HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi all,

Can anybody share some info on USB production Tools.?

E.g. Faulty controller on USB Flash Drive reports as 0MB - Using the production too to restore it to the correct size :

The main question is : Is it possible to retain/keep the data intact on the Flash memory chip without low level formatting and repairing the drive.?

Thanks for you help

DPB

There is no way to restore the correct size of the flash, since i am almost positive it has nothing to do with the actual nand chip. The faulty controller is what the problem is most likely. It is possible to restore the data by removing the nand chip and using a chip reader and flash tools to restore it. I would recommend you send it to someone that has the tools and capabilities to do this.

I'm aware of the removal of the nand chip procedure - quite a costly one too. I had 2 USB flash drives both with a similar problem, by using the production tools found for the type of controller, nand, and size spec, i was able to restore the USB flash drive to the correct original state, it now reports the correct size of 4GB instead of 0MB, but all data has been completely erased. Every sector has been overwritten - hex editor shows this as 00 - the entire drive.

I was hoping to do the same for the 2nd flash drive, but not overwrite every sector.. anyone know if this is possible..?

Thanks again

DPB wrote:I was hoping to do the same for the 2nd flash drive, but not overwrite every sector.. anyone know if this is possible..?

My experience of USB production utilities, is that they do deliberately cause the controller to initialise the flash to a known state (i.e. erased). And, of course, the controllers expect to have to write the reserved areas (because they treat the flash as "new on a production line"), so even just doing that would make data recovery almost impossible.

Therefore in general I would not expect you to be successful using USB production utilities, and then trying to do data recovery. YMMV.