Recovery flash drive after formatting: instruction

Unfortunately, the loss of data contained on removable devices like conventional flash drives or memory cards is one of the most common phenomena. And not always it is connected with physical breakdowns or program failures. Formatting (fast, complete or incorrect) also creates such a problem. Nevertheless, you can restore the files from the USB flash drive after formatting. Windows does not have its own tools, so all the hope for third-party programs. Many of them cope with such tasks very successfully.

Recovery flash drive after formatting: basic principles

If someone does not know, in the process of formatting removable drives and hard disks, or with the usual removal of files and folders, the information in the physical plan does not disappear anywhere.

In fact, objects are given different names and attributes (in the simplest case, the first letter in the name changes to the dollar sign "$"). Due to this, the object is unreadable, since the system simply does not see it. This is the most primitive example.

Thus, initially the restoration of the flash drive after formatting and all the information previously present on it is reduced to finding all objects marked with the indicated symbols. But today the technology has moved far ahead and the recovery can be done by some other criteria and using completely different means.

Recovering data from a USB flash drive after formatting: the best programs

Today, there are a lot of tools for data recovery on any types of devices. Not all of them are equivalent to each other in terms of opportunities or recommendations for users to use a certain level of training. Nevertheless, among all utilities that are the most popular and popular, we can distinguish the following:

• Recuva;
• Auslogic File Recovery;
• RS Partition Recovery;
• R-Studio;
• R. Saver.

Let us dwell on each of them separately.

Recuva and Auslogic File Recovery

To begin with, consider the recovery of the flash drive after formatting using the first two utilities, which, according to experts and users, are the easiest to use.

The first application is convenient in that after specifying the device to be scanned for recovery, the user will be able to select the type of object to be detected (music, video, images, etc.). If you need a full scan, regardless of the type of object, you can specify the definition of all files, then just click the start button.

In the list of results, the found files and folders will be marked with different colors. Green - the file is not damaged and can be restored, yellow - it is possible that the file can be restored (sometimes partially), red - the file can not be restored. Next, you only need to select the objects to restore and specify the path to save them (preferably on the hard disk).

The second program for data recovery after formatting the flash drive works almost exactly the same, but among its drawbacks, it can be noted that, unlike the first (free), it is conditionally free. Trial period of use is only 15 days. But in both cases, recovering the flash drive after formatting with these utilities is far from ideal, since most of the objects found can not be recovered, and the recently deleted large files are not always there.

RS Partition Recovery

This program, according to many, deserves all praise. Among its features, it is worth noting the improved system of deep analysis, as well as the possibility of applying filters (date, object type, size, etc.).

After you start the scanning process with the selected conditions after a certain period of time, the screen displays the results by which you can choose to restore individual files and folders or even entire sections. To activate the recovery process, the selected objects should simply be added to the recovery list section through the right-click menu. In the next step, the method and location of the storage are selected, while the drive itself can not be used as a location.

R-Studio and R. Saver

Finally, we have the most powerful flash card recovery program after formatting. According to many experts, there are no equal utilities for the quality of search and recovery today. By the way, another confirmation is contained in the feedback of users on the Internet, who used it in practice. The fact is that the application is able to find such files, which the user has long forgotten. Roughly speaking, the program finds almost everything that was ever contained on the drive. And it is this application that is most often used to recover information on problem SD cards even if there are software failures or even controller damage on them.

Unlike the simplest utilities, which even with deep analysis search is very fast, it takes much more time here. But the result justifies such a long wait (for example, an SD card with a capacity of about 32 GB can be scanned for hours 5-6).

The process itself consists in selecting the drive and starting the analysis. It's interesting that the current status of the process is displayed on the screen, the same as it was when defragmenting disks. When the process is completed, Extra Found Files will appear, clicking on which you can view the full list of found objects, and then restore them using the standard selection method and specify the location of the re-saving.

Similarly, the recovery of the flash drive after formatting also produces the utility R. Saver, but it, albeit very similarly, is portable (does not require a mandatory installation on the hard disk) and is able to restore even file systems of any type.

Instead of the total

In general, the issues of information recovery on formatted flash drives and removable memory cards are solved quite simply. Which program of the whole variety is preferable? It seems that the best option will be the utilities R-Studio and R. Saver. Of course, scanning will take a certain amount of time, but files that can be later restored will be found much more, not to mention the very possibility of recovery (Recuva loses to all applications in these settings).