It took me to put the system on an old computer.
There was no CD-ROM in the computer, and it was not interesting to install my own, and for a long time I was interested in how to divide my 8 Gb flash drive into several partitions. It was not possible to do this by ordinary means, since after creating partitions, Windows refused to see the second partition. Found a description about different methods installation of additional drivers for the second partition, but this did not suit me, tk. this must be installed on every PC you connect to for the first time.
Therefore, I decided to devote Saturday to an interesting case of studying how flash drives work.
I learned a lot about what chipsets are, what to do with a flash drive if it is not detected by the system, where to look for utilities for program recovery, and how to put the flash drive into test mode by closing the legs on the chip. But we will not delve into everything.
1) You need to find out the chipset manufacturer and values VID and PID.
This can be done by downloading and running the ChipGenius v3.0 utility
(be sure to write down or save the data that it will show, because in case of bad firmware, this will help you find the program you need)
2) Then go to the iFlash database page and enter VID or PID to the search bar.
We find which programs are designed to work with your flash drive. (my flash drive was with an SK6211 chip, and the SK6211_20090227_BA program came up to it)
3) If you have a different chip, not from Skymedi, then you do not need to read further.
So:
a)... We connect the USB flash drive to the USB connector of the PC.
b)... Launch SK6211_20090227_BA.exe
v)... In the utility, click -> Advanced-> in the window Password enter numbers 123456
and click on the Check button.
The windows will become active.
G)... On the menu Code Bank ver... select the latest database. For some, the flash drive was identified in the program (lit green, Ready) only after that.
e)... Dapee - press Multi-Partition.
In this window: Top left corner - check the box Enable CD-ROM, if you need to split the rest of the CD-ROM, and split a part into 2 more partitions (i.e. make a CD + flash + Flash), then move the engine - set the size of the partitions.
Top right corner - check the box Enable CD-Rom Booting(make the CD-ROM bootable) and write the path to the ISO image. The size of the CD part is set automatically depending on the size of the image. I tried a 2.5 GB image, everything is fine.
e)... Be sure to write the parameter autorun counter- it is responsible for all glitches associated with the disappearance of a flash CD after several downloads:
turns out autorun counter this is the number of times the Flash CD will appear on the system.
If we write 10 (as stated in the instructions), then the flash CD will appear and work exactly 10 USB flash drive connections.
In order for the image to work indefinitely, 255 (== unlimited) must be entered in this field.
source: http://www.mydigit.net/read.php?tid=58732&uid=35139
g)... Lun0 and Lun1 are partitions that will actually be seen as a USB flash drive. If the engine (see above) has not been touched, there will be CD + 1 flash section, otherwise - CD and 2 flash drives (the volume of each depends on the position of the engine in the upper left corner).
Here we install:
format - ( Fat or Fat32)
section name - ( Format Labe l).
The first Flash section can be done - ( Fixed) (i.e. it will be detected not as a flash, but as an HDD),
as well as block the partition from being overwritten - ( write protect), immediately writing to it required files by writing the path to the folder with them (but I did not do this, because protection against overwriting was not included in my needs).
Click OK and agree to the changes.
h)... Further (in the previous window that appears after this, you can set VID and PID(if you want to change the name of the controller manufacturer and its type displayed in CHIP GENIUS - to determine the flash drive by the flashing utility in case of subsequent flashing it will not affect), Serial no. flash drives (you can use any) and LED parameters ( LED) - blinking frequency and light intensity, parameter Curr leave equal 100 mA(it is better not to set more, as far as is known, this is the maximum current current consumed by the USB flash drive).
It is better not to change all other parameters - I do not know what they are responsible for.
and)... Write down your profile name and click " Save"(save the profile), agree to the changes and close this window.
To)... The firmware is possible only if the flash drive is in the database (see above).
In this case, it will turn green and it will be written " READY".
Select the profile we saved and click AUTO-LLF(AUTO-LowLevel Format).
The flash drive lights up yellow " BUSY"- the rewriting process is in progress.
Its successful completion is indicated by green color and " PASS". Congratulations!
Important Tips !!!
- If the color before the start of the firmware (after selecting the last base of supported flash drives) is blue (NO Match), then you are out of luck (there is no flash drive in the database), wait for the firmware update or search for yourself, I found the right one from the third time.
- If you need to overwrite a new image, be sure to first use the Recovery Disk utility (or the main utility to rewrite the controller firmware without creating a CD partition - remove the Enable CD-ROM and Enable CD-Rom Booting checkboxes, leave only the LUN0 partition (removeble), and only then change it again as you need it, otherwise an error may occur when flashing)
Thanks for all the instructions and tips:
Domrachev.Ivan,
AVP-720,
website flashboot.ru,
Chinese programmers who wrote programs for flashing.
CD-partitions on a flash drive allow you to boot without problems on a PC, where booting from a regular flash drive (with Public-section flash drive) impossible. Loading from CD- The area of the flash drive usually works everywhere.
But it should be understood that using a flash drive as a boot device from BIOS is not the intended purpose of this controller function.
And the main function CDROM-the area is so that a specific manufacturer of a flash drive can place there the necessary software for encryption, protection against viruses, or just some kind of advertising information.
Therefore, the successful outcome of loading any component as from a normal CD-drive, mainly depends on the compatibility of the particular controller with a specific motherboard on which you are booting.
WHICH CONTROLLERS SUIT THE MOST
I personally, for use as LiveUSB and reinstallation Windows, only recommend controllers SMI and Phison since they are most compatible with older motherboards.
Have SMI-chips, the highest loadability from under BIOS showed models SM3257AA and those older (for example SM3257ENAA and SM3257ENLT) .
WITH Phison, problems of a slightly different order, which are only indirectly related to the efficiency of loading. All controllers can be conditionally divided into two groups, in the first so-called PS2XXX (for example PS2232 and PS2239) and in the second PS2251-XX(for example PS2251-38 and PS2251-03). So, chips from the first group cannot be converted into MODE30, but only in MODE21 which contains an additional flash- a section that negatively affects the compatibility level.
If your computer is not old, then other models will do, but still not all. For example, controllers Alcor, have never had a good downloadability and in general this is not their topic.
And here are the chips Innostor who became famous for their USB3.0 models, although they are crooked to load, but they can carry up to 6 ISO-disk images!
Below, utilities for manufacturers will be considered USB-controllers capable of working with CD-section. In the same place, you can familiarize yourself with the complete list of USB flash drives suitable for this case.
SEVERAL CDROM PARTITIONS ON ONE FLASH DRIVE
Speaking specifically about simultaneously working CD-ROM areas on the flash drive, then I was able to curb only a few controller manufacturers. These are my favorites SMI controllers, some flash drives on Phison and chips used in Chinese counterfeits Chipsbank.
On the USBDev portal, you can find detailed instructions for creating up to 7 simultaneously operating SDROMs... At the same time, disk images can be changed in a couple of clicks, bypassing the flashing procedures, which minimizes subsequent risks to the limit!
In the same article, two videos are inserted that I specially recorded for you, in case the letters turn out to be too tough.
With chips from Phison, although everything is done much easier, only under MODE32 not all flash drives are suitable. Of those that I tried, slightly more than half were suitable for work in this specific mode. Yes and MODE32 limited to only two simultaneously working SDROM amy.
Controllers Chipsbank, least of all I liked in this regard. And the process of creation is longer and more dreary. And the likelihood of finding a USB flash drive of a suitable size on it is extremely small. And the ability to flash two CDROM-section, there are only the latest chips, line CBM2098 and CBM2099.
SMI chips, such an alternative can be made by controllers from Innostor already mentioned above. They will, of course, never match the functionality and flexibility of SMI-shkami, but they have at least something in terms of multibooting.
Have Innostor, although there is one section under CD-Rom, but you can write there up to 6 ISO images and through a special Windows program entitled Innostor AI-Burn, choose the one you need at a given time.
The operation itself to change the flash drive is a little risky, so it is better not to perform it with flash drives in non-standard buildings ( monoliths, flash drives with a coin size, ...). That is, in case of incorrect completion of the controller firmware, it would be possible to disassemble the case and transfer the flash drive to test mode.
In principle, provided that you are doing everything correctly, the utility fits your USB flash drive and create only a CD-ROM area on the flash drive, then the chance that the flash drive will freeze is very small. It was not for nothing that I highlighted the bold ones that it is advisable not to create other areas on the flash drive, except for CD-ROM... Although some write that it is better to create besides CDROM-section and also a flash area where you can drop files. But I am extremely skeptical about this.
What problems can there be when you create two or more areas on a flash drive:
It is very likely that when you try to return the USB flash drive to its original state or overwrite ISO-file, the flasher will terminate with an error and your USB flash drive will have to be reflashed again or it will “hang” at all. In this case, it will have to be translated into test mode and from there to flash. Those. if you have monolithic flash drive, you are risking quite a lot and I think that the game is not worth the candle.
Not all computers will be accessible from Windows flash partition, although the likelihood of this is very, very small.
From under BIOS, with a decent probability, it will not be possible to load through the bootloader (such as GRUB4DOS), elements with flush-areas of the flash drive. Those. v Windows You have everything in a bunch, but here is a bummer, for example, on my computer there is such a batwa.
Perhaps such that even with CDROM-the area is not loaded at all, which appears on a very large percentage of old computers. This problem is especially acute for company controllers. Innostor.
The USB flash drive takes noticeably longer to initialize by the computer.
Maybe I'm dramatizing the situation a little, but I just want to give you some thoughts in case you run into problems.
HOW TO FLASH INTO CDROM
For creating CD-areas on USB-flash you need to select a utility for a specific controller installed in a specific flash drive. Sometimes, when selecting, it is necessary to consider a memory chip as the main parameter, but this is already offtopic for this article. Then configure the utility to work with a specific bundle (controller + memory), activate the settings related to the CDROM area and then specify the path to the disk image itself (for the features of specific utilities, see below in the comments next to exclamation mark[!]). After such an operation, the flash drive in BIOS will be determined (depending on the settings of the production utility and controller capabilities) either as CDROM-device, or as two devices ( CDROM + regular section).
Also, the quality of the result, oddly enough, depends on the utility used. For example, Alcor did not create older versions of the utilities CDROM-area more 4GB or at Skymedi loadability in LUN2 mode may vary depending on the version.
I will clarify the situation with a kind of restriction in 4GB by size ISO-disk image - so no 4GB limit and never was. It all depends on the capabilities of the available software versions for a particular hardware (controller + memory). So for some very old controllers, as well as some not very advanced ones, I'm not familiar with these at all. And that nonsense (about 4GB and others), which often walks on the Internet, is associated only with the mental retardation of those who write it. Often, such people never had more than 1-2 flash drives and at the same time try to teach others. Also the hallmark of these doodles are the recommendations for finding software using VID-PID, which are also sheer nonsense.
Detailed guides with pictures for the main controllers will be written and posted in separate articles. So you need to be patient, and I have to scrape together the desire and the trick.
WHAT SPECIFIC UTILITIES CAN CREATE CD-ROM SECTION
A list of utilities that allow you to create a CDROM area and their features for the main controllers:
Alcor: AlcorMP_UFD, ALCOR Recovery Tool, FC MpTool, Transcend AlcorMP JF620 Online Recovery, Transcend AlcorMP V15 Online Recovery.
!: To create Generic Autorun Disk using ‘Transcend AlcorMP JF620 Online Recovery’, just rename the necessary image to create a CD partition in security_f.iso, put it next to OnLineRecovery_620.exe and perform the flash drive recovery procedure by running OnLineRecovery_620.exe. After executing OnLineRecovery_620.exe, two partitions are always created: a CD partition with the security_f.iso content and a regular partition defined in Windows as a removable disk in FAT32 format.
!: To create Generic Autorun Disk using ‘Transcend AlcorMP V15 Online Recovery’, just rename the necessary image to create a CD-partition in TMUS.iso, put it next to OnLineRecovery_TMUS.exe and perform the flash drive recovery procedure by running OnLineRecovery_TMUS.exe. After executing OnLineRecovery_TMUS.exe, two partitions are always created: a CD partition with the contents of TMUS.iso and a regular partition defined in Windows as a removable disk in FAT32 format with a Trend Micro label.
!: On flash drives with Alcor controllers up to model AU6982 inclusive, the ‘Autorun’ section has not yet been created.
ChipsBank: Chipsbank APTool, Chipsbank CBM2093 UMPTool, Chipsbank UMPTool, Chipsbank V88 UMPTool, FlashDiskManager.
Innostor: Innostor MP Tool, AI-Burn, AI Partition.
!: AI-Burn - only overwrites CD-area created with Innostor MP Tool or AI Partition.
!: AI Partition - only creates a CD-area, to which you can then use AI-Burn to burn a disc image.
iTE Tech. Inc. : MPTool, DtMPTool, UFDUtility, CDROM Tool.
Phison: Phison ModeConverter, Phison MPALL, Phison USB MPTool.
!: Phison ModeConverter v1.0.1.5 is the easiest and safest way to create modern controllers from Phison.
!: Mode = 30 (CDROM Only); Mode = 21 (CDROM + Public).
!: There may be some problems with the subsequent detection of the flash drive in the utilities when creating ‘CDROM \ Public + Fixed Disk‘.
Skymedi: Skymedi PDT, Skymedi SK6213 ISO Update Tool.
!: The ‘Autorun Counter’ parameter means the number of times the CDROM partition will appear in the system. In order for the section to work indefinitely, write the value 255 (== unlimited) in this field.
SMI: SMI MPTool, DYNA MPTool, uDiskToolBar, MySDKTest, UFDisk Utilities.
SSS: 3S USB MP Utility, 3S USB OnCardSorting.
!: In the utility windows there are no settings responsible for the CD-area of the flash drive, so you need to edit the used configuration file (for example - 6691_CM_T32D2 TSOP 32Gb x 2.INI) as follows: approximately after the section
add section
to which to add the line CDROM_ISO = j: \ LIVECD \ _2K10 \ MultiBoot_2k10_2.6.1_conty9.iso(where MultiBoot_2k10_2.6.1_conty9.iso is the file you want to burn to the CD area).
Not all controllers have the ability to overwrite a CDROM area without creating anew other partitions of the flash drive. For example, I only know reliably about two controller firms with which you can implement this operation, namely:
Innostor: using the AI-Burn utility.
SMI: using the program MySDKTest... Despite the fact that this software fully supports only controllers up to the SM3255AB model inclusive. It can perform the procedure for replacing a disk image with any, even the most modern SMI chip.
To restore the flash drive to its original state, as a rule, you can use the same utilities, as well as some other utilities that you can find on my site.
This article will talk about how, by reprogramming ("flashing") the control controller of the flash memory module ("flash drive"), to force any computer to which such a flash drive will be connected, to perceive it not as a standard USB disk, but as an external CD / DVD drive with a CD "inserted" in it.
Copyright Notice
To be honest, at first I didn't want to include this section in my article at all. Nevertheless, after a short reflection, I decided to do it. Why? Well, firstly, the fashion has gone like this now ;-) Secondly, I thought that it would really be nice to familiarize readers in advance with the principles that I adhered to when writing this article, in order to avoid possible misunderstandings in the future.
So the first principle is the author's disclaimer. This does not mean at all that the information presented in the article was taken "from the ceiling" and has never been verified by anyone. Quite the opposite - personally, according to the method I have outlined here, I "reflashed" at least two dozen flash drives, and all operations, except for one single time, were completed successfully. Speaking of a disclaimer, I only draw your attention to the fact that due to such objective and in no way controllable factors such as: a huge variety of models and modifications of flash drives, possible mistakes in the software used, various hardware and software configurations of computers and no less different level of user training, everything that works fine on my computer may well not work on your... Additionally, I want to note that the method I describe is not standard and pre-provided for their products by manufacturers of flash memory modules, therefore all operations described in this article, you perform at your own peril and risk... Remember this! If, as a result of performing the manipulations described below, you incur any material and / or moral damage, please address all claims only to yourself. O possible I warned you about the risk of further action. If you don’t find yourself ready to act on such terms, then just don’t try to reproduce them.
The second principle is the principle of independence. In my article, I provide links to pages on the Internet, where you can download one or another software that we need for work. So, I warn you in advance that I have nothing to do with either the owners of these pages, or, moreover, the developers of the software posted on them. Using the programs indicated in the article, I myself am in exactly the same position as you, my dear readers. Thus, if by the time my article is published, the specified software will not be located on the specified links, or it will be infected, or in any way damage your computer - all claims, again, please contact either the authors of the resources or the program developers (if, of course, you manage to find them), or to yourself.
And the last thing. Since I strongly doubt that the topic of my article will be of interest to novice computer users, I initially count on a trained reader. Therefore, I will try to outline those aspects that are directly related to the topic of the article in the most understandable and detailed language, but I will not pay attention (except for special cases) to those actions that are part of normal computer work. That is, for example, how to start the "task manager" (and what it is in general), where the "address bar" is located in the browser (and why it is generally needed), you, dear readers, should already know. If you (suddenly!) Do not know this, then it is clearly premature for you to read my article - except perhaps as information for "general development", in order to know that "this also happens."
Why is this necessary, or why are we not looking for easy ways?
To answer this question, you have to start from afar.
As you know, in the period lasting from about the mid-90s to the mid-2000s, optical compact discs were the main carriers of more or less significant amounts of information - first CDs with a capacity of up to several hundred megabytes appeared, then they were gradually replaced various modifications of more "advanced" DVD-disks up to several gigabytes. Currently, despite the strongly shaken positions, CDs have not yet lost their full value (at least in such areas as, for example, the sale of "boxed" software).
Around the mid-2000s, the previously almost completely dominant compact discs in the field of data transfer had serious competitors - storage media based on flash memory (colloquially referred to as "flash drives"). By the way, the first models of flash drives for the "general public" were released back in 2000, and the long-term delay before their widespread distribution is explained by the extremely small volume and high cost of production of the first serial samples. However, from the very beginning, flash memory technology possessed so much obvious advantages before the traditional methods of storing information, that bringing to mind certain specific parameters was only a matter of time.
Despite the fact that modern flash memory modules surpass conventional CDs in almost all comparable parameters (volume, speed characteristics, compactness), the vast majority of flash drives have one, but a very serious drawback - security. Or, more precisely, the absence of such. Interesting, but quite understandable, is the fact that the viral "livestock" transmitted through information carriers that existed at a small but stable level until the mid-90s (in the era of floppy disks) and practically disappeared by the mid-2000s, from the moment the widespread use of flash drives is developing at an unprecedented pace. The answer lies in the fact that optical discs, due to a special technology for recording information, require special software. We should not forget that 100% of "branded" disks generally belong to the "...- ROM" category, that is, they are read-only devices, and write to which is impossible in principle. Until CDs had a viable alternative, both users and manufacturers were forced to put up with the inherent difficulties of optical disc recording. But at the same time, it was these difficulties that were practically an insurmountable obstacle for viruses! Virus writers would have to build a full-fledged program for burning optical discs into each of their "creation", which would immediately nullify such important characteristics for viruses as stealth, speed and small volume. Apparently, keeping in mind the problems so typical for optical disks, the developers of flash memory modules decided to make life easier for end users. And viruses. Since a flash drive, along with a floppy disk and a hard disk, does not require any third-party software to record information and any operations can be performed through standard Windows "Explorer", all the obstacles that prevent them from entering the USB flash drive and back have disappeared before viruses. how popular this type of media is now, you can imagine the level of interest in them from the authors of viruses and the approximate scale of the epidemic. to plug a USB flash drive to the infected computer, so that it can immediately live on someone(I had to deal with viruses that automatically scanned USB ports for the presence of storage devices and, if they were found, immediately wrote a copy of themselves on them or performed any destructive actions). A few years ago, it was still possible to find models of flash drives on sale with a special switch on the case, blocking the ability to write to a USB flash drive (although there were very few such models at that time), however, unfortunately, nowadays there are almost no such flash drives. The reason for the refusal on the part of manufacturers from such an inexpensive but extremely useful improvement is not known to me. Judging by some reviews posted on the Internet, such microswitches have a small mechanical resource and fail quite quickly, leaving the flash drive in read-only mode, which causes a storm of indignation from users who are forced to buy a new flash drive ahead of schedule.
For ordinary users, such a microswitch on a USB flash drive, perhaps, is really unnecessary - it is enough to have a more or less adequate antivirus on the computer ... But what to do unusual users - admins, repair engineers, information recovery specialists? After all, they often have to work with a completely unfamiliar computer, in conditions when it starts and works at all, don't understand what! No self-respecting surgeon will perform an operation with a dirty non-sterile instrument. In this sense, the work of a doctor and a professional computer technician has a lot in common - both there, and there, sterility is extremely important. You can, of course, take a "step back" and record the entire necessary set of programs on the good old optical discs of the "...- R" modification, but ...
Firstly, a full set of professional programs for restoring a computer's performance, as a rule, has a volume significantly exceeding the volume of one disk, so you will have to carry with you not one, but a whole set of disks, which, you see, is no longer good ...
Secondly, optical disks, which serve as "workhorses", are constantly carried when, where and in whatever, deteriorate rather quickly, becoming dusty and covered with scratches.
Thirdly, even the most "advanced" modifications of DVD discs provide a very mediocre, by modern standards, reading speed. It happens that booting the system from such a recovery disk takes up to 10-15 minutes. I do not argue that some people will agree to wait for 10 or 15 minutes, or even an entire hour - there would only be something to wait, but, you must agree, if there is an opportunity to significantly increase the productivity of your labor, it is a sin not to take advantage of this opportunity.
Fourthly, such a once standard and obligatory device as a DVD drive is increasingly becoming a persona "non grata" in a modern computer, it was not "from birth" in portable computers, and I will not say anything about Blu-Ray drives at all .. At the same time, not only are practically all types of computers equipped with USB ports, but the number of these useful ports is steadily growing. So you may well face such a situation when you only have a set of CDs in your hands, and the computer being reanimated, instead of the expected floppy drive, has only a free USB port.
In general, you don't want to give up the already familiar flash drives in favor of optical disks! “But don't! - an experienced user will say. - Isn't it overwhelmed with Internet programs that allow you to write an "image" of the required disk to a USB flash drive? " And he will be right ... Partly. Most of these programs - DirectGRUB, WinSetupFromUSB, WinToFlash, UnetBootIn, ROSAImageWriter - and dozens of similar programs really do a good job of their task, but, firstly, they do not give the user "freedom of maneuver", clearly "tying" him to the "image" of this or a different type; and secondly, despite the emerging opportunity to boot from the flash drive processed by them, your information remains completely unprotected... That is, you can still easily format a USB flash drive, delete some files from it, or, conversely, add some information.
However, there is such a method that allows you to write the contents to a USB flash drive absolutely any the disk you need with the ability to boot from this flash drive, while its contents will be reliably protected from "intrusion" - creating a CD-ROM (DVD-ISO) partition on a USB flash drive and writing an "image" of the desired disk into it.
Why is "flashing" possible?
This becomes possible because the manufacturers of controllers for flash drives themselves initially include in their products the ability to work in different modes, including in the emulation (imitation) mode of an external CD / DVD drive. Thus, manufacturers leave a "loophole" for themselves to create various tricky "branded" flash drives. After a while, information about this somehow becomes available to the general public, and after a further period of time, versions of "proprietary" utilities appear on the Internet, which allow, in practice, to switch the controller mode.
What is needed for "flashing"?
To successfully complete this amusing procedure, we need:
- a computer running Windows XP or later and access to the Internet;
- USB flash drive equipped with a controller that has a CD-ROM emulation function;
- program-"flasher";
- in fact, the "firmware" itself (in 99% of cases it is supplied with the program);
- ISO image of the desired disc;
- any instruction (for example, this article);
- about one hour of free time;
- straight arms and crooked brains (but by no means the other way around! ;-))
As I said, you should know what an ISO image is and have it available (download from the Internet, “remove” from an existing optical disc, “assemble” yourself). If you do not know what it is and cannot download / remove / build an ISO image, then, sorry, I will not describe this procedure here personally for you, since the topic is so extensive and multifaceted that it deserves a separate article. As a last resort, you can find all the necessary information on the Internet. In the future, I will no longer return to this question, and I will assume that you have the necessary "image".
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the most difficult stage is, oddly enough, the preparatory one. The most difficult thing is to find a mutually suitable pair of "flash drive - program". If you managed to find such a pair, then with a probability of 99% everything else will end happily.
Why is it so hard to do? Yes, simply because nowhere to get information... Since the "flashing" of the controller is not included in the concept of "normal operation" with a flash drive, the manufacturers do not consider it necessary to indicate such uninteresting details (why do you need it, poor ones?!? ;-)). Moreover, it is enough to mentally put yourself in the shoes of a large manufacturer of flash drives to understand that it is not even worth hoping for any, so to speak, "internal consistency" of products - he (the manufacturer) produces millions of them, while he must take care of supplying them continuously to the market. It follows from this that he has dozens of contracts with various firms producing controllers, memory chips and other electronic "stuffing". Today, one specific model of the flash drive is produced on the A-001 controller, in a month the same model (!), In the exact same case (!) Will be produced with the B-002 controller, and in another six months, when the previous supplier of controllers will have problems with production, the baton will be intercepted by another company, offering its new controller E-030. Of course, sooner or later, service utilities appear on the Web even for the newest types of controllers, but how long will it take between the start of sales of flash drives on this controller and the appearance of a utility suitable for it on the Internet, only God knows and Chinese computer pirates ;-)
Hence, there are three possible strategies for our searches:
- borrow each flash drive bought by a friend, colleague, or issued at work by the supply department for an hour, and check it special program(which one - I'll tell you below). The flash drive will not suffer from this and all information on it will remain intact. If we see that the controller is exactly the one we need, we immediately find out from a friend / colleague / supplier where the flash drive was purchased and go there to buy the same one.
- search for the information we are interested in on the Internet (for example, by the phrase "controller +" flash drive model "). Sometimes people on specialized forums, describing a particular flash drive, indicate the controller model. Here, however, you should be careful and look at the publication date - if the description of the flash drive you found is older than six months, then there is a high probability that even buying such a flash drive, you will be very upset, because it will already be on a completely different controller.
- from time to time, buy one flash drive you like, checking it for the presence of the desired controller and, then, act in accordance with clause 1. The obvious disadvantages of this method are the large expenditures of time and money.
The most preferable for novice sewing machine operators ... oh, no - programmers, are flash drives on SMI controllers. The "Phison" controllers are a little more difficult to flash, but, on the whole, it's not bad either, but it's better not to mess with the "Alcor" and "SSS" controllers unless absolutely necessary. With regard to the brands of flash drives, we are most interested in the products of A-Data and Apacer (most of them), Kingston and Transcend (a smaller part).
If you fundamentally do not want to spend time and money looking for the desired flash drive model, but want to "reflash" the existing one by all means, try to start looking for a suitable "flasher" program here: and here:. The site indicated first - usbdev.ru - contains a more complete and detailed file archive, and the likelihood of finding the most latest version the desired program much higher here. At the same time, its “completeness” and richness of information also have a downside - as a rule, it is very difficult for a beginner to decide which software from the available on the site he really needs. The site indicated by the second - flashboot.ru - has a simpler structure and a rather nice look, but it is not a fact that here, firstly, you will be able to find the program you need, and secondly, that this program will be the freshest. Also, when choosing the right software, one should not forget that both of these sites are dedicated to USB drives. generally, therefore, programs that make it possible to "convert" flash drives into CD / DVD-ROMs are not specially separated or sorted by anyone, they are lost in the general mass of their colleagues designed to restore the performance of flash drives, monitor, diagnose media, low-level formatting, provide the ability boot from a USB stick and other things.
Demonstration equipment
As a "guinea pig" I chose an eight-gigabyte flash drive "Transcend JetFlash 520S". Why did I choose this particular flash drive? It's simple:
- since I decided to combine the useful with ... the useful - to write this article and create a new USB flash drive-DVD-ROM for my needs, I first of all drew attention to the type of case. In this model of the flash drive, all the electronic filling is placed in a sealed all-metal case, the connector is made integral with the case, which, you see, is important for a "workhorse" that you constantly have to carry with you. No static discharges, lost or forgotten caps, bent connectors - even protected from moisture penetration (although I haven't personally tested it ;-)).
- the ISO image that I have, which I was going to "fill" on the flash drive, takes up about 3.3 gigabytes, so, of course, one could get by with a four gigabyte one, but flash drives with a volume of less than 8 gigabytes do not exist in this design ...
- and finally, most importantly, I managed to find information that this model flash drives are currently being produced on the basis of one of the modifications of the "SMI" controller - just what you need!
The flash drive comes in a small cardboard box containing: short instruction, an insert with advertising information and a transparent blister, which, in turn, contains the actual flash drive and the branded strap "Transcend" (cute, but extremely short, clearly designed to improve the convenience of manipulating the flash drive, but not for wearing):
The flash drive itself cannot be said to be full-sized, but also not miniature - overall dimensions (length * width * thickness in millimeters): 37 * 12 * 4.5. In general, "slim" ;-)
Defining the controller model
First of all, let's create "at the root" of any of the local drives on your computer. working folder, in which we will put all the programs we need for "flashing". You can rename the newly created folder to your liking, but keep in mind that the name of this folder should not contain spaces or Russian letters. As an example, I will use the "USBreFLASH" folder on the local drive "C" of my computer. It does not hurt to immediately add this folder to the exceptions of your antivirus, because, for example, my vigilant "watchman" "Dr.Web" er "moved about a third of software modules in "Quarantine", considering them "potentially dangerous" and "possibly infected".
After we have decided on the working folder, we launch the browser available in the system (in my case, “Mozilla Firefox”) and type the following in the address bar:. On the page that opens, click on the link "Download the program" located below (2). The archive with the program offered for download takes about 3 megabytes, after unpacking the folder with the program will take up a little more space - about 4.5 megabytes.
After that, go to the downloads folder (its location depends on the settings of your browser), find the "usbflashinfo" archive and use any archiver available in the system to unpack it into the previously created "USBreFLASH" folder. As a result, the folder of the same name "usbflashinfo" appears in our working folder and text file"File_id.diz" containing a short description of the program version. Since this file is not needed for the program to work and it is only an "eyesore", we delete it with a clear conscience.
Next, go to the "usbflashinfo" subdirectory and run the only exe file "GetFlashInfo.exe" from there. A program window opens with a warning text and a single button "Get information about a USB flash drive" (see figure):
We connect the USB flash drive we have at our disposal to a free USB port.
Read the warning carefully before proceeding! The program shows you it every time you start it, and I will additionally remind you here. The main condition for the successful and safe completion of the diagnostic procedure is no access to a USB flash drive, that is, before starting and during the diagnostic process itself, you should not read or write anything from a USB flash drive or to a USB flash drive. Otherwise (very different! :-)), when you click on the button "Get information about the flash drive", the program will roughly "cut off" everyone else who wants to access the flash drive, and what will happen after that with the data on the flash drive (if, of course, they are there available), nobody knows. As you yourself understand, this is especially important if the tested flash drive is not yours, and, in addition, is filled with information important for its real owner, which you have no right to risk the safety of. Please note that some antiviruses (Kaspersky and others like him), acting "by default", rush to check the newly inserted USB flash drive with all their might, so it is better either to wait until this process is completed, or if there is a lot a lot and the check is delayed, interrupt it through the antivirus menu.
So, we make sure that no one and nothing is working with the flash drive at the moment, and press the button "Get information about the USB flash drive". If everything is in order with the flash drive and nothing prevented the diagnostic program from completing its work to the end, the main window of the program will be filled with the data obtained as a result of polling the flash drive. The second line from the top will indicate the model of the controller on which the experimental flash drive is assembled (in this case - "Silicon Motion SM3257 ENBA"):
For the future, you should keep in mind that the developers of the "usbflashinfo" program are trying to "keep up" with the times, so you may well face a situation when a program downloaded a few months ago, upon the next launch, refuses to work and asks you to download an updated version - there is no need to worry or be afraid of this, the developers of the program do not demand money from you (at least not yet ;-)), so it is not necessary to neglect the update O it.
Find a service utility
So, we managed to determine the specific controller model on which our flash drive is assembled. Now is the time to start looking for a suitable "flasher" program. I hope you haven't forgotten the address of a wonderful site -? As I already said, when visiting this site, you can easily get lost among the software abundance presented on it, so I give a hint - the main service utility for working with flash drives on SMI controllers is called "SMI MPTool". Despite the same name, this program exists in many versions and modifications, differing in support of certain models of controllers and memory chips. Therefore, you need not only download the latest version, but make sure that it supports your controller model.
To search for the version of the program we need, we re-launch the browser available in the system and type in the address bar::
Slowly "scrolling" the opened page, pay attention to the models of supported controllers indicated in square brackets to the right of the name and version number of production utilities. Let me remind you that in this case we are interested in the string containing. After the required line is found, download this version of the utility by clicking on the word "download" in the found line:
We find among the downloads a freshly downloaded archive with the service utility and using any archiver available in the system, unpack it into the previously created folder "USBreFLASH". After unpacking, a subdirectory “smi_mptool_v.2.5.27_v8_m1004_3257enba” with program files and a text file “readme.txt” with a link to the source site appear in our working folder. Since the "readme.txt" file is of no practical value, we simply delete it so as not to clutter up the working folder.
In principle, you can stop at this stage, but, despite the fact that the name of the folder with the program is "correct" from the point of view of the program itself (that is, it does not contain spaces and Cyrillic characters), I would advise you to shorten the folder name somewhat for convenience , before, for example, this: "smi_mptool_3257enba". I will repeat myself - the "flasher" program will start perfectly and will work even without renaming the folder in which it is stored, so the purpose of renaming is just the desire to make it somewhat easier for the user to navigate the working folder.
Editing the configuration file
At first I wanted to call this section “ Creation configuration file ", but I remembered that the configuration file itself, although in a form unsuitable for our purpose, is still present in the folder with the service program, so I called the section" Edit configuration file ".
So what is this file, why is it needed and, most importantly, how to edit it?
The configuration file is a simple text file called "default.ini" and contains instructions for the "flasher" program to in what way you need to "flash" the controller of the flash drive. Since the configuration file, despite the unusual (in the opinion of a layman) extension ".ini", as already mentioned, is a regular text file, it can be edited even using the standard Windows "Notepad" text editor. this is ungrateful and difficult for beginners, so we will make changes to the configuration file directly through the interface of the "flasher" program, in which, exclusively for this purpose, a special button is provided (well done, Chinese!). that the configuration file that comes with the service utility is primarily intended for restoring normal flash drives, so it does not provide any way to "convert" a standard flash drive into a CD / DVD drive "by default".
To make the necessary changes to the configuration file, go to the folder with the service utility - "smi_mptool_3257enba" - and run the only executable file from there - "sm32Xtest_V27-8.exe":
The main window opens in front of us service utility, in which we consistently need:
- press the "Setting" button at the right edge of the program window (1);
- in the password entry window that opens, type: "320" ( without quotes!) (2);
- confirm the entry by pressing the "OK" button (3):
If you leave the password field empty or enter any combination of letters and numbers there, the program will still give you the opportunity to view the current settings, but it will not allow you to edit them - keep this in mind. After we have entered the correct password to be able to change the settings, a window will open in which we will be asked to select a configuration file (2) from those already available in the program folder (1) or specify the path to the configuration file (if you saved it somewhere "outside"), confirming the selection by pressing the "OK" button (3):
Nothing prevents you from creating over time several different configuration files in order to choose the most suitable one for your specific task before starting work. The program, immediately after starting, "by default" works with the "default.ini" file located in the program folder, so neither rename nor delete this file it does not follow. It should be noted here that the mechanism for changing configuration files in the "SMI MPTool" program is not implemented very well. If you need to change the "default" configuration file to some other, you will need to open this "other" file for editing in exactly the same way as described above, but do not make any changes and just click on the "OK" button ... After that, the program will "think" for a few seconds, and when it "comes to its senses", the file you have selected will be installed as a working file. You can determine which configuration file is currently being used by looking at the title of the running program window, in the center of which, bounded on both sides by unbreakable underscores, the name of the currently active configuration file will be indicated, for example: "___ default.ini ___". It should be remembered that when saving or creating configuration files, they are subject to exactly the same requirements as those imposed on the program itself - the file name ( and all the way to it!) should be as short as possible, should not contain spaces and symbols of the Russian alphabet.
Since the topic of creating several configuration files, as well as clarifying the differences between them, are beyond the scope of this article, I will not dwell on this in detail, but simply describe what changes should be made to the existing configuration file "default.ini" in order to after "flashing" the controller, the flash drive was identified as a CD / DVD drive. After you, after completing all the previous steps, open the file "default.ini" for editing, a window with many settings will appear before your eyes (see figure):
All the settings contained in the first tab of the window, called "Main Flow Setting" ("my main settings") - and we are only interested in this one tab - can be conditionally divided into five groups:
- extended USB device identifiers (1);
- abbreviated USB device identifiers (2);
- type of USB device (3);
- USB device indication (4);
- the actual "flashing" settings (5).
From the first group of settings we need only two lines - "Vendor Str" ("Manufacturer's name") and "Product Str" ("Product name"). In principle, the information contained in them affects only what "name" your flash drive will appear in the Windows Explorer window and in the BIOS boot menu after the "flashing". The full "name" of the flash drive will be displayed as: "Manufacturer name" space "product name" ... When filling in these fields, Latin letters, numbers and even a space character are allowed. Since I am creating a bootable CD / DVD drive to repair broken computers, the ISO image that I plan to "upload" to the USB flash drive is called "Repair". Accordingly, it will be more convenient for me if my repair flash drive is designated as "REPAIR USB DISK". So, in the field "Vendor Str" I need to enter the word "REPAIR" (without quotes), and leave the field "Product Str" as it is. Of course, you can change the contents of these fields to your liking, for example, immortalizing your name in the name of the flash drive: "ETO SDELAL VOVA" ;-)
In the second group of settings, we just need to duplicate the name of the manufacturer and the name of the product in exactly the same form as you entered it earlier. In the same group there is a "switch" for the current consumed by the USB power, but I would not advise you to use it, and here is why. The real, "physical" current consumed by the flash drive depends directly on design features the flash drive itself and cannot be changed programmatically in any way. The value determined by this "kind of switch" only tells the system how powerful the equipment is connected and whether it is possible to find an opportunity to "save" on its power. It follows that a situation is quite possible when the flash drive physically consumes, say, 300 mA, and you manually set the value to 200 mA, as a result of which the system, when connecting the flash drive, will consider that it "has the right" to lower the current to the specified 200 mA, and the flash drive, of course, will stop working. Therefore, it is better not to profit from any crumbs, but to leave here the standard value of 500 mA, which is more than enough for the vast majority of flash drive models.
In the third group we are interested in the "Disk Type" and "Disk Label" fields. For our purpose, the “Disk Type” field should be “USB-ZIP”; and in the "Disk Label" field, you must repeat (yes, for the third time!) what you specified in the "Product Str" (from the first group) and "Product" (from the second group) fields. ).
The fourth group of settings is responsible for changing the light indication of the operation of the flash drive, and nothing needs to be changed here.
Finally, the fifth group of settings is of the greatest interest to us. Here are the parameters that are directly related to the process of "flashing":
- "Boot Blk" - boot sector... By default, the checkbox is checked, but the file is not selected. It doesn't matter to us.
- "Erase Info" - to erase all information. By default, there is no checkbox. It does not matter for us, since during the "flashing" all the information on the flash drive will be lost in any case.
- "Pretest" - " pre two-handed test". This refers to the test of the memory cells of the flash drive. By default, the checkbox is checked, the "Erase Good Block Only" option is selected. Flash drives, like hard drives, undergo full memory testing during manufacture, as a result of which unstable memory blocks are identified and marked in a special way in order to exclude their further use. If the "Erase Good Block Only" method is selected, then the flash drive controller does not overwrite the factory-created table of "bad" blocks and only tests those blocks that were marked as "good". Some older types of controllers "did not know how" to implement this method in practice, so if problems arise during "flashing", you can change the value of this parameter to "Erase All Block" ("erase all blocks"). This will slow down the "flashing" process, but may be able to help in case of problems.
- "Write CID" - "way of writing information". By default, the "daw" is on, the "TSOP Standard Type" is selected as the method, which is standard for all modern flash drives and does not require replacement with any other method.
- Download ISP - download specific type"Firmware". By default, the checkbox is checked, but the file is not selected. Item has no special meaning- if the program "recognizes" the connected USB flash drive, then it will select the appropriate type of "firmware" by itself; if not, then choosing something manually in our particular case is pointless, since you will not really "flash" the flash drive anyway.
- "Copy Test" - to perform a preliminary test of copying information to a USB flash drive. By default, the "jackdaw" is on, the amount of information to be copied is selected at 2% of the capacity of the flash drive. For us, this item does not play a special role - in order to once again make sure of the quality of the flash drive, you can leave it on; to speed up the process of "flashing", it can be disabled.
- "Make Auto Run" - "create startup". The name is not quite accurate, since it is the inclusion of this item (marking with a "daw") that provides us with the opportunity to load the ISO image of the required disk onto a USB flash drive during the "flashing". After the item becomes active, a field to the right of it opens for entering the path to the ISO image. In my case, this path looks like this: "D: \ ISO \ REPAIR.ISO". Please note that the path to the image, as well as the name of the image itself, should be as short as possible, without Cyrillic characters and spaces! Activating the "CDROM Only" sub-item enables a mode in which the free space remaining on the USB flash drive after the image is written is blocked (until the subsequent "flashing") and becomes unavailable for use. Deactivating this sub-item, accordingly, allows you to use the remaining free space as a regular removable disk, that is, one physical flash drive will be detected by the system as a composite device from an external CD / DVD drive and a regular flash drive. On my own behalf, I want to add that, despite the seemingly tempting of such a method, which consists in the fact that you are allowed to use the entire volume of an honestly paid flash drive, this method is fraught with problems in the future, since it is far from possible to boot through BIOS from such a "composite" flash drive all computers. Personally, I am ready to sacrifice the remaining half of the volume of the flash drive for the sake of maximum compatibility, so I will activate this item. If you still chose the option with a "composite" device, then by setting the "daws" on the checkboxes below, you can immediately set the formatting mode for the remaining volume of the flash drive and select the type of file system.
- "Preload" - "preload". By default, there is no checkbox and this item is inactive. We do not need to change its state. Activating this item implies a simple recording of some of your data on a USB flash drive in the process of "flashing" - in much the same way as you do it using the usual Windows "ovsky" Explorer. Of course, such data loading is possible only if you not create a CD-ROM, or at least leave free space on the flash drive (see the previous point). The question is, why add this option to the settings? What, after "flashing" the flash drive, it will not be possible to write data in the "usual" way? Of course it is possible. But only they will not be protected by anything from change. That is why the developers of the program added this item to the settings and the next one, which is called ...
- "Disk Read Only" - "read-only disk". By default, the "jackdaw" is not worth it. In relation to our task, it does not play a special role, since the CD / DVD-disk obtained after "flashing" the flash drive, even with the inactive parameter "Disk Read Only", will still be "read-only". But in the event that you do not create a partition on a CD-ROM flash drive or plan to write some arbitrary information to the remaining space, activating this item will help you protect it from unauthorized changes.
- Test Result LED Flash - checking the results. By default, the "jackdaw" is on. It is advisable to leave this item active in order to make sure once again that the "flashing" process has completed properly.
As a result of all the ordeals with the settings, you should get something like the following (here the items that I considered necessary to change are highlighted in red; of course, in your particular case, the settings may differ from mine):
After all the necessary changes have been made, we must save the configuration file. To do this, click on the "Save As" button located at the right edge of the lower edge of the settings window (1), then in the standard window that opens, select the existing file "default.ini" (2) and click on the "OK" button (3) :
Let me remind you that if for some reason you do not want to "spoil" the original "default.ini" file, then you can save it under a different name, for example, "forcdrom.ini". If you decide to overwrite the existing configuration file, then after clicking on the "OK" button, another window will open in front of you, in which you will be asked to confirm the replacement of the file. In any of these cases, after you have performed the described actions, the settings selection window will close, and the program will automatically switch to work with the updated configuration file. (in case of creating a new configuration file - before restarting).
After the configuration file has been edited properly, you can proceed directly to the "flashing" process.
"Flashing" the flash drive controller
Before starting the "flashing" (or even better, before connecting the USB flash drive), it is highly desirable to suspend the antivirus. Yes, yes, of course, I remember that you have already added our working folder to the antivirus exceptions, however, do not forget that during the "flashing" process, the service utility will have to go "to the side" - to where the specified in the settings is stored file-image, and the inhibition of the data flow "pouring" from one disk to another by the anti-virus monitor is fraught with the most unexpected errors. The work of all other application programs that are not related to the "flashing" process should also be terminated. In addition, I note that it is very rare and not on all computers, but, nevertheless, it happens that the monitor's power saving functions forgotten by the user and not activated in time during the process of "flashing" hard drives, motherboard, as well as the inclusion of the screensaver, lead to the impossibility of its correct completion. Therefore, instead of taking risks and checking in practice with an unpredictable result for a flash drive, whether "you have the right computer", I would advise you to temporarily disable all power saving functions for the above devices, and either disable the screensaver for a while, or set a longer interval triggering - at least one hour. During this time, firstly, in any case, you will perform some actions; secondly, it will become clear how great the chances of the success of our event are.
After work antivirus software suspended, energy-saving functions of the hardware are disabled, and the time before the screen saver is activated is increased, insert a suitable USB flash drive into a free USB port:
We launch the program, the "flasher". If your computer is running Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8, then use the "Run as Administrator" function. Since I have the good old Windows XP, I do without such problems and just run the program file for execution. The main window of the service utility opens in front of us:
First of all, click with the "mouse" the button "Scan USB" ("Scan USB ports"), located at the right edge of the program window, in the middle (1). The same effect can be achieved by simply pressing the "F5" key on your keyboard. If at the moment of pressing the button - on-screen or keyboard - it makes no difference, a suitable flash drive is connected to the computer and nothing interferes with the operation of the program, the following changes will occur in the program window:
- firstly, in one of the lines of the list of 16 possible USB ports (this is the scope! :-)), the status value "Ready" will appear, the volume accessible flash memory, controller model and unique serial number of the flash drive (2);
- secondly, in one of the squares corresponding to the same 16 USB ports, the value will appear total volume flash drives, obscure index "2" (the second version of the presentation?), and to the right and below the main square there will be a small additional, filled in blue, corresponding to the same controller status "Ready" (3);
- thirdly, the name of the flash drive controller model and the corresponding binary firmware automatically selected by the service utility (4) will appear in the lowest information window.
If after pressing the "Scan USB" button the listed changes did not occur to you, then this indicates either any physical problems with the USB flash drive / USB port, or that the program does not "know" anything about the connected USB flash drive at all. Sometimes it also happens that the information fields are filled in according to the scan results, but the controller status value is indicated as "No ready" or "ISP can" t be found! " and is displayed in a font not in blue, but in red (the small additional square in the graphical representation field (3) becomes the same color) Unlike the previous situation, when the program did not "know" anything about the connected flash drive at all, this means that the program I "recognized" the flash drive, but it (the program) does not have a binary firmware suitable for this type of controller, in which case it remains only to look for a newer and (or) suitable version of the "flasher" program.
Let's hope that you correctly identified the model of the flash drive controller, took the choice of the service utility seriously, and that everything is in order with the USB ports on your computer, therefore, in the program window in blue, symbolizing inspiration (did you not know?: -)), the promising "Ready" status is displayed. This is the last step when you can "painlessly" refuse to "flash" the flash drive if you suddenly change your mind. And if not, then you just have to click with the "mouse" on the "Start" button (the uppermost at the right edge of the program window), or, which is the same, press the "Space" key on the keyboard (1):
After that, in the very first line, in which the inscription "Ready" was previously flaunted, in the column "Progress" a progress indicator will start, similar to the one that is standard for Windows (2). Please note that it will be filled in and reset again. several times, since the process of "flashing" consists of several sequential stages (have you forgotten many settings in the configuration file yet? ;-)), and the indicator shows the current progress of each process in turn. You can find out exactly at what stage the process of "flashing" is currently located by looking at the second option for representing USB ports in the form of squares. In the square that corresponds to your USB port to which the "flashing" flash drive is connected, a description of the current stage of the "flashing" process will be displayed in the form of a text inscription (3). In this case, you can see that the screenshot was taken at the moment when the preliminary testing was carried out, which is unambiguously evidenced by the inscription "Test" against the background of the first square. In the lower right corner of the program, the counter of the time elapsed since the start of the "flashing" is displayed in seconds (4).
Keep in mind that the process of "flashing" itself and, moreover, the recording of the file-image takes a significant amount of time - sometimes up to several tens of minutes. Despite the fact that the data transfer rate via the USB bus is strictly regulated by the relevant standards, many factors influence the execution time of the "flashing" process, both explicit (the number of stages during "flashing", the USB port standard, the volume of the ISO image), so and hidden (configuration and characteristics disk subsystem computer, parallel execution system processes, controller modification). In any case, you should be patient and in no case interrupt the process of "flashing", if the counter continues to count the seconds, the indicator scale may move slowly, and the inscriptions on the square symbolizing the USB port change. Of course, in the event that, for example, for a whole hour the inscription "Test" does not change to the inscription "Load", and the indicator either stands still or is cyclically filled / reset, you will have to make a sad conclusion that that the "flashing" has failed at the moment and the program crashes. But, I repeat, this is - extreme a case, which should not be resorted to without extreme necessity and clear evidence of the "freezing" of the "flashing" process.
Evidence of the successful completion of the "flashing" process is the "reset" indicator of the progress of the work, the stopped time counter and, most importantly, the appearance of two green squares with the inscription "OK" in the graphical representation field and in the upper right corner of the program:
As you can see on my On a computer, "flashing" an 8 gigabyte flash drive with preliminary testing and recording an ISO image of 3.3 gigabytes took a little over 13 minutes and was completed quite successfully.
After the long-awaited inscriptions "OK" "light up" in the window of the service utility, close the program and safe we extract our USB flash drive in a way.
Remember - at the first moment after the "flashing", only safe removal flash drives with a mandatory preliminary stop of the device!
Checking the results
Let's say you did everything correctly and the "flashing" process was successfully completed, after which you disabled in a safe way USB flash drive and removed it from the USB connector. What's next? And then we have to check the result of the "flashing" by testing our flash drive in action. Therefore, without postponing the matter indefinitely (as a rule, human nature is arranged in such a way that you want to quickly see the result of your labor), let's proceed to the tests. To do this, we reconnect our experimental flash drive to the computer:
But what do we see? A computer that has long been "familiar" with our flash drive (it detected it at the very first connection and installed the appropriate driver), has just worked with it and into which, after just a few seconds, we reinserted it, informs us about that "New equipment was found" - but not a flash drive at all, but first we are talking about a certain "REPAIR USB DISK USB Device", And then specifies that this device belongs to the class of" CD / DVD drives "!
Now let's see how this device is displayed in the standard Windows "My Computer" window:
Obviously, it belongs to the class of "Devices with removable media", and is displayed as a CD / DVD drive (in my case, it is assigned the letter "G:") with the "REPAIR" disc inserted in it.
Do you still have doubts that the drive is "not real"? Then let's take a look at its properties:
From what the operating system demonstrated to us in the properties window of this device, we can make an unambiguous conclusion that the drive is a very "real" one, with the CDFS file system, which is the "calling card" of real CDs, and a complete lack of free space for recording.
How is he doing with security? Maybe the flash drive only skillfully "pretends" to be a CD / DVD drive, but in fact remains available to everyone and every standard random access medium? To answer this question, let's try to write a certain arbitrary file to it (for a trial I will try to copy the file “readme.txt” from the archive with the “flasher” program):
Does not work! We are politely but firmly made to understand that this, if I may say so, "disk" is "read-only" and you cannot copy or move files to it. Well, what am I, in fact, repeating the standard Windows message to you? Have you never seen it yourself? ;-)
Thus, it turns out that we really "turned" the flash drive into a CD / DVD drive, along the way once again making sure that it is now really recognized by the system as a real CD / DVD drive and write or modify the stored on it (or all- still "on it"?) files are not possible, but - I hope you have not forgotten yet? - we are interested in another important feature of our "flashed" flash drive, namely, the ability to boot a computer from it through the BIOS. Therefore, the last and most important stage of verification is ahead of us.
We leave the USB flash drive connected to the computer and reboot it. At the time the BIOS firmware is running, we call the boot menu (as a rule, by pressing one of the "F + number" keys - which one depends on the developer of the motherboard of your computer) and make sure that our flash drive is present in the list of devices from which you can boot:
After we confirm our choice by pressing the "Enter" key, we make sure that the computer really booted from our flash drive (of course, the "picture" obtained as a result of this on the monitor will depend on which ISO image you have chosen to write to process of "flashing"):
Congratulations - you not only became the proud owner of a unique flash drive, but also mastered the technique of making such flash drives!
Possible problems and ways to solve them
Despite the fact that SMI controllers are one of the most reliable and well thought-out, in the course of such a delicate and non-standard process as "flashing", a wide variety of errors and problems may occur. I sincerely wish you a successful completion of each "flashing", but if it still happens that the process ends with an error or does not end at all ("hangs"), I hope this section can help you, in which I tried to collect descriptions and possible solutions to the most common problems. At the same time, I ask you not to consider the material presented here as "the ultimate truth." One the person who owns one(well, let's say, even two or three) computers, and having "reflashed" only two dozen flash drives out of thousands of commercially available ones, it is simply physically impossible to "catch" all possible "glitches" and "bugs" arising from the greatest variety of hardware combinations - software configurations of computers, models of flash drives and controllers, as well as differences in the experience of their owners. Therefore, a situation is quite possible when you, in the process of implementing the actions described in this article, will encounter a certain problem, and I, in turn, will not be able to help you with anything. In this case, I can advise you to look for information about the problem on the Internet, ask the appropriate question on specialized forums (at least on the two sites mentioned at the beginning of the article - and), consult with more experienced comrades, or try to implement these actions on another computer (on work, with friends ...).
So, now directly the description possible problems and ways to solve them:
| Description of the problem | Clarification | Possible reason | Solution method |
| The service utility does not "see" the USB flash drive | The operating system also does not "see" the flash drive | Physical malfunction of the flash drive | Replace the USB stick with a working one |
| Physical malfunction of the USB port | Connect the flash drive to another USB port | ||
| Failure of the "south bridge" of the motherboard | Repair or replace the motherboard | ||
| USB device support is disabled at the BIOS level "a | Enable BIOS support for USB devices | ||
| Corresponding USB controller is disabled at the operating system level | Turn on the USB controller (for example, through the "Device Manager") | ||
| Not installed at all or installed incorrect drivers for the motherboard | Check and if necessary update the drivers for the motherboard | ||
The flash drive does not have enough power:
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| The operating system "sees" the flash drive | Temporarily disable antivirus protection, as well as currently unnecessary software running in the "background" mode (for example, using "msconfig") | ||
| The connected flash drive is incompatible with the version of the service utility being used | Replace the USB flash drive with a compatible one or update the software | ||
| The service utility "recognizes" the USB flash drive, but cannot work with it | One of the following messages is displayed: "No ready" "Initial Param Fail" "ISP can" t be found " | The service utility cannot find the firmware file suitable for this controller model | Select software that supports this type of controller |
| The service utility is "reset" or "freezes" during operation | The problem occurs at the same stage of the "flashing" process | The configuration file contains functions that are not supported by this controller model |
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| The integrity of the ISO-image written to the USB flash drive is violated | Check the integrity of the used ISO image, update or replace it if necessary | ||
| The problem occurs at different stages of the "flashing" process | The operation of the service utility is interfered with by the activated energy saving functions of the computer components. | Disable or suspend all power saving functions (both software and hardware) | |
| The operation of the service utility is interfered with by the activity of antivirus tools or other third-party software | Temporarily disable anti-virus protection, as well as unnecessary software currently running in the "background" | ||
| The service utility does not have enough system rights to perform the action | Run the program "On behalf of the Administrator" and (or) "In compatibility mode with Windows XP" | ||
| The "flashing" process ends with an error | The message is displayed: "Bad Block over setting" | The number of unstable blocks of flash memory detected exceeds the maximum permissible target value |
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| The message is displayed: “Bad Block over setting (User ...> FW ...)» | An unrecoverable flash error has occurred |
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Hello everybody! Today interesting topic, how to burn a disc to a USB flash drive! In general, we read)
How to rewrite from disk to USB flash drive?
I sometimes look at site statistics and see what people are interested in. I have a popular topic, well, usually people are looking for how to write an image to a USB flash drive, but here I see a request: how to burn a disc to a USB flash drive ... To be honest, the request sounds strange, but when I looked at how many people are trying to find how I do it, I was slightly surprised that they thousands ... On the site I write topics that people are interested in or need, for a note) Well, of course, here is the first option and I hope this topic will come in handy for many who are looking how to burn a disc to a USB flash drive 🙂
At first I still thought, did they really write such a program, but I didn't even find it on foreign sites, it's still not safe)
1. First, make a disk image
I have not yet written an article about the UltraISO program, but now the time has come, I just have a portable version.
Launch, insert the disc into the CD-DVD-ROM and choose to create a CD image.
Now we select your USB flash drive, format it if necessary, but when recording, the program will format the USB flash drive itself and press write.
Everything! Myth how to burn a disc to a USB flash drive destroyed 🙂
Live CD is an effective tool for fixing computer problems, treating viruses, diagnosing malfunctions (including hardware), and also one of the ways to try operating system in use without installing it on a PC. Typically, Live CDs are distributed as ISO image to burn to a disc, however you can easily burn a Live CD image to a USB flash drive, thus obtaining a Live USB.
Despite the fact that this procedure is quite simple, it can nevertheless cause questions from users, since the usual methods of creating a bootable USB flash drive with Windows are usually not suitable here. In this tutorial, you will find several ways to burn Live CD to USB, as well as how to put several images at once on one USB flash drive.
From almost any ISO image from a Live CD, you can make a bootable USB flash drive using the UltraISO program.
The recording procedure is very simple - you just need to open this image in the program and select the "Burn image hard disk”, And then specify the USB storage device for recording. More about this: (despite the fact that the instructions are given in relation to Windows 8.1, the procedure is completely the same).
Burn Live CD to USB in other ways
For almost every "official" Live CD on the developer's site there is own instruction for writing to a USB flash drive, as well as its own utilities for this, for example, for Kaspersky - this is Kaspersky Rescue Disk Maker. Sometimes it is better to use them (for example, when recording via WinSetupFromUSB, the specified image does not always work adequately).
Likewise for homemade Live CDs, the locations you download them from are almost always detailed instructions, allowing you to quickly get the desired image to USB. In many cases, a variety of options will do.
And finally, some of these ISOs have already begun to acquire support for EFI booting, and in the near future, I think most of them will support it, and in such a case, it is usually enough to simply copy the contents of the image to a USB drive with the FAT32 file system to boot from it. ...
