You can argue, but flash drives have become one of the most (if not the most) popular media. Not surprisingly, there are quite a few questions regarding them: especially important among them are issues of recovery, formatting and testing.
In this article I will give the best (in my opinion) utilities for working with drives - that is, those tools that I have used repeatedly myself. Information in the article, from time to time, will be updated and updated.
The best programs for working with a flash drive
Important! First of all, with problems with the flash drive, I recommend visiting the official website of its manufacturer. The fact is that on the official site there may be specialized utilities for recovering information (and not only!), Which will cope with the task much better.
For testing
Let's start with testing drives. Consider programs that can help determine some of the parameters of a USB drive.
H2testw
A very useful utility for determining the real volume of any media. In addition to the volume of the drive, it can test the real speed of its work (which some manufacturers like to overestimate for marketing purposes).
Important! Pay special attention to the test of those devices on which the manufacturer is not indicated at all. Often, for example, Chinese flash drives without marking do not at all correspond to their declared characteristics.
Check flash
A free utility that can quickly check your flash drive for operability, measure its real read and write speed, completely delete all information from it (so that no utility can recover a single file from it!).
In addition, it is possible to edit information about partitions (if they are on it), make a backup copy and reanimate the image of an entire media section!
The speed of the utility is quite high and it is unlikely that at least one competitor program will make this work faster!
HD speed
This is a very simple, but very convenient program for testing flash drives for read / write speed (information transfer). In addition to USB-drives, the utility supports hard drives, optical drives. The program does not need to be installed. Information is presented in a graphical representation. Supports Russian language. Works in all versions of Windows: XP, 7, 8, 10.
Crystaldiskmark
One of the best utilities for testing the speed of information transfer. It supports various media: HDD (hard drives), SSD (newfangled solid state drives), USB flash drives, memory cards, etc. The program supports the Russian language, although running a test in it is as simple as simple - just select the carrier and press the start button (you can figure it out without knowledge of the great and powerful).
An example of the results - you can look at the screenshot above.
Flash memory toolkit
Flash Memory Toolkit - this program is a set of utilities for servicing flash drives.
Full feature set:
- a detailed list of properties and information about the drive and USB devices;
- a test for finding errors when reading and writing information to the medium;
- fast data cleaning from the drive;
- search and recovery of information;
- backup of all files to media and the ability to restore from a backup;
- low-level testing of information transfer speed;
- performance measurement when working with small / large files.
FC-Test
The benchmark for measuring the real read / write speed of hard drives, flash drives, memory cards, CD / DVD devices, etc. Its main feature and difference from all utilities of this kind is that it uses real data samples to work.
Of the minuses: the utility has not been updated for a long time (there may be problems with new-fangled types of media).
Flashnul
This utility allows you to diagnose and test USB Flash drives. During this operation, by the way, errors and bugs will be fixed. Supported media: US and Flash drives, SD, MMC, MS, XD, MD, CompactFlash, etc. List of operations performed:
- reading test - an operation will be carried out to identify the availability of each sector on the medium;
- write test - similar to the first function;
- information security test - the utility checks the integrity of all data on the medium;
- save media image - save all that is on the media in a separate image file ;.
- loading the image into the device is an analog of the previous operation.
To format
Important! Before using the utilities listed below, I recommend trying to format the drive in the “usual” way (Even if your flash drive is not visible in My Computer, you may be able to format through the computer).
HDD Low Level Format Tool
A program that has only one task is to format the media (by the way, both HDDs and solid state drives - SSDs and USB flash drives are supported).
Despite such a “meager” set of features, this utility is not in vain in the first place in this article. The fact is that it allows you to "return" to life even those media that are no longer visible in any other program. If this utility sees your media, try to perform low-level formatting in it (attention! All data will be deleted!) - there is a good chance that after this format, your flash drive will work as before: without crashes and errors.
USB Disk Storage Format Tool
A program for formatting and creating bootable flash drives. Supported file systems: FAT, FAT32, NTFS. The utility does not require installation, supports USB 2.0 port (USB 3.0 - does not see. Note: this port is marked in blue).
Its main difference from the standard tool in Windows for formatting drives is the ability to "see" even those media that are not visible with regular OS tools. Otherwise, the program is quite simple and concise, I recommend using it to format all the "problem" flash drives.
Format USB Or Flash Drive Software
This is a simple and neat application for quick and easy formatting of USB Flash drives.
The utility will help in cases where a regular formatting program in Windows refuses to “see” the media (or, for example, will generate errors during operation). Format USB Or Flash Drive Software can format media to the following file systems: NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. There is an option for quick formatting.
I also want to note a simple interface: it is made in the style of minimalism, it is easier to understand it (the screen above is presented). In general, I recommend!
SD Formatter
A simple utility for formatting various flash cards: SD / SDHC / SDXC.
The main difference from the standard program built into Windows is that this utility formats the media according to the type of flash card: SD / SDHC / SDXC. It is also worth noting the presence of the Russian language, a simple and intuitive interface (the main program window is presented in the screenshot above).
Aomei Partition Assistant
Aomei Partition Assistant - a large free (for home use) "harvester", which presents a huge number of functions and capabilities for working with hard drives and USB drives.
The program supports the Russian language (but by default, English is still installed), it works in all popular Windows OS: XP, 7, 8, 10. The program, by the way, works according to its own unique algorithms (at least, according to statements made by the developers of this software ), which allows her to “see” even “very problematic” media, be it a flash drive or HDD.
In general, to describe all its properties is not enough for a whole article! I recommend trying, especially since the Aomei Partition Assistant will save you not only problems with USB drives, but also with other media.
Recovery Software
Recuva
One of the best free file recovery software. Moreover, it supports not only USB-drives, but also hard drives. Distinctive features: fast scanning of media, a rather high degree of searching for “remains” of files (that is, the chances of returning a deleted file are quite high), a simple interface, a step-by-step recovery wizard (even very “newbies” will cope).
R saver
Free * (for non-commercial use on the territory of the USSR) program for recovering information from hard drives, flash drives, memory cards and other media. The program supports all the most popular file systems: NTFS, FAT and exFAT.
The program sets the media scan parameters independently (which is also another plus for beginners).
Features of the program:
- recovery of accidentally deleted files;
- the ability to reconstruct damaged file systems;
- file recovery after formatting media;
- signature data recovery.
Easyrecovery
One of the best data recovery software supports a wide variety of media types. The program works in all versions of new Windows: 7, 8, 10 (32/64 bits), supports the Russian language.
One of the main advantages of the program is the high degree of detection of deleted files. All that can be "pulled out" from a disk, a flash drive will be presented to you and offered to be restored.
Perhaps the only negative - it’s paid ...
R-STUDIO
One of the most popular data recovery programs, both in our country and abroad. A wide variety of media are supported: hard drives (HDD), solid state drives (SSD), memory cards, flash drives, etc. The list of supported file systems is also striking: NTFS, NTFS5, ReFS, FAT12 / 16/32, exFAT, etc.
The program will help in cases:
- accidentally deleting a file from the trash (this happens sometimes ...);
- formatting a hard drive;
- viral attack;
- in case of a power failure of the computer (especially relevant in Russia with its “reliable” power networks);
- in case of errors on the hard drive, in the presence of a large number of bad sectors;
- when the structure is damaged (or changed) on the hard drive.
In general, a universal harvester for all kinds of occasions. The same only minus - the program is paid.
The report is over. Good work and good luck to everyone!
After memory card failures, usually only the program for formatting USB flash drives ntfs, fat32, microsd, transcend, usb, kingston, sd, apacer, hp helps. There are several of them.
Which is the best to say impossible. On the computer and phone, they are by default, but often may require additional programs for formatting.
In each flash drive (memory card), there is a microprocessor responsible for its work.
The program for formatting flash drives, in the event of a failure, simply closes the "bad" sectors (cells) and leaves only workers.
The amount of memory is reduced, but the memory card remains operational.
A very good program for fully formatting flash drives ntfs, fat32, microsd, transcend, usb, kingston, sd, apacer, hp "Flash Doctor".
It can be used for forced and low-level formatting, moreover, it is free.
Download this program for free to format flash drives
How to use? First of all, after starting, for formatting, find your USB flash drive in the panel:
A new window will open, wait for the verification of the selected drive to finish.
You will see the state of your memory card or disk (depending on what you are checking).
Formatting flash drives and stuff
To format a flash drive, click "recover media". Just be careful. All content (if not stored separately) will be destroyed.
By the way, if your flash drive does not want to format,. If after this there is no positive result, then nothing will help her.
In conclusion, I will give an example from personal experience. Once my memory card completely stopped working. What just did not. Stayed to format it with all existing programs. There were no results.
Then he began to stay on the phones. It was micro SD (with the rest: ntfs, fat32, microsd, transcend, usb, kingston, sd, apacer, hp, if the phone does not support this option, it won’t work) and a miracle happened, it worked.
Only not on the first hit, but only on the fourth Sony Erickson. Before that, he tried on Samsung, Nokia and LG did not help. Why am I leading this?
Sometimes, computer programs for formatting flash drives that are considered the best may not help, especially when your Chinese memory card is in use.
Formatting is the process by which the storage area is marked up. This area is called file system, and is a table.
Each square of such a table is called a cluster. And when a file is copied to a USB flash drive, the clusters are alternately filled with data until the file is completely moved.
If you frequently overwrite information on the device, the clusters begin to fill up unevenly, since some of them contain the remains of previous files. And new recorded files can occupy clusters at different ends of the "table", which slows down the flash drive.
Formatting resets all parameters and re-marks. This has a positive effect on the speed of the device, because the file system is reset. That is, the "table" is cleared.
Why format?
- To quickly destroy all recorded information
- To "kill" all viruses and traces of their activities
- To eliminate errors that occur when opening and writing files
- To speed up the device
- When creating a bootable flash drive
Formatting erases all data that was recorded on a USB flash drive! Therefore, before starting it, be sure to transfer all the important files to another location (for example, to the hard drive).
How to quickly format a USB flash drive
This can be done using standard system tools. They are in any version of Windows (XP, 7, 8, 10).
one . Insert the USB flash drive into your computer.
Most likely, after a second or two, the autorun window will open. Close it.
2. Open Start - Computer.
3. Right-click on the flash drive icon and select the "Format ..." item.
four . Choose the parameters or leave it as it is.
File system. It is proposed to choose one of three. The default is usually Fat32. It is good if small files are written to the device, since it interacts with them faster. But if you need to write a file larger than 4 GB, then there will be problems - Fat32 does not support working with such large files.
Another thing is NTFS. This system is able to work with very large files, even more than 1TB. But with small ones, it works a little slower than Fat32.
There is also exFAT. This is an upgraded Fat 32 that can handle files over 4 GB. However, at the moment it is only supported on Windows 7 and higher, and other devices (such as televisions) and computers on previous versions of Windows cannot work with it.
There are more advanced file systems, such as ext4, but Windows is not able to support anything better than NTFS and exFAT.
So, if you plan to write small files to a USB flash drive, you can leave the default file system (Fat32), and if you need to copy individual files larger than 4 GB (for example, a movie) to it, select NTFS.
Cluster size. The minimum data size. It is better not to change anything in this field.
Volume label The name of the device that will be displayed at boot time. For example, I want the flash drive to appear as "Neumeka". So, I’m erasing from this field what is being offered and printing the name I need. As a result, it will be displayed like this:
Formatting Methods. Initially, in this paragraph, a checkmark is set to “Fast (clearing the table of contents)”. With this method, the file system is overwritten, which is usually quite enough.
If you uncheck the box, then full formatting will be done, which means that first the computer will check the physical surface of the flash drive and if it finds damage, then fix them. In fact, they simply disguise themselves and then it will not be possible to record information there. And only after all this the file system will be recorded.
5 . Click "Start."
The system will warn us that it will destroy all information from the device. We agree and wait for the end of the process.
When it ends, we will see the next window. Click "OK" and close the formatting window.
All! The device is ready to go.
If it didn’t work out
Despite the fact that a flash drive is more reliable than a CD and a DVD disc, nevertheless, it also suffers from problems. For example, it may simply not appear on the “Computer”.
This happens for several reasons:
- File system damaged
- The device was not formatted by the manufacturer
- The letter of the flash drive matches the letter of the already used Windows disk
To eliminate these reasons, go to Start - Control Panel.
Go to "System and Security" and / or "Administration".
Open Computer Management.
Click on "Disk Management" on the left side.
The window takes the following form.
Right-click on the USB flash drive and select "Format ...".
Formatting using the command line
Another formatting method. But in order to use it, you need to know the exact letter of the flash drive. Otherwise, you can accidentally delete data from another desired drive.
one . Press the keyboard shortcut Win + R.
2. In the Run window, type cmd and click OK.
3. In the window that appears, enter format G: / FS: NTFS / Q / V: flashka
- format is a command to start formatting
- G - the drive letter under which your computer identifies a USB flash drive (do not confuse!)
- / FS: NTFS - the file system in which you want to format the device. If you want fat32, then enter FS: FAT32
- / Q - fast formatting. If you need complete, that just do not use this command
- / V: flashka - volume label (this name will be displayed when loading in the "Computer").
When everything is ready, a similar inscription will appear.
Low level formatting or “flash drive treatment”
Use this method only if all of the above has not helped.
Download and install the HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool from the official site. During installation, select "Continue for free."
Open the program, select your flash drive and click Continue.
A window with device information will appear. Go to the LOW-LEVEL FORMAT tab.
Press the FORMAT THIS DEVICE button.
A warning appears that all data recorded on the media will be erased. Click "Yes."
And we are waiting for the end of the process: when the window becomes something like this and it will be written 100% complete.
Close it and do the usual formatting, otherwise the flash drive will not open. To do this, follow the first instructions from this article (Start - Computer - right-click on the flash drive icon - Format ...).
Hello friends. In this article, I want to tell you how to format a USB flash drive in different ways so that you can choose the best one for yourself. A flash drive today is the most common and convenient medium for a wide variety of information. But after a certain period of time, it is necessary to carry out the formatting procedure, for a number of very different reasons:
- quick deletion of all files on the media
- cleaning flash drives from viruses
- the appearance of errors when writing or reading
- slow media operation
- the need to create a bootable flash drive
Formatting will also be useful if, for example, you want to copy a file larger than 4 GB to a USB flash drive, then you need to format from FAT32 format to NTFS format.
As you can see, there can be a ton of options for this operation, let's look at the difference from quick and full formatting (we will talk about this later in the article).
With quick formatting, only the file allocation table is cleared, if desired, deleted data can be restored. With full formatting, all data is completely destroyed (overwriting with zeros), and, as a rule, this process takes longer than with fast formatting.
Everything, with the theory we are done, let's get down to practice, and I will tell you how to format the flash drive.
Advice! Before formatting, be sure to copy the files important to you to your hard drive or other removable media.
How to format a USB flash drive - 3 ways
1) Using the built-in Windows tools
Insert your removable media into the computer and open the My Computer window, you can also press a key combination:
In the window that appears, right-click on the icon of your media and select Format.
In the new window, set the necessary parameters:
Capacity - service information about the size of the medium is displayed here, it does not change.
File system - you can select the type of file system from the drop-down list (NTFS, FAT32, exFAT). I advise you to choose the type - NTFS.
Cluster size - leave unchanged.
Restore Defaults - this button returns the settings to the standard, we do not touch it.
Volume label - here you can specify any name that will be displayed when the USB flash drive is connected to the computer.
We put a checkmark in front of the Quick Cleanup item if you need to urgently clean the media memory. If the flash drive is slow and constantly slows down, or it is infected with viruses, then uncheck this box.
Click the Start button and in the next window we confirm our actions by clicking OK.
After a short period of time, an inscription should appear indicating the completion of formatting.
2) Formatting a flash drive using the command line
Press the key combination:
or the Start button - Run, and enter the command - cmd to invoke the command line.
In the window that appears, enter the following command:
format H: / FS: NTFS / Q / V: My_Fleshka
format H: is a command that starts formatting removable media indicated by the specified letter. In order to find out which letter is used by your flash drive, open My Computer.
/ FS: NTFS - this command sets the type of file system that will be used after formatting the flash drive. In this example, it is NTFS.
/ Q - this part of the command indicates quick formatting, to completely delete data, we do not use it.
/ V: My_Fleshka - volume label, or name that will be assigned to your media.
and press Enter.
A message appears of the following nature:
where we also press Enter.
That's it, the formatting process is running, wait a while before this message appears.
3) How to format a USB flash drive using HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
We unzip the program and run the exe-file (it does not require installation) from the Administrator’s names (right-click on the file and select Run as Administrator).
You will see a window in which you need to select the file system during formatting, as well as specify the name of the flash drive. Choose the formatting method - Fast (put a tick) or Full cleaning (do not put a tick), and click the Start button.
A warning window will appear, which we press the button, Yes, and the formatting process begins with the specified settings.
Depending on the selected formatting method, after a certain period of time a window appears with the formatting result, in which you must click OK.
Now you know how to quickly format a USB flash drive and deprive yourself of the problems associated with removable media.
And I have everything, bye everyone!
Program HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool developed by Hewlett-Packard, is convenient to use, weighs only 96 Kb and does not require installation on a computer. But about everything in order.
To begin with, let's figure out why it is necessary to format flash drives.
The first reason. You want to write a file on a USB flash drive that is larger than 4 gigabytes in size, and you cannot do this. Indeed, it will not be possible to record a movie or an ISO image of a large size, because many manufacturers release flash drives in FAT32 format, and it does not support the transfer of large files. To do this, format the USB flash drive in NTFS format.
The second reason. You checked the USB flash drive for viruses and the antivirus program did not find anything suspicious, but you still have suspicions that there is still something there. Therefore, it is better to format the flash drive.
The third reason. The flash drive began to work more slowly. The fact is that after deleting unnecessary files, clusters remain in the flash drive or, in other words, empty places that slow down its operation. Formatting will fix this problem.
The fourth reason. You want to make a bootable flash drive from an ordinary flash drive so that you can install an operating system from it. To do this, you also need to perform formatting.
That’s probably all. Now download the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. You can do this by clicking on the link below.
Before formatting a USB flash drive, make sure that there are no important files and folders left on it, as all data after formatting will be destroyed.
The HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool is used to format a USB flash drive and create a bootable USB flash drive. It works with devices via the USB port and supports three file systems: FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS. It also restores or eliminates bad sectors on a flash drive, and performs forced formatting, that is, ignores open or executable files.
After you have downloaded the installation file, double-click on it and click on the “Run” button.
The main window of the program opens. In the "Device" section, select the USB flash drive that you will format. If you have several USB devices connected, in order not to make a mistake, check by name and size.
Now go to the choice of the file system - “File system”. If you plan to record large size movies on a USB flash drive, it is better to choose NTFS. If you make it bootable: FAT32.
In the “Volume label” field, enter a name for the flash drive.
"Quick format" - allows you to perform quick formatting. With quick formatting, data that was on a USB flash drive can be restored. With full formatting, data is completely destroyed - overwritten with zeros.
“Enable Compression” - allows you to compress data in NTFS format.
“Create a DOS startup disk” - used to create a bootable flash drive.
Click on the “Start” button. The next window warns that all files from the flash drive will be deleted, click "Yes."
We are waiting for the device to be formatted.
I hope you have no problems now, and hP USB Disk Storage Format Tool will be useful to you.
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