How to recover a deleted document from a flash drive. How to recover deleted or damaged data from a flash drive

Youtube

Files on USB flash drive may be damaged for various reasons, for example, due to viruses or improper removal of the flash drive from the computer port. In this article, we will share three ways to recover files from a damaged USB flash drive.

Nowadays, people use USB flash drives instead of CD/DVD drives. It's fast and convenient way transfer files between different devices. However, due to viruses or improper removal of the USB flash drive from the computer, the data on it may be damaged. Some of them may not work properly, while others may not be available at all.

1. Assign a new letter to the USB flash drive

If the computer cannot recognize the USB flash drive, you can try assigning a new letter to it. This method helps many people. Besides, you don't need third party programs to recover files.

1. Insert the USB flash drive into your computer. Then click right click mouse on the “My Computer” shortcut and select the “Manage” option.

2. From the menu on the left, select the option called Disk Management.

3. Here you will see all available hard disks, as well as a connected USB flash drive. Right-click on the flash drive and select the “Change drive letters or drive path” option.

That's all! You have assigned a new letter to the USB flash drive on your computer. Now you can try to open it and check the files. If this method does not help, read on to see how you can recover files on a damaged USB flash drive.

2. Recover files on a USB flash drive using CMD

1. First of all, insert the USB flash drive into your computer. Then click Start (or Windows key on your keyboard) and enter "CMD". Now right click on the program " Command line", and select "Run as administrator".

2. Now type next command“Chkdsk h: /f” (without quotes), where “H” is the letter of your USB flash drive. This command will start checking files and folders on the flash drive.

3. After the process is completed, you will see the verification result as in the image below.

4. The screenshot above says that my USB flash drive is working fine and no damaged files were found.

By the way, if you don't see the files on the USB flash drive, you can try entering "." (dot without quotes) in the search field on the right top corner, and press Enter.

3. Recover files on a USB flash drive using EaseUS Data Recovery

EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Free Edition is a free program for recovering data on digital camera memory cards. You can also use it to recover deleted, damaged or formatted files on any kind of memory cards, including USB flash drives.

1. Download and install the EaseUS Data Recovery program on your computer under Windows control. Launch the program.

2. Now you need to select the file types you want to recover, such as photos, documents, etc. Click "Next".

3. Select the drive on which you want to recover files (in our case, it is a USB flash drive), and click the “Scan” button.

4. Once the scan is complete, you will see all the files that can be recovered. Click the "Recover" button to get your lost or damaged files back.

That's all! Using one of these methods, you can recover files from a damaged USB flash drive. I hope you liked our article. If you have any questions, write in the comments below.

Hello, friends! Question about restoration deleted files from flash drives, memory cards and other storage media will probably never cease to be relevant. Flash drives are much more reliable optical disks and much more versatile and convenient to use. But they also have critical days. The reasons for this may be different, ranging from the fact that the flash drive was pulled out incorrectly and ending with viruses. Here we will look at the recovery program and give several recommendations, firstly to prevent data loss, and secondly, to recovering deleted files from flash drive completed successfully. If time is running out, watch the video at the end of the article.

First of all, you need to check whether they are really deleted. Perhaps you have a virus that has made your files on the flash drive hidden and you simply cannot see them. If you know what it is hidden files and your deleted ones are not among them on the flash drive, then read point two right away.

For those who don’t know that there are hidden files, I’ll tell you. Hidden ones are regular files having the “Hidden” attribute.

How to view hidden files?

You can view hidden files and folders on a flash drive and any other drive using programs such as Total Commander, Free Commander (a free program similar to Total Commander. I use it myself and recommend it to you)

If your information is not among the hidden files and folders, then most likely you deleted them.

The information below will help you try to recover your deleted files from a flash drive.

Important. Do not write anything to the flash drive. It’s better to turn it off altogether and think through a battle plan.

Why can't you write anything down? Because when deleted, the information is not physically deleted. Only the entry about it is deleted. But, it becomes possible to write information to the place of the deleted file. And if you write something down on a flash drive after deletion, then with a high probability at least part of the information will be written in place of the deleted file, and in this case it will be practically impossible to recover the information.

If your information is important, then it is better to immediately seek help from specialized recovery centers. They have powerful programs for this + experience = high chance of successfully recovering deleted files.

Recovering Deleted Files Using DMDE

Download the program to recover our files from the official website

On this moment current version 2.4.4.442.

An archive of ~650 KB in size is downloaded. Let's unpack it. If you have questions about unpacking archives, please read the article How to open a file with the *.rar extension. WinRar archiver opens files with rar and zip extensions.

We insert the flash drive into the computer and run the DMDE.exe file in the unpacked folder. A window will appear in front of us in which we need to select a physical disk - our flash drive. We select the disk and look at the volume below to identify the flash drive. Click OK

Another window opens in which we select a section as in the figure. He will most likely be alone. Click the “Open volume” button

In the next window, don’t change anything, just click “Open”

A window opens with information about our section. On the left side, select “All found” by double-clicking on the section

The program will ask you to wait a couple of seconds to read the information.

Then you will see the files on your flash drive in the upper right part of the window. Those marked with a red cross are deleted files. Select the file to be restored and click restore. A hint will be at the bottom of the window. You can also right-click on the selected file and in the opened context menu menu select "Restore..."

In the window that opens, in the “Restore to:” field, use the button (...) to specify the location of the file or files to be restored. Click OK

Checking the recovered file.

In this way, without bothering with installing additional software, you can recover deleted files from a flash drive or from any other storage device, be it a hard drive, an external hard drive, a camera memory card, and so on.

The recovery will be successful if nothing is written to the place of the deleted file. Otherwise, only part of the file or nothing at all may be recovered.

How to avoid recovering files on a flash drive

Use safe removal Flash drives and memory cards from all devices. If you cannot remove it safely, turn off your computer, laptop, netbook or tablet. Then remove the drive.
If possible, replace the flash drive with cloud storage data. For example Dropbox, Yandex Drive or Google Drive. Reliability is maximum and you don’t need to carry anything with you.
The most important. Make copies of important data to at least another drive. An excellent option for storing backups are the same cloud services.

Conclusion

If you need to resurrect any information from any drive, first of all, do not write anything to this disk or partition. If this is a system drive, then do not install any programs. (Probability of recovery from system disk strive for zero, but you need to try) Use portable versions of the above program or R.saver. You can use programs that were already installed before deleting the files.

I can’t help but remind you about backups. Copies on cloud services(Dropbox, Yandex Disk or Google Drive) this is almost a 100% guarantee of file safety. By the way, in Dropbox you can recover even a deleted file within 30 days. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Video " Recovering deleted files from a flash drive» where I will show all of the above

To be honest, I already forgot when I carried something on a flash drive. I only use them to install Windows 7, Windows 8 and even Windows XP sometimes.

IN modern world millions of terabytes are created every day digital content, which includes photos, videos, software and much more. All this is stored on hard drives, flash drives, memory cards.

Every day, our smartphones also accumulate information that can be lost at any moment. This is because the data on memory cards can be lost at any time due to accidental deletion or incorrect removal of the flash drive. In general, there are very, very many reasons, but now this is not the most important thing.

In this article I would like to tell you how to recover data from a memory card that has been deleted. Unfortunately, standard means It is impossible to carry out this process on Windows, so we will turn to the help of programs for restoring photos, videos and audio recordings.

As an example, I will use a microSD card from an MP3 player, which was previously mentioned on the site in articles about, as well as about. I will deliberately erase all audio tracks from it, and then, using the programs described below, I will restore it back.

You, in turn, will be able to recover not only music from your memory cards, but also photos, videos, documents and many other files.

Recuva (for Windows)

Recuva is a free program that works on all versions of the operating system. Windows systems(XP, 7, 8, 10, Vista). You can download it below:

Download Recuva for free

You shouldn't have any difficulties installing the program, so I won't describe this process. I'll get straight to the point. To recover files from your SD card, you need to connect the flash drive itself to the computer via a card reader, mobile phone, digital camera, etc.

Then open " My computer» and right-click on the corresponding removable drive. In the context menu that appears, select the command " Finding Deleted Files».

At the end of the scan, a list of files located on the memory card (both current and previously deleted) will appear. To recover a deleted file, you need to right-click on it and select the command “ Restore selected».

Pandora Recovery (for Windows)

Pandora Recovery is a free utility that is also designed to recover deleted data from SD cards, hard drives, USB flash drives etc. You can download it below

Download Pandora Recovery utility for free

To make the experiment more reliable, I formatted my flash drive again. To restore files, you need to reconnect your storage device to your computer or laptop.

Now let's focus on an important point that will arise when you first launch the program - you need to select a scanning method. I recommend choosing deep scanning, since this method allows you to recover photos, music tracks, documents and other files even from damaged media.

Have you set it up? Then we move on to searching and restoring what was lost. Launch Pandora Recovery and go to the tab Search. Next, select the disk on which the search will be carried out, and then click on the button " Search".

Once the search is complete, you will see a list of files at the bottom of the screen. Find the one you need to restore and right-click on it. Then in the context menu select the command Recover to.

A dialog box will open in which you need to click on the “Browse” button, and then select the location where the file will be restored. Next, just click on the button " Recover now" and everything is ready.

Stellar Phoenix Mac Photo Recovery (for OS X)

Unfortunately, I do not have the opportunity to demonstrate the principle of operation of this program, but I know for sure that Stellar Phoenix Mac Photo Recovery is one of best programs to recover deleted files from storage media Mac computers running OS X 10.5 or higher.

Among other things, I would also like to highlight the following: free programs recovery deleted photos, songs, videos or documents from memory cards:

R.saver
USB Flash Drive Recovery
CardRecovery
chkRepair

I think it makes no sense to describe the process of returning data using the above-mentioned software, since the principle is the same as in the Recuva or Pandora Recovery programs.

In general, now you don’t have to worry about an accidentally deleted photo on your phone, because you know that with at least a USB cord and 5 minutes of free time, the image can be restored without any problems.

By the way, I almost forgot, in the next article we will look at best apps for devices running on operating system Android systems, with which you can also recover deleted files.

Today, flash drives are used by millions of people. After all, on such a storage medium you can store any files - films, photos, documents, music and many others. etc. In addition, flash drives are installed in a variety of devices - tablets, cameras, smartphones (both Android and Windows), etc., expanding the memory capacity of such gadgets. Naturally, from time to time the user erases unnecessary information from the card. At the same time, important information is sometimes accidentally deleted. What to do in such a situation? Is it possible to somehow recover deleted files from a flash drive? Let's look into this.

So, files have disappeared from the flash drive of your phone, camera or any other device. Or you deleted them yourself, but now you realize that you shouldn’t even need them. What to do? Remember, first of all you need to:

Don't write anything else to the flash drive. This will prevent you from recovering deleted files from the memory card.
Don't create new folders. Otherwise, the information cannot be returned without losing any data.
Don't delete anything else.

The less manipulations with the flash drive, the easier it is to recover data later. How to explain this? In fact, when you delete a file from a memory card, it is not immediately deleted. Here's a pun. Only the entry about it is deleted. But for the system this means one thing - in the future, when the user starts recording new files, they can be placed in the place where the old and deleted ones were stored. By the way, this is why copying or moving the same movie takes tens of seconds, or even a couple of minutes, while its deletion is instantaneous.

So now you know where the data is deleted from the flash drive. They are simply overwritten. Well, when deleting, the space in the file table is simply marked as free.

In addition, before you start recovering deleted files from a flash drive, we recommend checking it with anti-virus software. Some malicious program can easily “hide” information from the user. It wouldn't hurt to look at the hidden files on the memory card. For this:

For reference! Some viruses delete files from a flash drive so that they can no longer be restored. The point is that such malware They also overwrite files, rather than simply erase the information on the media.

When can deleted files be recovered and when not?

We have figured out what needs to be done first and what should not be done under any circumstances. Now let's talk about what are the chances of successfully recovering files deleted from a memory card.

Let's be honest, they are small. It is much easier and more efficient to recover data from stationary storage devices – that is, hard drives of PCs and laptops. From flash drives (be it an SD card or USB drive) it’s more difficult. The fact is that erased files on them are often overwritten. And rewriting, in fact, puts an end to all attempts to return information.

So the chances of recovery are minimal if:

The flash drive itself is faulty. For example, it is not readable different devices or is recognized as unknown device. The failure of the media can also be expressed in the fact that instead of GB of memory, the system sees only a few KB. In any case, restore from a faulty flash drive remote folder or just one small file almost impossible.
The files were deleted using so-called “shredder programs.” The most popular of them is File Shredder.
The flash drive has been overwritten. Either she was exposed low level formatting. After all, with such a procedure, all data is destroyed. Even the partition table is deleted.

At the same time, you can recover deleted files from a flash drive (in whole or in part) if:

The flash drive was formatted using the OS.
The user manually deleted the data.
Information became unavailable after a virus attack (but not all, because some Trojans are capable of overwriting files).
The data was lost after trying to partition the flash drive.
The file system of the drive has failed (the flash drive is not recognized by the device or is recognized, but it is impossible to write anything to it).

What programs best help recover data from flash drives?

There are the most different programs to recover files deleted from flash drives. And both free and paid. We had a chance to try a dozen similar utilities. Everyone has both pros and cons. But, in our opinion, the most effective and convenient are:

DMDE;
saver;
PhotoRec;
Wise Data Recovery;
Disk Drill;
Recuva.

We'll tell you how to use some of these utilities.

You can download the program here http://dmde.ru/download.html. Moreover, there are versions for different OSes. So choose the installer carefully before downloading. Once you download the archive, open it and run DMDE. There is no need to install anything. What to do next?

The only caveat is free version the program does not allow recovery whole folder. An error will appear. Therefore, you will have to either buy a program, or restore everything one file at a time.

Enough popular program file recovery. Its developers are the authors of other well-known software that we often use. For example, CCleaner, Speccy, etc. Recuva is no more difficult to manage than these utilities. In addition, it is completely Russified.

At the same time, Recuva allows you to easily and quickly recover files from any flash drive (including micro SD) and hard drives. Below we give small instructions, in which we will tell you how to use the program:

Helpful information

If using some program does not work, then do not despair. Try using some other utility.
Don't forget that it is easier to prevent a problem than to waste time and effort on solving it. So do backup copy data from a flash drive.
By the way, you can also recover files from memory cards that were deleted a year, two, or even several years ago. Time doesn't matter. The main thing is the fact of rewriting. If no new data was written “over” the old ones, then you can try to return it. And, most likely, successfully.

Introduction

Have you ever accidentally deleted documents from flash drives? Have you ever lost photos from your camera's memory cards? If not, you are a happy person!

Important! If you deleted a file and want to restore it, do not write anything else to the flash drive until the recovery procedure. You can't create folders either. You can't delete anything either.

The more operations performed on the flash drive, the less chance of successful file recovery.

The fact is that when you delete a file, it is not actually deleted (such a pun), only its entry from the file table disappears. In the future, other information may be written to the location of the file, as a result of which the contents of the file will be irretrievably lost. This is how the storage of information is organized both on the hard drive and on flash drives - nothing is immediately deleted. Therefore, the fewer operations performed on a flash drive, the higher the chance of returning what seemed to be irretrievably lost.

For fans of video instructions

At your request, I made a video on how to use the Recuva deleted file recovery program. After watching, please leave a comment whether you liked it and whether you should continue creating video versions of your articles.

Check your flash drive for viruses

Perhaps the files were not deleted - they were hidden by a virus. That is, there was no deletion and you just need to make the files on the flash drive visible.

There are many programs to recover hidden files from flash drives. I prefer USB Folder Fix.

Download it from the link above, run it as an administrator (right-click on the program icon - “Run as administrator”), select the drive in the program (button "Browse"). Files from the flash drive will appear in the list, which may include your “lost” ones. If this is the case (on the right in the file properties column there will be the words “Hidden” and/or “System”), click “Yes! Unhide the folders!” And hidden files will appear. The program can be closed, the files are “recovered”.

How to recover deleted files: Recuva

Did you delete it by accident or evil virus I cleaned the flash drive - there is a solution in the form of the program Recuva. It will help you recover deleted files from a flash drive (from other drives too).

In fact, there are a lot of such programs and each has advantages, but I settled on Recuva as the simplest and most universal, suitable for recovering all types of files from flash drives - documents, photos, music, videos and more. The good news is that it's free for home use.

You can recover data from USB flash drives, memory cards, hard drives, even old floppy disks.

After simple and clear installation The program needs to go through several steps.

The modern Recuva is slightly different in appearance. For aesthetes, updated instructions for restoring files from using Recuva located here: The instructions below are still relevant, just new version Some inscriptions have changed.

Let's run the program:

We choose what we want to restore. It's best to choose " Other» to recover all types of files:

Select "Other" to find all files

Then click " Review" and select the flash drive.

« In-Depth Analysis» allows you to detect more deleted files, even completely overwritten ones. Unfortunately, overwritten files cannot be recovered, but overall this option improves the result:

If you enable "In-Depth Analysis", more deleted files will be found

We are patient and wait while the program scans the flash drive for deleted files:

Then we will see the result. Not all of these files can be recovered - look at the color of the circle to the left of the file name (this is the state of the file).

If the circle is green - probably, the file is not damaged, then it will be restored completely and open without errors.

Yellow circle - only part of the file will be restored. If you need to recover a deleted coursework or diploma, then this result may be acceptable - pieces of text are better than nothing.

The circle is red - such a file once existed, there are “mentions” about it, but it will not be possible to restore it (instead of the contents there will be a mess of data that is not related to the desired file).

To select all files, just check the box indicated by the red arrow.

You can sort the results by “Status” or other parameters, and manually check the required files.

Click " Restore" and specify the folder in which we want to restore deleted files. The folder where we want to save the recovered files should be on any disk, but just not on a flash drive, the files from which we are recovering.

Depending on whether the files were recovered completely (without damage) or only part of them, the report will be different:

About partially recovered files

Repair programs damaged files The tips are there too.

Fully the recovered files will open correctly. Partially recovered files - from case to case, depending on the type of file. For example, from damaged archives there is a chance to extract multiple files.

Partially restored documentation(for example, created Word program) most often contain part of the text, which is quite logical. If the document is badly damaged, then there is a chance to get at least something out of it using special programs. Which ones exactly - see the descriptions in the list. Some programs from that list are designed to “repair” damaged files, some are analogues of Recuva.

When recovering deleted photos (Jpeg format) you may encounter a problem: corrupted (partially recovered files, indicated by a yellow circle in Recuva) image files of the viewer refuse to open. In this case, try opening them in standard Paint and save through it again (preferably in new file via "Save As"). This often helps restore at least part of the photo, because Paint can “digest” partially damaged image files.

Damaged video recordings it will be possible to view it, but with strong artifacts (digital noise). I recommend using the VLC player, it is unpretentious to the contents of files.

Questions and answers about file recovery

Question: I want to recover X from device Y. Will Recuva help?

Answer: Until you try, you won't know. Please do not write this question in the comments. Only you can find the answer to this question.

Question: Nothing appeared on the flash drive after recovery. The program didn't work?

Answer: You did not read the instructions carefully. All files detected by the program are restored to the folder you specify on the computer, not onto potentially damaged media.

Question: The program did not restore anything or did not restore everything important information. What to do?

Answer: If Recuva does not display a single file found after scanning, either you selected the wrong disk for scanning, or the storage medium was completely formatted, in this case there is still a chance to return files from oblivion, but you will have to contact specialized companies.

Question: The flash drive is asking for formatting or you need to restore data after formatting. What to do?

Answer: Do not format it under any circumstances! First, use other programs like the free one (instructions for it are below) or. These tools can work with disks, where file system damaged.

Question: The flash drive has become zero size. What to do?

Answer: If this is not a hardware failure, you can pull out the data using , and then the file table.

Question: Is it possible to recover files from a flash drive that were deleted 2 (3, 4, 5 - any number to your taste) years ago?

Answer: Time doesn't matter. All that matters is the fact that the files are overwritten with new data. Until you try to restore it, you won’t know.

Question: A file was deleted to the Recycle Bin and then it was emptied, is it possible to undo the Recycle Bin emptying?

Answer: Yes it is possible. Recuva program, which I described above, can be restored after emptying the Recycle Bin. But there are nuances regarding all programs for recovering deleted data:

1. If the data deleted from the Recycle Bin is truly valuable, you should immediately turn off the computer and take its hard drive to a specialized company that specializes in data recovery. The longer the operating system runs, the less chance there is of recovering a valuable file.

2.On the hard drive (especially the one where Windows is installed), files are constantly overwritten, so Very there is a good chance that your file will be erased in the near future forever. Therefore, we must act quickly. Ideally, you should turn off the PC and take it to a specialized company. But, if you don’t really need the file, you can try to restore it yourself. If you download Recuva from the Internet, save it to a flash drive - this way there is less chance that the downloaded file will end up exactly on the disk where the file deleted from the Recycle Bin is physically located.

3. If you have a second operating system on a different drive than where the file was deleted, boot into it and restore the file from there.

Question: Is it possible to recover records from hard drive video camera, phone memory or other devices?

Answer: If the device’s memory appears as a hard drive or flash drive when connected, there is a chance to recover the data. Try it - it might work. To resurrect data from memory cards phone or camera (not internal memory), connect the card via a card reader. The fact is that when cameras and phones are connected to a computer by wire, a flash drive is often identified not as a flash drive, but as an MTP media device that no recovery program will see. The card reader will allow the card to work like a regular USB flash drive and file recovery programs will see it.

Question: Is it possible to return using Recuva? deleted contacts, SMS from your phone?

Answer: No. For an explanation of why this is not possible, see the separate article.

Question: Only photos (music, documents - i.e. files of the same type) were recovered from the flash drive. How to restore everything else?

Answer: Make sure you select "Other" in the File Type window. Also read the answer to the second question

Question: The program recovered the files, but (some) cannot be opened. Is there any way to open them?

Answer: This means that the files were too damaged. As I said in the previous chapter, there are programs for restoring (or rather, “fixing”) damaged files, but the chance of successfully repairing a damaged file is low. So nothing can be done at home.

Question: The program restored the document, it turned out to be empty or with gobbledygook inside. What to do?

Answer: Most likely, the file was too damaged. But there is a chance that your document was recovered under a different name. In the “File Type” window, select “Other”, then check the “In-Depth Analysis” box and restore all the files that were found, then open all the documents in a row and see their contents. One more point: if there is no text in the document, but the file is not zero size, see the previous chapter “About partially recovered files” - perhaps the text is still in the document file and it can be restored with programs specially designed for this.

Question: The program saw only photos, other types of files do not see. What to do?

Answer: In the Recuva Wizard you need to select the “Other” item instead of “Pictures”.

Question: Where can I find these “specialized data recovery firms” you are talking about?

Answer: Search with using Google or Yandex - maybe there is one in your city. Ask about the service at service centers where computer equipment is repaired.

Question: Does Recuva recover videos/photos/music/anything else normally?

Answer: Success in recovering files erased from a flash drive does not depend on the file type. However there is specialized programs, which can “repair” partially recovered files of a certain type so that at least part of the data can be “pulled out.” For example, you will be able to see at least a piece of a photograph or part of a video frame. Examples specialized software I won’t list them because almost all such programs are paid and I can’t test them. For example, they may turn out to be Unfortunately, the free Recuva cannot do this - it restores the data that remains on the storage medium without trying to “repair” the contents of damaged files.

Question: I want to open a flash drive, but some error appears. What to do?

Answer: Reasons similar problems a lot of. Use Google or Yandex to find a solution.

Question: When saving recovered data, the error is “The path is too long.”

Answer: Save all data to a folder at the root of the disk. For example, create a “Recovered” folder on the C: drive and save the recovered files there.

Question: Recuva found months-old photos, but not recently deleted ones. What to do?

Answer: Most likely, after deleting, you wrote down some kind of file that “overlaid” the recently deleted files, erasing them forever. Try restoring with another program - PhotoRec, link below. If it doesn’t find it, it means there is no chance to recover such files.

When the flash drive asks for formatting (recovery using TestDisk)

Something worse than deleting files can happen to storage devices. The file table may become damaged, which is why instead of opening the flash drive, a window will appear asking you to format the disk:

This means that the operating system cannot understand what kind of file system is used on the flash drive. Formatting a disk is a radical solution. A new file table is created, where there will be no records of old data. Simply put, The flash drive will become clean. Naturally, you don’t need this, because the flash drive contains important files!

If suddenly you have formatted the flash drive and it is visible as an empty disk, you can scan it using the program above, maybe you can find something. But if you haven’t done anything with the flash drive yet, there is a chance to open a damaged file table and copy files to HDD using the TestDisk program. I will also tell you in passing, how to restore available flash drive capacity, if it has decreased due to file system errors.

1. Download TestDisk (replacement link for version 7.1) and unpack it to any folder.

2. In the folder with TestDisk, create a folder where the files from the damaged flash drive will be copied. The name doesn't matter, 11111 will do.

3. Run the program from the unpacked folder testdisk_win.

4. At the first stage, the program will ask the question - should I record my actions in a log file?

The mouse does not work in the program, operate the keyboard in the English layout. Use the down arrow ↓ button to select No Log and press Enter.

5. TestDisk will then ask you to choose which disk to work with. It is important not to make a mistake, otherwise you will waste your time.

Typically, flash drives are defined as “Generic Mass-Storage”. Portable hard drives - “Generic External”. The disk size is also visible in the list. Therefore, unless you have 100,500 flash drives connected at the same time, you can't go wrong. Use keyboard arrows ↓ to select required disk, then press Enter.

6. The program will ask for the type of stored file tables, in 99% of cases this is the first item - Intel, so just press Enter.

7. Then there are several operations to choose from - Analyze (searching for remote file systems, helps after formatting), Advanced (working with existing file tables) and others. To start you need Advanced, because perhaps the file table is still there, although it is damaged.

8. Using the keyboard up and down arrows you will need to select a disk partition. Usually there is only one, but there are exceptions. For example, computer hard drives contain a lot of partitions - drive C:, D:, boot, backup, and so on.

When selected using the up and down arrows, the action bar at the bottom of the window changes depending on the file system of the partition. Do you need an item Undelete. Selected using left-right arrows ←→. After selecting the section and action, press Enter.

9. A list of files and folders in the section will open. You can navigate the disk using the arrows and pressing Enter. Items "." and “..” at the top of the list of each folder - return back.

Action Buttons:

a- select all files.
: - select only the selected file/folder (over which the cursor is hovered).
q- go back to partition selection or cancel the recovery action.
h- switch the viewing mode - whether to show found deleted files (they are red in the list) or only existing ones.
Shift+c- copy selected files to your hard drive.
c- copy the selected file/folder.

When you are in the root folder (immediately after selecting the partition), click h to hide deleted files (most likely they are damaged and will not open), then a to select all files and folders of the flash drive, then Shift+C.

Immediately after pressing Shift+C, copying will not start. You need to select a folder where to copy the data. This is where the folder you created in step 2 inside the TestDisk folder comes in handy. Select it with the arrows and press C. The process will go:

Then you can simply close the program, all files from the flash drive will be in the selected folder.

10. If on 7 At the -th stage, after clicking the Advanced button, you do not have a list of partitions (you never know, you suddenly formatted the disk), restoring deleted files will be difficult. Then instead of Advanced you need a section Analyze, which will start searching for remote file tables.

There will most likely be no partitions in the next window; they have not yet been found:

Click Enter(in the panel below, the “Quick Search” action is selected by default, which is what we need), wait for the search to complete. If you're lucky, the file systems will be found and appear in the list:

There is important point. Using TestDisk, you can restore a file table directly on the disk, then it will normally open through the “Computer” folder. This is what is advised to do in some instructions for data recovery via TestDisk. I, in turn, do not recommend doing this. Who knows why the disk partition got lost? Suddenly, there are hardware problems with the flash drive and the data is written with distortion, then any attempt to write can completely destroy the existing files. That's why The best way- select the section with arrows ↓, press P to view and act as in step 9 - select all folders and files, copy them to your computer’s hard drive.

How to format a flash drive (and return the full capacity)

When the data is copied to the computer’s hard drive and you are convinced that everything is in order with the files, you can format the flash drive and use it as usual.

Formatting method No. 1 (simple).

Open the “Computer” folder, right-click on the flash drive - Format - button Begin. Ready!

Formatting method No. 2 (more difficult).

The first method will not always work. The file system can be so damaged that the operating system does not understand what size to make the partition. It looks like this:

In the formatting window, in the “Capacity” item there will only be an item "Capacity unknown" or size smaller the actual capacity of the flash drive. When you try to start formatting, a window will appear "Windows cannot complete formatting."

What to do? Just recreate all file tables. Windows has a Disk Management tool for this. In Windows 10, it is launched by right-clicking on the Start menu button - Disk management, in old operating systems located in Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Disk Management.

At the bottom of the window of this program, find your flash drive, right-click on the sections (rectangles with a blue stripe, there may be several of them) - Delete partition.

Then, when all the partitions are deleted, there will be only unallocated space left on the flash drive, displayed as a rectangle with a black stripe at the top. Call up its menu with the right button - Create a simple volume.

File system, if it is a flash drive for a phone or you do not need to store files larger than 4 gigabytes on it, you need to select FAT32. However, for flash drives in this window the choice of other file systems is not available.

If your goal is transfer large files between computers, you need to format the flash drive into a file NTFS system or exFAT. This can be done later by right-clicking on the partition rectangle and selecting “Format”.

The cluster size can be left at default. The volume label is the name of the flash drive, which is visible in the “Computer” folder. You don’t have to uncheck the “Quick Format” checkbox, then only the area where the file system is stored on the flash drive will be overwritten. Files with quick formatting physically remain on the flash drive, but will not be visible and will soon be overwritten with new data.

12. If you can’t format even using method No. 2, This means that the flash drive ordered it to live. This often happens with MicroSD cards for phones, memory cells run out of read/write resource and writing to them is blocked.