all files and folders on removable media to "Hidden", and propagates itself under the names of your data. A not very attentive user who did not notice the substitution starts to open the document, but a virus program is launched instead. It’s good when the installed antivirus recognizes and eliminates it in time, preventing it from harming. As it seems to many, the antivirus becomes the culprit of data loss, but alas: it only removes malicious programs that bear the names of your documents. Here you need to be more careful and look at the extensions of the files deleted by the antivirus. Surely, in all it will be " exe", And your files are further stored on the flash drive, not displayed in the explorer, until you follow the instructions described below.

Real files hidden by a virus on a flash drive and "fake" ones with an exe extension

In order to make sure that the files on the flash drive are present, but not displayed, or missing, we check the amount of information placed on it. To perform this operation, we perform the following steps. We call the context menu of the flash drive and select the item in it " Properties", Located at the end of the list.

We look at the volume occupied by files. It is displayed next to the inscription " Busy».

If there is no data on the flash drive, it means that the information was deleted by the user during formatting, file system damage, logical or mechanical defects in the drive structure. That is, they will have to be restored using specially designed applications.

Deleting files in the Trash

How can I recover data deleted from a flash drive to the Recycle Bin? None. Such a concept does not exist, and now we will understand why. Do not even try to find files recently deleted from the flash drive in the Recycle Bin.

Remember! Deleting files from removable USB drives occurs bypassing the Recycle Bin, unlike a similar process with hard and solid state drives.

This can be understood from the object deletion dialog. Just compare the warnings about deleting data from a flash drive with a similar dialog about moving information to the Recycle Bin.

Most users do not pay attention to the contents of the dialog during the operation, and simply agree to the action by clicking the "Yes" or "Enter" button.

If you delete information from a flash drive, do it deliberately, there will be no chance to restore anything from the trash, as is the case with a hard drive.

The lost will have to be restored through special applications, and no one guarantees 100% reliability of the data recovery process. Files that were deleted from the hard drive to the Recycle Bin, and it was then cleared, can be easily restored using a special program. The best of the free offers will be discussed a little later.

Flash drive damaged by a virus

There are a huge number of different opinions, the essence of which is that any malware is capable of causing physical harm to a removable drive - and this is not true.

The only thing that a virus can do is hide files from the user's eyes or damage the file partition table, which was discussed earlier.

Therefore, the operating system will not be able to read the data and, most likely, will offer to format the device. The information will remain physically on the media, but it will not be possible to access it using the standard method. There are viruses that assign the Hidden attribute to all files and folders located in the root directory of the media. After that, such information becomes invisible in the explorer window and, as a result, the user does not see it. We'll talk more about this later.

Recovering files after accidentally formatting a flash drive

Formatting a flash drive is the process of software partitioning of a drive and the formation of its logical structure. There are two types of formatting: quick and full (or low-level). Quick formatting is the clearing of most of the file allocation table with their addresses and attributes, that is, no data is physically destroyed, and their structure remains intact, which allows you to determine it and restore data. Full formatting consists in the physical rewriting of each drive cluster or partition - after deleting information about the placement of files, a logical zero is written to each cluster (the minimum information storage unit) of the drive. This process turns information recovery into a time-consuming and difficult, but still doable, albeit partially, task.

Many programs are able to analyze the information found on a formatted hard drive by its signatures to determine the contents of the file. Signatures are file labels that help programs identify them. As a rule, they are placed at the very beginning of the file, less often at the end, and look like a small piece of hexadecimal code.

Signature search

Signature-based analysis of found files and their fragments is the most effective data recovery technology currently available. It allows you to reanimate virtually any files: lost due to quick or low-level formatting, partially overwritten or placed in bad sectors.

In addition to the usual reading of deleted data, this method allows you to access absolutely any information placed on the media, even partially damaged and one that is not referenced in the file system. Programs that support file recovery by signatures read data from the media and compare it on the fly with an online or offline database of signatures specific to various file types for compliance. When the utility finds a match, it starts parsing the document header to extract as much useful information as possible. At the end of the procedure, the utility renames the document, indicating its inherent extension. Thanks to this algorithm, the application is able to determine the exact size of the file, because many types of documents contain in their header not only its size, but also the name, attributes, etc.

The advantages of the method include the possibility of effective recovery of files from media. The disadvantage is that it works only with known types of documents entered into the database. Also, the duration of the process of deep scanning of the drive's file system can take tens of minutes or even hours, depending on the volume.

How to recover data after a damaged usb device

All modern flash drives consist of a controller, data storage cells, a crystal oscillator, and several additional microcircuits. All physical damage to flash drives can be divided into several categories: mechanical - damage to the soldering, connector, deformation of the substrate, etc. due to careless handling of the drive (falls, bumps); electrical and thermal - arise as a result of sudden jumps in potential on the elements of the board, storage and use of the device at high ambient temperatures, or during overheating, which is very rare; controller corruption and failure is the most common problem, due to which the data still stored on the memory chips cannot be accessed by standard methods.

Mechanical damage is the most difficult to eliminate: you will have to solder the missing contacts, replace the connectors, or completely solder the memory chips and read information from them using special devices - readers or flash readers.

In the case of electrical damage (for example, an element burned out), information is read, as in case of mechanical failures, by soldering memory chips, creating their images on specialized equipment for subsequent data recovery by software. If the controller is inoperative, you will also have to unsolder the memory chip and restore information using the same reader or Flash reader.

Instead of a conclusion: if the elements of the flash drive are physically damaged or if its controller or crystal oscillator fails, it is unlikely that you will be able to recover data from the drive yourself. This can be done in a specialized service center.

Check flash drive for hidden files

Probably, many users are familiar with the situation when the operating system does not detect files stored on removable media, although you are sure that they are. Before you start recovering documents that you cannot find on a USB flash drive, you need to make sure that they are really missing. To do this, activate the option to display files that have the "Hidden" attribute. This operation does not require any advanced IT knowledge from the user.

Just follow the instructions below.

We launch " Explorer", For example, go to the directory " My computer».

Focus on the main menu. In it, select " Arrange", And in the drop-down list of options, click on the item" Folder and search options».

In the window that appears, switch to the tab " View". Scroll down the list of functions, where we move the switch to the position " Show hidden files…” as shown in the screenshot.

Set "Show hidden files" to active.

This will provide the ability to see files and directories with the Hidden attribute. In the explorer window, they are indicated in gray. Click " Apply"And agree to the display of hidden files by clicking" Yes"In the warning window. After this, the changes will take effect and you will not have to restart the system or the explorer process. Click " OK" to close the dialog box. The same can be done in another way - through " Control Panel". We call " Control Panel"A method known to you, for example, through" Start». If the panel view is switched to "Categories", go to "".

Then click on the inscription: Show/show hidden files and folders».

When the control panel elements are visualized as icons, large or small, click on the inscription " Folder options". Next, we perform all the actions starting from step 3 of the previous method for displaying hidden files and directories. Also, these actions can be performed using the Total Commander file manager.

If your files still have not appeared, then access to them will not work in the usual way and will have to be obtained through specialized utilities.

Video instruction - how to check a flash drive for hidden files

Automatic correction of system errors and recovery of bad sectors

File system corruption is a fairly common problem due to which Windows cannot read files placed on a USB flash drive. This scenario can be caused by several factors:

improper disconnection of the flash drive;
power surges during the operation of the flash drive;
physical wear of memory cells, etc.

In order to try to correct this annoying error, it is necessary to scan the memory cells of the carrier for physical and logical errors. This can be done through a large number of applications, but we will take a step-by-step look at how to scan a USB flash drive using the console utility built into Windows. You can launch it in several ways.

Via GUI

We go to " My computer"Or open the directory with the contents of the flash drive, call its context menu.

We activate the tab " Service", Which will allow you to start scanning the flash drive and click" Run a check” to launch the ChkDsk system program.

We set the verification parameters, as in the screenshot, to correct the physical and logical errors of the drive, and click " Run».

If the operating system asks you to disable the device volume for scanning, exit all applications using it and agree by clicking " Disable".

Next, you will have to wait a few minutes, depending on the damage and volume of the flash drive, until the utility checks it. At the end of the scan, the scan statistics will be displayed on the screen. If the utility has corrected errors and reassigned sectors, you can try to open the USB flash drive in Explorer to gain access to the information placed on it.

The same can easily be done using the command line

We call the dialog " Run"By clicking on the corresponding element of the menu" Start"Or pressing the combination Win + R. In the window we write " cmd"And click" OK"or" Enter"To start the command line.

We start the process of checking the drive. To do this, look at its label in the explorer window. On the command line, we write “ chkdsk I: / F / R”, where: chkdsk is the command to call the disk check program; I: - disk label; /F – flag that launches the program in the disk file system defect repair mode (similar to automatic system error correction); /R - a parameter responsible for fixing or reassigning bad sectors.

Enter on the command line - chkdsk I: / F / R

Press " Enter"And wait for the completion of the verification procedure. If the question arises about the need to disable the device for other applications, we complete all programs that can access the flash drive. Then click "Y" and "Enter".

At the end of the scan, the Found.000 directory with the results of the scan should appear on the USB flash drive if the utility found and corrected errors.

If after checking the flash drive with an antivirus, the files disappeared

It happens that after connecting the flash drive to the usb connector, the antivirus program starts scanning it automatically. And after completing the scan and removing viruses, it turns out that all your files have disappeared from the drive, be it programs or text documents. The same can happen after manual scanning of removable media. What happened, why does the antivirus delete files that are not viruses? Not the fact that all your files were safe: the same doc format documents may contain dangerous macros, and the antivirus could perceive executable files as malicious. As mentioned earlier, there are viruses that change file attributes to " Hidden", Read more in paragraph "Where did the files go?". In any case, if nothing is copied to the USB flash drive, there is a huge chance to save your data.

Free programs for recovering deleted data (files) from a flash drive

Well, if your files still turned out to be erased due to accidental formatting or deletion, it is still possible to access them - you will have to use one of the freely distributed utilities designed to solve this problem. The market is littered with similar solutions, but most programs for resuscitating information from flash drives are paid. Of the few free ones, a significant part does not cope with its tasks or has poor functionality, which is not enough for many users. Today we will look at the best free solutions for data recovery from removable drives. The list of applications reviewed includes both easy-to-learn utilities that can recover information after accidental deletion or quick formatting, as well as professional solutions that can be used to recover data from drives with a damaged file system after full formatting or partial overwriting of files. Below are the most effective and functional data recovery from removable USB flash drives with detailed instructions that will help restore information to a user with any level of training.

How to recover deleted information from a flash drive with the free DMDE program

DMDE is a professional data search and recovery utility. You can download the latest version of DMDE on the official website at this link. Working according to the scheme of debugged algorithms, the program is able to restore the folder structure of the disk and the files located in them. It has several built-in tools, such as a disk editor, partition manager, imaging modules, and others. After downloading the application, you will have to unpack it to any place, except for the partition from which you will restore files. Any archiver or built-in Windows tools for working with archives can handle this. The first time you run DMDE, you must specify your preferred interface language. Choose Russian and click " Ok».

In the next window, we accept the terms of the license by checking the box " I accept the terms... and clicking on the "Accept" button.

To view file recovery and edit disks, you must select the media with which we will work. If the device is connected, check the item “Phys. devices." Next, check the box next to Show Sections". In the right frame, mark our flash drive and click " Ok".

After that, the utility will scan the computer for logical devices and display them as a list. Since we are using a flash drive, there will be only one volume on it. In the window, select the flash drive and click " Search FAT"Or search" NTFS", Depending on the file system of the flash drive.

In the window with setting the search parameters, it is better not to change anything, and immediately go to the search by clicking on the button of the same name.

The current file system is defined in the device properties.

Select a specific file system and click " Open volume". It is not necessary to save the disk log.

In the left part of the window that opens, go to the directory "$ Root" - this is the root directory of our flash drive with the scan results. It displays all the information that the utility is able to recover. We tick the documents we need, call their context menu and click on " Restore Files...". The same can be done with the key combination " Ctrl + U».

It is also worth noting " Files in current panel" if you want to recover only certain information. Click " Ok».

Then we will see a dialog box with a report on the work done on data recovery. Close it by clicking on " OK"And continue working in the program or exit it.

Recovering deleted files from a flash drive with the free Recuva program

Recuva is an easy-to-learn utility for recovering lost data from the developers of Ccleaner. You can download the latest version of Recuva on the official website at this link. File recovery is carried out in the following way. We start the program in wizard mode, if the settings have not been changed, it automatically starts in this mode. In the first window, click " Next». Then we select the type of data that you want to recover to determine the flash drive scanning algorithm.

If you want to recover, for example, photos, then there is no need to waste time searching for and identifying other types of files. The same applies to other similar cases. When you want to restore various types of documents, we do not change anything, and click " Next". In the window with the question about creating an image, it is better not to create it if no other programs use the device in recording mode. Otherwise, you should create an exact copy of the drive to increase the chances of recovering lost data. Specify the flash drive from which the information will be restored.

We move the radio switch to the position " On the memory card"If one removable drive is connected to the computer.

Specify "On the memory card if one removable drive is connected to the computer"

Otherwise, the mark is moved to the position " At the specified location". Then click "Browse ..." and select the USB flash drive.

Click on the button that says: "Next". We turn on in-depth analysis only if the necessary files for recovery were not found during the normal scan. It is better not to enable this option during the first scan. We wait while the utility searches for information.

In the window that opens with the search results, check the boxes for the files you need and click on " Restore".

Specify the path for the recovered data and click " OK".

The folder with the recovered data should not be on the flash drive from which we are restoring it.

Upon completion of the procedure, we get acquainted with its results and close the window by pressing its only button.

When restoring graphic files (photos), you should switch to advanced mode by clicking on the corresponding button.

In this mode, a preview of the found graphic files is available, which will greatly facilitate the work if you need to access several images or photographs.

If some files are not found, you will have to perform a deep scan of the flash drive's file system. To do this, in paragraph 6, put a tick next to " Enable in-depth analysis».

This process will take much longer, but the result of a deep scan will bring more results.

Recovering deleted files from a flash drive with the free utility R.saver

R.saver is an easy-to-use utility for recovering information from media with various file systems: FAT, NTFS and exFAT. In addition to resuscitation of deleted data, the application is able to reconstruct the damaged file system of a flash drive and gain access to information that was lost by completely formatting the device (by signatures). You can download R.saver for free from the official website at this link. The program does not require installation and runs from any media. Below is an instruction for working with R.saver, which will be understood by a user who has basic computer skills. Run R.saver. During boot, the utility checks the computer for storage devices connected to it.

In the window that opens with a list of information storages connected to your computer, we go down and fix our eyes on the device with the name "JetFlash USB ...". We select the flash drive we need, if at the moment there are several of them connected. You can navigate by their name and size.

We call the context menu of the drive and select the action we need in it: “ Search for lost data» - if you want to recover deleted information; " Restore after formatting" - when you need to access information that was lost due to formatting the drive.

We are waiting for the completion of the reconstruction of the file system. The process can take about ten or more minutes of time when scanning a large flash drive (32 or 64 GB).

After the file system scanning is completed, the search window will automatically close. A list of data that can be recovered will appear on the right side of the program interface.

Select the desired files (as in Windows Explorer using Ctrl and Shift). We call their context menu and click on "Copy to ..."

In the dialog, go to the directory where the program will restore the data, and click " Select».

Do not select the removable disk from which you are restoring information or its subdirectories as the output directory.

The utility will quickly cope with the process of copying files and automatically close the copy window. In the case of the reconstruction of the file system after formatting the drive, all actions are performed in the same way, unless the reconstruction process can be delayed in time and before scanning, you will have to select the file system of the flash drive from the list proposed by the utility.

Recovering deleted data with PC Inspector File Recovery utility

PC Inspector File Recovery is a powerful English-language utility for recovering lost files at the sector level, which will allow you to access partially overwritten and lost information due to damage to the media file system or its formatting. You can download PC Inspector File Recovery for free from the official website at this link. The program does not have a Russian-language user interface, so you have to deal with English-language inscriptions, and there is nothing complicated about it. In the launch window, we are offered to get some privileges by purchasing the full version of the program. We press the green button with the inscription " Free trial"In order to get started.

We click on the upper left frame with the image of the basket and the inscription " Lost File Recovery"-" Restoring Lost Files».

Click the "Lost File Recovery" button

We choose our removable usb-drive, as a rule, it is located at the very bottom. We focus on the icon of USB devices, the volume of the flash drive and its name. Click "Start" to start the scanning process.

Select our flash drive and click "Start"

If it was not possible to find the necessary information using the usual method, then check the box next to " Enable deep scan"For the behavior of in-depth scanning at the sector level and select the file system of the drive.

It can be viewed in the properties of the flash drive, as in the screenshot.

We wait while the utility checks the drive for traces of those files that can be recovered.

Upon completion of the drive check, a window will appear, divided into several frames. The left frame shows all detected data, grouped by data type: archives, graphic files, text documents, videos, etc. In the lower right frame, you can see the names of all files of the selected type, and images and text documents can also be viewed in the preview window. view above. We tick the files and / or types of files that we want to recover, and click on the orange button " Recover»To open the file recovery dialog.

In the dialog, specify the directory where the program should restore the selected files. If necessary, you can create a new one by clicking on the " New Folder". Click on the green "Recover" button.

Specify the folder where you want to restore files and click "Recover"

Depending on the amount of information being reanimated, the recovery process may take from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Upon completion, a window will appear congratulating you on the successful restoration of files, and the folder in which the program has created copies of the data to be restored will open in Windows Explorer. We go into it and check the quality of its algorithms. If the files are inoperable, use the deep check, as described earlier.

Recovering deleted information using the Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional utility

A recoverer from the category of freely distributed, capable of recovering a huge number of types of files lost both due to careless deletion, and when formatting a removable flash drive. You can download from the official site at this link. Unfortunately, when we tested the latest version of Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional, it did not restore anything for us. We found an earlier version on the Internet, which successfully coped with its task. Therefore, our data recovery instructions will be from an earlier version of Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional than on the official website. But soon, we will definitely re-test the latest version and make a separate review of Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional. The utility, although it has a multilingual interface, has not acquired Russian. Let's start recovering files that Windows Explorer cannot find on a removable USB flash drive. In the main window of the application, click on the button labeled " Data Recovery", Because we are interested in file recovery. Choose a data recovery method. In our case, " Deleted recovery", Since the information was lost precisely due to careless deletion of data, is suitable.

We stop the selection on the device that will be scanned. Flash drives are usually displayed last in the list. Next, select the type of files to recover if you want to recover certain data (photos, documents). We click " Next».

In the left part of the window that appears with the scan results, a directory tree is displayed, and in the right part, a list of found files.

We tick off the data we need. And we click on the button " Next". If necessary, you can use the preview function - the button " View File".

Click on the " Browse" button to open a window with a choice of a directory for recovering files. Specify the recovery path and confirm it with the OK button. Also, the path to the output directory can be entered manually in the line before the "Browse" button.

We call a window with a choice of a directory for recovering Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional files

After specifying the path, click " Next»To start the recovery operation of the marked files.

Choose the path where you want to restore files

The operation is completed, a window with its results appears in front of us. If necessary, the report can be saved by clicking on "Save" and specifying the path to the text file. Click Done to complete Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional.

When asked about the need to save the report, click negative if it has already been saved or if it is not necessary.

Learning how to recover deleted files with Active File Recovery

Active File Recovery is a system data recovery utility that supports a huge number of removable flash drives and their file systems. You can download Active File Recovery for free from the official website at this link. Let's consider a chain of actions that must be performed to recover files lost in one way or another. The list of storage media is displayed in the left part of the main program window. We select among them a flash drive by clicking on the icon of the usb device.

We move the cursor to the detected file system, as a rule, it is one, call its context menu and select " Quick Scan"To start the process of quick file system check.

Mode " Deep Check"Or" SuperScan"Run if the device was formatted or the previous method did not give the desired results. In most cases, a quick scan is enough to recover files deleted by mistake.

Using the keys " Ctrl", " Shift"And the cursor select the desired files. We call their context menu and stop at the item " Restore ..."

In the window with recovery options, specify the path for resuscitation of files (enter manually or use the “…” button to open the dialog for selecting the output folder.

Having set all the parameters, for example, opening a directory with files upon completion of their recovery, click " Restore».

Now you know how to access your lost files in minutes without spending a single penny on software, a trip to a service center or a house call. But the recovery process does not always go smoothly. Quite often, users encounter the following problems:

the data recovery program does not find the required file;
the recovered document does not open;
an error occurs when trying to open a reanimated file;
information is partially restored, etc.

In this section of the article, we will consider these and other problems that accompany the process of extracting lost information from removable media.

If the files are partially restored, what to do

It happens that applications partially restore data - the reanimated file is a document with a broken internal data structure. This means that the program found the file and determined its structure, but by the time of recovery, some of its fragments were physically overwritten. Indeed, during the deletion of information or formatting the drive, the sectors that it occupied are designated as free, some information was written to these sectors. Also, fragments of the document could be in damaged areas of the media. Therefore, it is recommended not to write anything to a non-USB flash drive before or during data file recovery.

As for our further actions for working with such data, here the choice is between two options: try to recover files with another program, use an in-depth drive analysis method, or resort to the help of utilities to recover damaged files, although their functionality is very doubtful in most cases. .

It is quite possible to work with some partially restored documents. For example, an audio file or video that has been reanimated with minor defects will play in most cases. Places with lost data are simply clogged with zeros - this means that in the playback of such a video or song there will be artifacts in places - inherent flickering or image distortion, third-party clicks, atypical noise and interference of audio tracks. It is recommended to play damaged files with a powerful and unpretentious multimedia player VLC. As for the archived data, there is always a chance to extract some of the files from the archive, which may also have a structure that is broken in relation to the original version. There are many applications for recovering corrupted archives. To work with damaged archives, there is an IZArc archiver with integrated algorithms for recovering such archives. You can also use utilities for Recovery Toolbox for Rar/Zip.

Corrupted graphic files, as well as other multimedia data, can be opened in most image viewing applications. Part of the information in this case, of course, will be lost. Missing fragments will be filled in with some color, usually black. Try opening corrupted graphic files with regular Paint and resaving them.

Corrupted text format files such as txt or doc can be opened with a text editor. If the document is slightly damaged, there is a high probability that part of the text will be available for txt documents. Even slightly damaged doc documents tend to open with errors, or contain erroneous encoding. This results in a nonsensical set of characters being displayed instead of text. This is where OfficeRecovery can help. It analyzes the original document, and refined algorithms correct the data to extract the maximum amount of useful information. Next, a heuristic analysis of the file is started, if possible, in order to identify lost fragments. The utility combines user and received data into a single file and saves it. But the effectiveness of such programs is too low, and they most likely will not help out.

Nothing appeared on the flash drive after recovery.

Only naive and inattentive users can claim that after recovering data from a removable usb drive, no information appeared on it. Firstly, as it was said, it is not recommended to choose the drive from which information is extracted as the output folder for saving them, because the programs warn about this. Secondly, nothing can appear on flash drives, since programs recommend specifying the path to the output folder or assign it automatically, for example, “My Documents” or some directory on the system drive.

Please read the instructions in this article carefully. All your data has been restored to the directory you specified.

flash drive asking for formatting

Probably, many are familiar with the situation when, when you connect a USB flash drive to a computer, the operating system prompts you to format the drive. What to do in such a situation if there is important data on the flash drive, which, after formatting, will naturally disappear, and the chances of gaining access to them will be significantly reduced.

First of all, you will have to check the drive for bad sectors, as described in the "Automatic correction of system errors" paragraph. Then we reconnect the device and in most cases the problem is solved.

The second method is to scan the flash drive with one of the free programs to access data that Windows cannot read, such as JetFlash Recovery Tool, which was discussed in the corresponding section.

Is it possible to recover files from a flash drive deleted a long time ago?

The time of deleting files does not play any role. It is more important that the device is fully functional, and the sectors occupied by deleted files have not been overwritten. The more actions were taken to write data to the drive after deleting the files that you want to restore, the less likely it is to do so.

If a file was deleted to the Recycle Bin and then the Recycle Bin was emptied, can the deleted file be recovered?

Let's start with the fact that deleting data from removable drives goes past the Recycle Bin. When you delete something from a flash drive, the file is erased from the drive without moving to the Recycle Bin, as is the case with a hard or solid state drive. It is possible to recover such data, but there is an important nuance. Remember that data written to a hard disk or removable drive, files deleted from the Recycle Bin can be completely or partially overwritten, which reduces their likelihood of being recovered. First of all, this concerns documents erased from the system disk - it is constantly accessed by the operating system and a huge number of running applications. In this case, you should turn off the computer and boot from a USB flash drive or other disk to increase the chances of recovering whole files as yet.

The more actively the disk is used and the more time has passed since the deletion, the less likely it is to get back a full and undamaged document.

The program recovered files, but some of them won't open, what should I do?

If some files do not open after resuscitation, then they were damaged or not restored at all - the program created an empty file with the name of the detected one, but could not transfer the contents of the deleted one to it for one reason or another. Use a different data recovery program or enable in-depth drive scanning.

The program restored the document, but it turned out to be empty. What to do?

In this case, the document turned out to be badly damaged and nothing can be done with such a file. Unless you try to restore the empty file again, saving it under a different name or in a different location, or use another utility to recover information. In the end, you will have to contact a service center that specializes in data recovery.

How to recover a damaged file from a camera?

How to recover deleted documents with Recuva?

Other questions about the Recuva program

Now let's talk about scan and recovery time. It, of course, depends on the file size and disk space, but it is a little tiring in its duration. Yes, and the program does not always restore, sometimes crashes occur. But it's still worth trying. The program also has a function that can cleanly (without the possibility of subsequent reincarnation) delete files.

This software is free, its overall rating is not as good as that of its competitors, but let's take a closer look at it anyway.
First of all, we can note the simplicity of this software - even not very experienced users will be able to understand the menu. And in order to return the data after formatting the flash drive, you can use a special wizard that, with the help of step-by-step instructions, will help you achieve the desired result.

Flash drives and sd memory cards are capacious, cheap and convenient devices for storing information. The flash drive may contain data of particular importance: confidential information, logins and passwords for accessing wallets, bank accounts. Also USB Flash drive is used as a key for access and authorization to operating systems, services, programs.

As a result of a simple mistake (or due to banal inattention), it is easy to lose valuable information on a flash drive. Most often, information loss occurs due to a corrupted file structure. In some situations, deletion is indeed irreversible, but in other cases, flash drive recovery is possible. What we will try to do on our own - programmatically.

This review presents programs that will help you recover deleted files from a flash drive. Each application has strengths and weaknesses, we will definitely list them.

How the programs were tested

To test the programs, a 7.29 GB usb flash drive with the FAT32 file system was taken. Files copied to it:

We cleared the flash drive of files the way it would look in reality. For this we:

deleted files on the flash drive bypassing the trash (Shift + Del)
Performed a quick format (with the Clear Table of Contents option).
a 1.1 GB video file was recorded over the deleted information.

Choosing the best program to recover deleted files

Reconstructor applications are good because they skip the service information on the flash drive and access the memory directly. As a rule, if not all, then at least some of the data that will be suitable for further work can be retrieved from the device’s memory. As a result of manipulations, using special programs, we will recover the data contained on the flash drive. The important thing is that the flash drive will work absolutely correctly after the data resuscitation procedure.

There are countless programs for recovering files on a flash drive. Many of them are universal: they work with hard drives, system partitions, and are suitable for recovering specific file formats.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with programs that work with mobile storage devices - usb flash and sd memory cards.

Unformat - a program for recovering data from a flash drive with many settings

File recovery in Unformat

Scanning deleted partitions on a flash drive took about 20 minutes. Further scanning of the partition after opening the partition is about the same time. Saving files also takes a few minutes.

The Unformat program determines the partitions removed, the type of file system, the quality of the results, the first and last sector of the partition. All information about the process can be tracked through the log.

Files sorted by file type are available in the files detected by signatures section. In this case, the file types may not match the extensions and they must be changed manually.

As a result, the Unformat program found all photos in jpg format. After formatting and overwriting, all data was preserved, including exif information. But the file names have been removed. Video and audio files could not be found in Unformat.

In this video, I show how to recover information from a flash drive using the basic Unformat settings:

CardRecovery is a specialized program for recovering files from a flash drive.

The CardRecovery program organically fits into the review, since the list of supported devices includes USB flash drives and portable drives. It will help to recover files in such deletion scenarios as accidental formatting, damage to the file system of the flash drive and memory card damage.

In fact, this product has not been updated for a long time, the latest version - 6.10 - was released several years ago. However, CardRecovery works without issue on Windows 10.

Recovery of other information from a USB flash drive (archives, documents), unfortunately, is not available. For this reason, the CardRecovery utility will be more useful to owners of photo and video cameras who have lost information on a memory card or flash drive.

The cost of the program is low, a license for 1 user costs $39.95 USD.

File recovery in CardRecovery

To recover data on a flash drive, we performed the following steps:

We chose the Removable Devices list, as a storage device, usb flash.
Specified file types for scanning on a flash drive. CardRecovery has limits on file extensions, mainly multimedia file types - photo, audio and video.

Scan results are displayed as “file name - properties”. Exif information can be easily extracted from photographs. At one of the steps (Step 3) you can see the preview. In this regard, CardRecovery is perhaps the most convenient program.

For video preview is not available: you can see it only after purchasing the full version.

CardRecovery recovered all the images on the flash drive, just like Unformat. Many media files were restored in a damaged form with no chance of recovery (apparently, this is information that was contained on a flash drive for a very long time and was overwritten many times).

PhotoRec - recover photos from a flash drive

File Recovery in PhotoRec

PhotoRec saves the result to the specified folder as it is restored.

Scanning took about 10 minutes: which is quite fast, given that the results are identical to Unformat. The program restored not only photos, but also videos, and not only what was deleted from the flash drive after formatting, but also files recorded and deleted before the test. Apparently, this place on the flash drive was not overwritten, so the clips of 1 GB each were restored almost without damage.

Of the shortcomings - PhotoRec does not have a save option. All files are stored in a bunch in the specified folder, preview is not available. Also, information is not available from where the files were deleted.

Recuva program - free data recovery from a flash drive

Recuva is a universal program, you can use it to recover from usb flash drives, sd cards, hdd and ssd. Its toolkit is free, and you don't have to buy a license to bypass the limits, as with other recovery programs. When restoring a flash drive, at the last stage, it does not show a window demanding to pay for the full version.

Recovery from a USB flash drive in Recuva

If the flash drive is in very poor condition, you can create an image, enable signature search. Depending on the degree of damage, color marking of files is displayed. Previews are available for media files.

How to recover information on a flash drive in Recuva

Having connected the flash drive, we opened the Recuva Wizard, selected the file types and media (usb flash drive).
We have also activated the Deep Scan option so as not to miss corrupted and overwritten files.

In general, the recovery took about 20 minutes. If the USB flash drive is over 64 GB, get ready for the scan to take even longer. However, Recuva is faster than other programs like Unformat.

Conveniently, the Recuva Wizard has a preview, which is especially useful when working with photos if you only need specific files.

In general, everything is done in a few clicks, but you will have to pay for this in that there is no way to select a partition for recovery and there is no sorting by signatures.

File Scavenger - a program for recovering files on a flash drive

The list of problems solved with File Scavenger is impressive:

Restoring files deleted from a usb flash drive
Data recovery after accidentally formatting a flash drive
Fixing a corrupted flash drive
Flash drive not showing up in Disk Management
Flash drive reset to factory settings

Files can be recovered on hard drives, memory cards, RAID arrays, etc. Recovers data on most file systems (including NTFS, FAT 32/16/12, exFAT, ReFS) and virtual drives (VMFS, VMDK, VHD and VHDX).

The program works without installation (the corresponding option can be selected when starting File Scavenger).

File Scavenger is regularly updated, the current version of the program for Windows 10 and Server 2012 is available on the developer's website, in 64- and 32-bit editions.

Please note that in demo mode File Scavenger allows you to test the functionality; Saving recovered files without purchasing a license is not possible. File Scavenger Standard Edition is $57.00, Professional Edition is $195.

Restoring files in File Scavenger

To recover files from a flash drive, you need:

Select a USB flash drive from the list of devices,
Specify the scanning mode quick (fast) or long (long)
Press the Scan button.
At the end of the scan, a table with the data found on the flash drive will be displayed.
For each file, the status (probability of information recovery), modification date, size and other information useful when recovering from a USB flash drive are indicated.

Also, File Scavenger displays the section, the folder where the files were deleted. The Status column does not always display real information. Some of the files that Recuva has identified as recoverable are not listed here.

The program has very few scan settings, the interface is rather inconvenient, although simple. Files can be displayed in the form of a file tree, plus a preview is available. You can select all files or only specified types (files are sorted by signatures) and through the Save to tab.

Verdict. Programs for recovering usb flash drives - which is better?

The results showed that the programs participating in the review showed approximately the same results. In fact, the probability of recovering data on a flash drive mostly depends on what actions were taken with the usb drive after the data was deleted.

So the main difference between the programs is the cost of the license and the convenience of the interface.

Answers to questions from readers

I have auto call recording turned on. When yesterday I deleted the records selectively, then at some point I clicked "delete all". And I don’t need everything, there are records that I need. What to do? How to restore them?

Answer. Any of the above file recovery programs (Recuva, Recover My Files, CardRecovery and other utilities) allow you to recover audio recordings, say, on a flash drive. Data can be written and not on a USB flash drive, it does not matter. Simply specify the source to scan for deleted files, then view the results found and select the files that are most similar to audio recordings (you can find out by the file extension) to return.

All the files (photos, music, etc.) suddenly got on the flash card, but the folders that I created remained. There was no rewriting, there were no formatting actions. Very strange situation, what could it be? I would like to believe that data recovery from a flash drive is still possible ...

Answer. All the programs listed here (CardRecovery, PhotoRec, Recover My Files and Recuva) are equally effective in recovering data from a flash drive. Read the review and choose the utility that will meet your criteria.

Directly on how to recover information from a flash drive, you can find out by selecting the desired section on our website in the main menu. Video tutorials are available for some applications.

I deleted the information from the flash drive (rar archive in the archive word, pdf and dwg files) and completely overwritten the rar archive with pdf files. Is it possible to restore previous information on a flash drive?

Answer. If there was free space on the flash drive before overwriting, there are chances to recover the information. In fact, they are always there, but if there was no space and you deleted files for this very reason, the probability decreases. Any program for recovering deleted files from a USB flash drive will help you, for example, Undelete 360, Recuva or Unformat.