The flash drive constantly asks to format. The computer asks to format the flash drive what to do. Recovery after formatting

Hello dear friends! Today we will talk about flash drives. Sometimes flash drives fail, require formatting and show the file system as RAW. We will consider the sequence of actions that will allow us to get rid of this problem.

Flash drive symptoms

In principle, everything is quite transparent here. If, when you try to enter the USB flash drive, you receive an error message, if the flash drive writes something like "The disk is not formatted." Or if you enter the properties of the flash drive and see the file system type as RAW.

Attention! If the flash drive contains important information that must be extracted, it is advisable to contact specialists. They are highly qualified and have special equipment.

To recover information from a damaged flash drive, you should use two programs (you can also download them by clicking on the links):

Steps to recover data from a flash drive

It is important to remember that you cannot install any programs or copy data to a USB flash drive that has lost data. This can lead to the fact that the old information will be overwritten and will be irretrievably lost.

So, the first step is to protect yourself from mistakes. We need to make a copy of the flash drive image. Thus, we can safely work with a copy without fear for our actions, because the original will remain unchanged.

The flash drive image is created using the WinHex program. To do this, run the program:

Press F9 to select the failed flash drive:

An editor window appears in front of us, in which we see information from a flash drive, presented in the form of hexadecimal numbers.

We go to the “File” menu item and look for the “Create Disc Image” image creation item:

In the window that appears, our task is to remove the image compression (this will allow us to work with it faster) and choose the path along which the image will be created.

Click "Ok", the image is created at the specified path.

Installing the GetDataBack program

To Russify it, find the gdbnt.RUS file in the installation folder. It must be copied to the installed folder with the program.

Then, after starting, change the language to English as shown in the picture.

Ok, let's move on to the data recovery process. We select from the list the item that suits us best, for example: "Recovery after formatting."

Then you need to specify the path to the drive or image. In our case, to the image created in the WinHex program. To do this, click "Upload" in the Image file line.

In the window that appears, we need to set the display of all types of files. This will select the WinHex image.

We just have to select the ones we need and copy them to another location. On this epic with a flash drive that requires formatting, will end.

Conclusion

We have considered what to do if the flash drive shows the RAW file system or asks for formatting. Of course, there is no 100% chance that you will be able to get your data, so it is better to periodically make copies to avoid unnecessary problems. Nevertheless, the method is working, tested by many experts.

Various flash drives and memory cards are very well settled in our lives. At the moment, they attract attention with their low cost and large memory capacity. But, as it turned out, many manufacturers have not yet found a way to produce successful models of flash drives and memory cards. Unfortunately, they also produce unsuccessful ones. What's the matter? The fact is that one of the problems with formatting, an error often occurs - Windows can't complete formatting the drive. Recording on different operating systems may differ, but does not change the essence. Now let's figure out why the flash drive is not formatted and analyze all kinds of solutions.

Standard formatting procedures if the flash drive is not formatted

If it was not possible to format the flash drive in any way, then there are two options: either carry the device to the service, or to the trash.But the attempt is not torture, we have a few more ways in store to fix our problem.

So, the first thing we will do is try to format the USB flash drive through the console. We have already done a similar procedure in the article, but this time we will use a different command.

If the files on the flash drive were occupied by some process, then “formatting” in the usual way - through my computer, would not work, since windows would not allow such files to be destroyed. Through the console, we will clean everything up.

Using the key combination Win + R and in the window that opens, enter the command:

The Disk Management Manager will open. Find your flash drive, right-click on it and select format.

If everything worked out, you can close this article. If not, then read on, there are a couple more ways.

Methods for SD cards and flash drives

The flash drive is not formatted with standard options? Then we turn to the use of the program USB Disk Storage Format Tool. The program is free and you can safely download, and how to use it is written in.

Now about MicroSD. If you also get a similar error when formatting memory card data, you can try using the SDFormatter utility. Here's the link: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

Run it and in the window that opens, select our flash drive (where Drive). Press Option and where Format Type set Full(Erase), and where we set the Format Size Adjustment On. And click Format.

Update as of 07/24/2016 . This program - SDFormatter may not work, so let's move on to other methods. I found an interesting program called USB Flash Drive Repair Tool. This utility is capable of low-level formatting and disabling write protection on a flash drive, try it. Here is the download link. If any method helped, please unsubscribe in the comments.

And here they are described, I advise you to look.

Diskpart team

We start the command line. By pressing the keyboard shortcuts Win + X, select "Command line". In the window that opens, write:

It shows all the drives that are connected to the computer, including: flash drives and memory cards.

We find the flash drive (usually it is at the very bottom) and write the following command, which selects the flash drive:

To view the disk attributes, you need to enter this command:

Exit the utility with the command exit and try to format the flash drive or SD drive again.

And finally, if the flash drive is not formatted, there is another way.

Formatting with Flashnul

Download a special flashnul utility. This is a utility for testing removable drives and you need to work with it very carefully, otherwise you may damage data on other drives. Here is the link (you need to copy and paste into the address bar: http://shounen.ru/soft/flashnul/index.html)

Unpack the program to some disk, for example, D. Then the path will be like this: D:\flashnul.

Now, using the same keyboard shortcuts Win + X, launch our command line, where we enter the following command:

cd D:\\flashnul

Once we are in the directory with the utility folder, we need to identify the flash drive.

We write the following: flashnul -p

In the list that appears, find the number of your flash drive and remember it. You can remember the letter, it doesn't matter.

Let's say that your flash drive has the letter M, then you need to write a command that will wipe all data to zero:

flashnul M: -F

Now let's run a test for controller errors, which will also destroy the data:

flashnul M: -l

At the end of the test, start formatting again through management console. And the error should no longer appear.

I hope this article has fully helped you get rid of the problem of formatting flash drives and memory cards.

I noticed that users have a problem with the Flashnul utility. It consists in an error that flashnul is not an internal or external command. Everything is solved here simply. To get started, open a command prompt and go to the directory where you unpacked the flashnul program, I have drive E. In the line, just write "E:".

Now go to the flashnul directory, for this you need to enter cd flashnul.

After that, you can enter all other commands described above. Good luck to you. I am attaching a screenshot of the action.

Can't format a flash drive even in the ways that are indicated by yours? You can try using the Usbflashinfo program. After starting the program, click on "get flash drive information". Need to find lines VID and PID. The values ​​that are indicated in them you copy and paste into the search engine. It is possible that for this memory controller there is a special utility with which it is possible to complete the formatting procedure. Here is the download link: http://www.antspec.com/usbflashinfo/

Also, you can use the site flashboot.ru. There are many different programs for flash drives and memory cards from well-known manufacturers.

It happens that no matter how much you try, but the result is zero, then it remains just to throw out the flash drive and purchase a new one, hoping that it will not fail for a very long time. If you purchased it recently, then give it back under warranty, as you may have had a marriage. Now you basically know what to do if the flash drive is not formatted.

You connected the USB flash drive to your computer, but instead of viewing photos or copying other data, you are faced with the fact that the drive requires formatting. What can be done in this situation? Try to extract files from a removable disk for free using the program [email protected] file recovery.

Important: do not agree to formatting if a flash drive or memory card asks you to do it. After formatting, recovering deleted files will be difficult - photos may not open, videos may not play, etc.

Recovery without formatting

To extract files from a flash drive that needs to be formatted:

After the scan of the media that the system asks to format is completed, the “Super Scan” folder will appear on the left side of the program. Go to it to see what data was extracted from the removable drive. To recover photos, documents and other files for free, right-click on them and select the "Recover" option.

Save found files to your hard drive, not to a flash drive, to avoid overwriting. If necessary, you can use the "Search" tab to find specific information.

Recovery after formatting

If you still formatted the flash drive, then it will be necessary to return the deleted data. File recovery can be done free of charge using the R-Studio program, which can return photos, videos and other data after formatting.

Note: if you have applied low-level formatting on a flash drive or memory card, then it is unlikely that you will be able to recover deleted files. Information can be returned if the drive was formatted quickly, by headers.

In addition, it is important that after deleting the files, the flash drive or memory card is no longer used. If accidentally deleted information is overwritten with other data (photos, videos), then you will not be able to restore the files.

In the scan settings window, you can specify what specific data you want to recover - music, videos, photos, documents. Check the box "Look for known file types" and select from the list what information to look for.

Click the "Scan" button; a disk map will appear showing the progress of data recovery after formatting. Here you can see how much time is left before the end of the procedure. After the search for deleted photos and videos is completed, the "Extra Found Files" folder will appear under the formatted flash drive.

This directory contains all the data that could be found on a memory card or flash drive after formatting the media. Select the files you need and click Restore. Specify a place to save the computer's hard drive to avoid overwriting information on a flash drive or memory card.

21.02.2017

Information at the present time plays a crucial role in the lives of most people on the planet. Along with the growth of its importance, carriers and devices for storing it grew and developed. Once upon a time, these were clay tablets on which some events or information about anything were recorded, then paper, magnetic storage devices, optical discs: CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, and so on.

Now, discs and cassettes have been replaced by such media as:

• Flash memory: USB drives, memory cards in phones and cameras;
• Disk devices: SSD, HDD;
• Chips: SDRAM (DDR SDRAM and XDR).

Most of these removable (portable) drives come with the FAT or NTFS file system, since the Windows operating system, which is installed on most computers around the world, only supports these formats. In this regard, manufacturers of various types of drives manufacture them taking into account the needs of users, namely, so that the majority of users on their computers with Windows OS can work with them without problems.

What to do when a flash drive requires formatting

There are times when information as valuable as documents or project developments that have been spent several months on is locked in a medium that does not want or cannot function normally for some reason. In a word, the flash drive will forgive you to format it. What to do then?

First of all, you need to conduct a visual inspection of the drive for chips and cracks, whether the USB connector is bent due to a fall or impact, other visible damage, possibly oxidation of the contacts from moisture. Whether the flash drive or SD card has been exposed to overheating or excessively low temperatures. Repair in this case will cost much more than the flash drive itself when replacing spare parts. And it is advisable to resort to such repairs only if there is very important data on the flash drive that needs to be restored.

In addition, you need to make sure that your USB ports are working. To do this, connect a known-good flash drive to your computer. It should be connected to the port located directly on the motherboard. The connectors on the front of the computer may not be receiving sufficient power.

Cause and investigation

Much more often, problems with removable media are not hardware, but software, and there are a lot of reasons for their occurrence. You can simply pull the USB flash drive out of the slot at the moment when files are being copied to it and that's it - then only formatting. Or you can bring a malicious virus onto it, which will try to poison your life by spoiling the file system on the drive. But, in most cases, you can save data even after formatting the flash drive.

Be sure to check the flash drive for viruses, in most cases, after treatment for a viral infection of the flash drive, it starts working normally again.

What programs to recover a flash drive can be used

There are many different utilities for formatting, restoring data, testing for errors. Here are some programs with which you can format a non-working flash drive and recover data.

1. Utility from Transcend - to recover deleted files from hard drives, USB flash drives, memory cards. Conducts a deep search for deleted files for subsequent recovery. Simple and convenient program.
2. Flash Memory Toolkit is a great application for testing, formatting, restoring data after a quick wipe.
3. HDD Low Level Format Tool is a program for low-level formatting of HDDs, as well as external devices such as USB flash drives and memory cards.
4. USB Flash Drive Tester is a small free program that can find bad and unstable sectors. Designed for testing removable media such as SD, MMC, CF and USB-Flash drives. It supports writing tests and reading data from disk. The result of the reading is written to a log file, which can be viewed at any time. Useful for testing fake drives.

Restoring information on a Transcend drive

After installing the application, launch it (the installation itself is simple and intuitive and does not require special knowledge).

We are waiting for the end of the process, if everything is done correctly, the files will be restored to the specified folder.

Data recovery without formatting a flash drive

Imagine that we have a flash drive that does not work. We insert it into the slot, an indication appears on it and even the computer makes a characteristic sound of the connected media, but when you try to open it, the system reports that it cannot process the data and asks you to format it.

Let's try to check it for errors using the built-in Windows tools.

TIP: Always remove any removable drives using the safe removal of devices, because when removing a USB flash drive or memory card from a computer in a hot way, there is a high probability of damage: at a minimum, files on the media may be damaged or it will no longer be indexed by the computer, especially Chinese flash drives.

IMPORTANT: after low-level formatting of any media, data recovery is impossible, do this only if there is no important data on the drive.

The computer does not see the flash drive

Sometimes a flash drive is simply not detected by the computer. It happens that the letter that is assigned to the flash drive is occupied by another medium, here it is enough to rename the flash drive in the section "Disk Management".

Recovery of a non-working flash drive

It also happens that when a non-working flash drive is connected to a computer, an indication appears on the drive itself and, perhaps, the computer notifies you with a sound signal that a new device is connected, but there is no flash drive in the safe removal list.

To solve the problem, go to "Device Manager".

1. open "Start".
2. On the badge "A computer" right-click and select from the list "Properties".
3. Next, select "Device Manager".
4. Tab - "Disk Devices".

AT "Disk devices" your flash drive is there, let's try to figure out why the computer does not see it. To do this, let's go to "Disk Management".

1. open "Start".
2. Right click on the label "A computer".
3. Item "Properties" - "Disk Management".

In our case, Disk 4 is the Removable device, this is the non-working USB flash drive. Since, in the usual way, it is impossible to recover data from a USB flash drive and even formatting will not work, because it is not detected by the computer, or is defined as a medium with “0” memory capacity, you need to resort to restoring the USB flash drive using special utilities.

If the driver for the “Disk device” (flash drive) is marked with a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark, then you need to update or reinstall the drivers. You can read more details on the website of your equipment manufacturer - what kind of drivers are needed for your motherboard model, and where to download them.

The section can also be marked as "Unallocated" this usually means that the file system is corrupted. Try right-clicking the mouse and if it appears in the menu, select "Create Simple Volume" to create a partition and format the flash drive (data, unfortunately, will be deleted).

There are still a huge number of such utilities on the network, each of which is capable of either extracting information or restoring it, or formatting a flash drive in order to restore its performance. It is advisable to install these utilities and test them on your computer only after reading the reviews of users who have ever used them, on the website of the developer of these programs, or on the appropriate forums.

What if the computer itself offers to format the media, preventing it from working, but we need the files recorded on it? Of course, you can try plugging the USB port or using another computer, but it happens that this does not change the situation. In this case, do not despair and say goodbye to valuable information. There are several special and proven ways to recover data using simple and affordable algorithms.

Nowadays, USB flash drives are very popular among many users due to the fact that their use is most convenient for storing, transferring and exchanging information, in addition, they are extremely easy to use and inexpensive. Almost any PC user has such a device.

However, like any other technique, in some cases they can fail and, for one reason or another, not open in the system. Often in a situation where software or hardware failure, when connecting a flash drive to a computer, an error awaits us, as a result of which we see a message like “ The disk in the device is not formatted". Many users start to panic and decide that the information can no longer be retrieved.

Flash drive data recovery algorithm

One of the easiest ways to reanimate the media can be called recovery through EasyRecoveryProfessional(you can find it on torrents). This is a simple program that shows great results in practice, which are improved from version to version:

1. Insert the "killed" flash drive and wait for it to appear in the "My Computer" menu.
2. Open media properties and select formatting. Then in the methods specify: Quick (clearing the table of contents) and run the application.
3. After a few minutes, the operation will complete and you can close the window.
4. Now the flash drive will open, however, the computer will see it as empty. Don't be afraid because your data is still on it.
5. We open Ontrack EasyRecovery. You can experiment with different recovery methods, but by default, it is best to select the " FormatRecovery". Further, all procedures will take place automatically, and you can copy the files to your hard drive.

Other Tips

Sometimes it is useful to go through the Control Panel to Administrative Tools, then Computer Management and run a standard program in the disk section ScanDisc. This solution will replace the damaged sectors and improve the performance of the device. Moreover, in addition to EasyRecovery, there are many more programs, such as GetDataBack and R-Studio.