Lot of times we end up with a broken USB drive or flash memory, we try to format it but we can’t, we try to repair it but it won’t and sometimes it doesn’t even appear to be detected by our Operating System, in this case Windows.

So… if your USB drive is corrupted and you just can not get it to work no matter what you have tried.

If you followed all the steps listed in this guide: How to Fix your USB Drive from A to Z!

And your USB drive still doesn’t work then the only solution is flashing it, in an other words we are going to reinstall the firmware that is responsible to ensure the hardware is functioning correctly.

This way you can fix your USB drive no matter what the problem is: Protected from writing, doesn’t appear on your Computer or doesn’t make any sound at all when you plug it.

Your USB drive will get a new life after the application of this tutorial.

Let’s GO!

Why Flashing Your USB Drive is a Risk?

As you may know every electronic peripheral has on it a program that make it work and do its job as expected, this piece of code is called a “Firmware“, sometimes the Firmware get corrupted because of an electric shock or other reasons…

And when the Firmware is damaged you can do nothing (formatting, resetting, …) except installing it again, we call this procedure: “Firmware Flashing”

To be honest, flashing isn’t fun. Don’t try to flash a working USB drive. Use this method of fixing your USB drive only when you tried all the solutions listed here.

So please dear reader, use this method on a corrupted USB drive and think outside the box, you may not find the tool you need in this Russian website that I found by pure luck, therefore you have to Google the VID & PID (you will know what theses signify in this article) to find the software…

In my case I have a flash drive that simply refuses to format, it doesn’t show any information and I will try to fix it.

Getting Information Using ChipEasy

Before we start our procedure we have to collect some informations about our corrupted USB drive. In order to identify the flashing tool that will work with your USB drive you have to get the VID, PID, Device vendor and Device model. Here is a quick description of theses values:

• VID is a unique Vendor ID to identify the manufacturer of the USB drive.
• PID is the Product ID associated to your USB drive.
• Device vendor is the name of the manufacturer.
• Device model is the name of the model and sometimes a generic name.

Having theses informations we can identify our USB drive and find the perfect firmware to bring it back to life. Hopefully.

Please download ChipEasy for free from this page: http://flashboot.ru/files/file/361/

Click on the link “ChipEasy_EN_…” to start the download, then unzip the file using 7-Zip. The password of this archive is: flashboot

Insert your USB drive in the USB port and after that launch the program ChipEasy.

After launching it, ChipEasy will detect all USB devices and will only display your USB drive in the list at the top. Copy the informations we talked about earlier in a text document and move on to the next step.

Downloading the Flash Tool for Your USB Drive

Open this page: http://flashboot.ru/iflash/

And use the “VID” and “PID” in the form in the header of the web page.

Once you submit the form you will get a table with lot of tools on it, use the “Device vendor” and “Flash model” values to match the “Device vendor” and “Device model” in the ChipEasy you found earlier.

Find the line where there is a value in the last column “Utils“. Then copy that value and continue.

Open this page on a new tab: http://flashboot.ru/files/

Put the Russian name of the tool in the search box above to fine the flash tool you are looking for, sometimes you may not find the name of the flash tool and that is because that USB drive you are trying to fix is new to the market and you need in this case too look in Google Search for the flash tool using the same informations (VID, PID, Device vendor and Device model), don’t forget to look at the manufacturer’s site or contact them to provide you with the tool to flash your USB drive.

How to Use the Tool to Flash the USB Drive

In fact there are hundreds of tools if not thousands, but each tool function quiet differently…

Most of them work only in older versions of Windows (like Windows XP), so it’s recommended to run theses tools in compatibility mode.

Sometimes you need to run it as administrator also…

Here is an example of the tool from the inside:

There you go, you have just discovered the best website to find the right tools to flash your USB drive.

If you need any help feel free to post your question in the comments’ section below!

See you in the next article.