Hello, dear visitors of the Start-Luck blog. Some readers remember those times when we shared our videotapes, disks, books and then lost them in obscurity, forgetting which particular bad friend took “our charm.”

For modern people this is already such a rarity. Digital options include recording and re-recording. Even if you want to give something to someone, you can always make a copy with peace of mind and not worry about whether the information will be returned to you or not. It will remain at hand. This is what we will talk about today.

In this article I will tell you how to copy from a disk to a flash drive. simple method and using an ISO image. I will work on Windows 7, although essentially this is not so important. The steps won't be much different no matter which version you're using.

And, of course, we can’t do without video instructions, which will resolve any misunderstanding between me and those eager to know the information.

I think we can start now.

A simple way without programs

So, first of all, open the “My Computer” section. Then you need to insert your CD or DVD into the drive.

Some laptops do not have a dedicated disk drive. What to do in this case? I think you already know the answer to this question and have used boot disks in ISO format more than once. You should have it now.

If this is your first time encountering this problem, I’ll explain. I already told you how to do this in one of my previous publications. Thanks to programs like Daemon Tools, we calmly solve this problem.

You won't have a physical disk, but the computer will start to "think" that the CD is inserted into the correct drive. Stop for a second, now you need to take a little break from the main task and solve a related one. My article will help you with this. After reading and “inserting” the image into the “disk drive”, return here.

As soon as you have solved the most important task and inserted a physical disk or its image, you will see an autorun window. Click on "View Files".

If the required window is not displayed, then you can right-click on the image or disk so that a dialog menu appears, in it select the “Open” function, or the same “Autorun”.

Now insert the flash drive into the USB port. This goodness is enough for any laptop or computer. Select the “Open folder to view files” section again. Again, if this does not happen, the right mouse button and the “Open” or “Autorun” function will help you.

As a result, you should have two windows with the “insides” of each disk. If this does not happen, just open the CD/DVD, then in a new window go to the “My Computer” section and open the flash drive.

Copy files from the disk. Click on the ones you need, then right mouse button and the “Copy” function.

You can, of course, first open the disk and copy files from it, and then “open” the USB and insert everything you need there, but I wouldn’t want you to get confused.

Open a second window in which you have files from the flash drive, upload them there. Right mouse button and then "Paste" option.

That's basically it. The problem is solved.

Video instruction

In this training video you can see how to load music onto a flash drive from a disk - where the buttons are located, in what order to press them, and so on. Everything is very detailed.

If you are confused in my text, then everything will become clear in just 3 minutes.

Some licensed discs with audio files have copy protection. What to do about it? The easiest way is to use special programs that help remove it.

This method should be treated with great caution, since there are no licensed utilities to help perform this task. This activity is not legal! Therefore, you may have to download files that may contain viruses. Personally, I'm afraid of such things. There is too much “valuables” hidden on my PC.

Considering how active hackers are now, this is a really serious issue. You can read articles such as “” or “” in my syllable.

Based on the previous words, I am not giving you any specific link to the program, but I am offering the training video, in the description of which you can find the download URL, for your information only. Know that such a method exists.

Creating an image and then overwriting it

We move on to disk images. What is this, I think you already understand. The same disk, only in digital format, intended for sharing with friends, deceiving the computer, saying that something has already been inserted into it, and so on.

In general, any image can simply be transferred from a computer to a flash drive without any problems using the same principle that I have already described. However, there is also alternative method.

This blog has a detailed article about . In it, I described in detail how to create an image and upload it, so you can read it by following the link.

To make this publication more useful, I will leave you with just a video on this topic, which will allow those who are in a hurry to complete this task faster. I advise others, of course, to read the publication. It describes in detail everything that may be useful.

I recommend that you also download licensed version this program UltraISO from the siteAllsoft . There's too much storage on any PC. important information, which hackers can use to use pirated utilities with peace of mind. I wouldn't want your personal data to be hacked. The risks are too great.

Don't forget about antivirus software too. Of course, they are unlikely to get help from well-known scammers who operate on a serious scale, but there are only a few of them, and the interest in other people’s PCs is now enormous. This is very easy money. The phrase “This will never affect me” no longer works. Everyone is interested in you.

You can download a good antivirus from the same Allsoft website. For example, I like NOD32 .

That's all. Don't forget to subscribe to my VKontakte group . See you again and good luck.

Hi all! Today is an interesting topic, how to burn a disc to a flash drive! In general we read)

How to transfer from disk to flash drive?

I sometimes look at the website statistics and see what people are interested in. I have a popular topic, and usually people are looking for how to burn an image to a flash drive, and then I see a request: how to burn a disk to a 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 a little surprised, they thousands... On the site I write topics that people are interested in or need, for note) Well, here, of course, is the first option and I hope this topic will be useful to many who are looking for how to burn a disc to a flash drive 🙂

At first I also thought whether such a program had really been written, but no, I couldn’t even find it on foreign sites, it wouldn’t be safe anyway)

1. First we make a disk image

I haven't written an article about UltraISO program, but now the time has come, I just have a portable version.

Launch it, insert the disc into the CD-DVD-ROM and select create a CD image.

Now we select your flash drive, format it if necessary, but when recording, the program itself will format the flash drive and click write.

All! Myth how to burn a disc to a flash drive destroyed :)

Since there is a section on the forum about storage media (including optical media, such as CD and DVD), it was decided to write an article about such, unfortunately, a not very popular method of recording discs as batch recording. Perhaps, after reading this, someone will be interested in this method.

Batch method for burning CD/DVD-RW discs or how to use optical RW discs like a flash drive or HDD

These days, various flash drives, portable HDD already almost completely replaced optical CDs and DVDs, which at one time were quite popular due to their relatively low cost and very capacious volume (at that time, anyway). And there are, of course, many reasons for this. This is their size, and constant damage to disks due to scratches and cracks, and low speed recording, and noise when the drive operates.

Even the process of writing data to such disks could only take place in a session: we decide in advance what data to write, we assign it to the program, and the recording occurs. Subsequently, if we need to add something to the disk, we open a new session, and this means losing a few more extra megabytes (on a DVD - tens of megabytes), since they are allocated for service information. Well, it’s basically impossible to delete any individual files from the disk; you have to completely erase them, then rewrite the data onto the disc, leaving only what you need...

Of course, the complexity and inconvenience of writing data to such disks turns off most users. After all, it’s much easier to plug a flash drive into a USB port and copy what you need; if there is something unnecessary, you can delete it. But not many people know that in fact, this is also possible on optical discs. After all, a writing laser, in theory, doesn’t care what to write. Solution - Batch recording method (Packet Writing), invented by the way quite a long time ago.

The essence of the method

Unlike the session recording method, when the entire session with data and service information is pre-formed and immediately written entirely to disk, the batch recording method allows you to write data not immediately, but in small portions (packets). Thus, the disk can be treated like a regular flash drive: write, edit, delete data directly on it.

The RW disc is first formatted (this operation takes 10-15 minutes), the UDF file system is written to it, after which the disk can be fully used on any writing drive in operating systems of the Linux family (if the package is installed udftools), as well as Mac OS X and Windows Vista/7/8. In more earlier versions Windows (Windows 98/ME/2000/XP) will require installation of additional software, such as Nero InCD or Roxio Drag-To-Disc, For example. In the absence of such software in Windows XP, for example, data from such a disk can only be read.

In this article I will look at the process of preparing a DVD-RW disc for use in batch recording mode in the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. For those who have Windows 7 or Windows 8 installed on their computer, the preparation process will in principle be similar to Windows Vista.

Batch recording CD/DVD-RW in Windows Vista/7/8 operating system

As I already said, before you use our RW disc (in my case it is a DVD-RW disc), you need to first format it. In Windows Vista/7/8 this procedure is extremely simple; you do not need to install any additional programs.

1. Insert our RW disk into the drive tray.

2. If there is any data on it, erase it. To do this, double-click on the icon Computer on the desktop (or execute the menu command Start ==> Computer). In the window that appears, find the icon of our drive, right-click on it and select the item in the menu that appears Erase this disk.

The Erase Disk Wizard window will appear. Click Further, the erasing process will begin. After it is completed, click Ready.

3. Now that we have a blank disk, we can immediately begin formatting. Just double-click on the drive icon, a small window will appear in which you will be asked to enter the label of the future disk. Enter the desired label, you can leave the existing one; it can be changed later.

Click on the round arrow button Show formatting options.

The window will expand and formatting options will appear. There will be two switches here that set the method for writing data to the disk. By default the radio button will be set Live file system- this is exactly what we need, so we leave it enabled. Now we need to decide on the version of the UDF file system.

It all depends on what operating system you're on. this disk will be used, The default version of Windows Vista is UDF 2.01. If the recordable disc will be used on computers with operating system Windows Vista or later, you can leave version 2.01. If the disk is planned to be used in earlier Windows versions, it is recommended to change the version to 1.50. To do this, immediately under the switch Live file system click on the link Change version, in the window that appears, select UDF version 1.50 from the drop-down list and click OK.

4. We have decided on the parameters, we can start formatting. Click on the button Further. A message will appear warning us that formatting may take time and that we should not turn off the computer during the formatting process. We agree, we press Yes. The formatting process will begin, and a window will appear on the screen displaying its progress.

The duration of this operation largely depends on the permissible recording speed of the disc itself, as well as on maximum speed recording supported by the drive. In my case, I used a 4-speed DVD-RW disc, the formatting procedure took about 15 minutes.

5. Once the formatting procedure is completed, the window displaying its progress will disappear. You can start working with the disk.

You can write, delete, edit files on the disk in any program, in any file manager. The disk is removed in the usual way: close all programs that use the disk, then remove it. When you insert a disc into the burner drive on a computer running Windows Vista/7/8, you can use it immediately.

Batch burning CD/DVD-RW in earlier versions of Windows

Before the release of Windows Vista, CD and DVD burning software manufacturers built into their software packages special utilities for recording optical disks batch method. Ahead AG Software (now Nero AG Software) released a utility Ahead/Nero InCD, Roxio - Drag-To-Disc(previously known as DirectCD), NTI - NTI FileCD.

In truth, such utilities were quite buggy. And since batch writing technology was very successful in Windows Vista, CD and DVD burning software manufacturers decided to abandon their own batch burning utilities in subsequent versions of their packages.

These utilities are usually paid. Find the latest versions at the office. manufacturers' websites is extremely difficult. I will be using Nero InCD v4.3.

The installation process for Nero InCD is quite simple: run installation file, enter serial number, install the program and restart the computer. After the reboot, you can start working with our RW disk.

1. Insert an RW blank into the drive.

2. Click 2 times on the icon My computer on the desktop, in the window that appears, right-click on the icon of our drive. In the menu that appears, select the item InCD Format.

3. A window for setting formatting parameters will appear on the screen.

There are few parameters: you are asked to specify the formatting type and disk label. What’s nice is that, unlike Windows Vista, there is a quick format that will take less than a minute (however, in this case the disk surface will not be checked for damage).

UDF version selection can be activated by going to Options and checking the box there Allow extension format options. After this, a button will appear in the formatting window Advanced, by clicking on which you can select the required version UDF.

Select the quick format, set the desired label and click Start. Formatting will take a few seconds, after which the disk can be used.

For some reason, a disc recorded in Windows Vista in batch recording mode could not be written to in Windows XP via Nero InCD. However, a disc formatted in Nero InCD opened without problems in Windows Vista and data could be written to it.

How to cancel batch write on disk?

Simply erasing the disc. In Windows Vista, this can be done using OS tools or using third-party software such as Nero Burning ROM. In Windows XP, using the same Nero InCD utility, clicking in the window My computer on the drive icon and selecting InCD Erase.

USB Flash can be used not only in the traditional way “like a large floppy disk”. There are more interesting and in some cases more useful options. This article will describe how to make a USB CD-ROM from a flash drive. Of course, the flash drive will remain a flash drive, but the computer will “see” it as a CD-ROM.

This trick may be needed, for example, to install Windows XP or 7 on a computer without a CD-DVD drive. Of course, in such a case, there are other ways, but such a CD-ROM flash drive allows you to install Windows on a netbook without any problems or any unnecessary steps.

If you need to make an installation flash drive Windows 7 there is another way, easier - Installing Windows 7 from a USB flash drive.

The first thing you need to do is get a disk image as a file in ISO format. This could be an image installation disk Windows XP or any other CD or DVD disc. There are many programs that allow you to save the contents of a laserdisc as an ISO file. For example, such as UltraISO, InfraRecorder, ImgBurn and many others.

Then, you need to find out exactly which controller is used in your flash drive. The fact is that even one model of flash drives can have different controllers, and the programs that can be used to make a CD-ROM from a flash drive are strictly tied to the controllers, that is, each controller has its own program.

The most accurate results are provided by the usbflashinfo program; it itself produces “crazy messages”, but they need to be sent to the author and he will send information about the controller of your flash drive. You can search for your model among the ready-made results in this forum.

After that, on the website flashboot.ru, find a program to work with the controller of your flash drive. Using this program, create a CD-ROM partition on a flash drive and upload your ISO file there.

Below we will describe how to create a USB CD-ROM from an Apacer AH325 4 Gb flash drive. This flash drive uses a Phison 2251-60 controller.

Programs for working with this controller are called Phison_MPALL. They come in different versions. This article will use version 3.20.0B2 as an example.

First you need to make sure that the usbflashinfo program was not mistaken and that Phison is indeed inside, to do this you need to run GetInfo.exe and enter the drive letter under which your flash drive is detected in Windows, and then click the "Read" button:

If there is a Phison controller inside the flash drive, then the program will display information about the flash drive:

The next step is to create a configuration file for subsequent recording of the flash drive. To do this, you need to run the program MPParamEdit_F1.exe: and then specify the necessary options in it starting from the top, in the "CD-Rom Image" field you need to specify the path to the file and the:

ISO file.

It is possible to create two partitions on a flash drive, one will emulate a CD-ROM, and the second partition will be a regular flash drive or emulate HDD. In this case, the CD-ROM partition will be allocated as much as necessary for recording ISO image, and the rest of the space on the flash drive will be allocated to the removable/fixed HDD partition. However, if the flash drive will be used to boot and especially to install Windows, I recommend making only one partition - CD-ROM. You will “lose” part of the total capacity of the flash drive, but you will avoid compatibility problems on different versions BIOS.

In this program you need to open the file that you created in the settings editor. If all the fields of the program are empty, then you need to click the "Update" button, after which an entry about your flash drive should appear in one of the fields. After this, you need to click the “Start” button and wait until the program runs:

Green color of the field means everything is finished. You need to close the program and then open the manager Windows processes(taskmgr.exe) and manually kill the MPALL program in it. The fact is that after closing the program window, its process remains in memory.

Now you can disconnect the flash drive via “Safely Remove Hardware” and unplug it from the USB connector.

Then plug it into the connector again - but now Windows will recognize it as a CD drive.

This article will discuss how, by reprogramming (“flashing”) the control controller of a flash memory module (“flash drive”), force any computer to which such a flash drive is connected to perceive it not as a standard USB drive, but as an external CD/DVD drive with the CD the user needs “inserted” into it.

Copyright notice

So, the first principle is the author's disclaimer. This does not mean at all that the information presented in the article was taken “out of thin air” and has never been verified by anyone. Just the opposite - I personally, using the method I outlined here, “reflashed” at least two dozen flash drives, and all operations, except for one single time, were completed successfully. Speaking of disclaimer, I only draw your attention to the fact that due to such objective factors that are not in any way controlled by me, such as: a huge variety of models and modifications of flash drives, possible mistakes in the software used, different hardware and software configurations of computers and no less different levels of user training, everything that works fine on my computer may not work on yours. Additionally, I would like 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 are performed at your own peril and risk.. Remember this! If, as a result of performing the manipulations described below, you suffer any material and/or moral damage, please address all claims only to yourself. ABOUT possible I warned you about the risk of further actions. If you do not find yourself ready to act on such conditions, then simply do not try to reproduce them.

The second principle is the principle of independence. In my article I provide links to Internet pages where you can download this or that software that we need for our work. So, I warn you in advance that I have nothing to do with the owners of these pages, much less with 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 is not located at the specified links, or it is infected with viruses, or damages your computer in any way - again, all complaints should be addressed either to the authors of the resources or to the program developers (if, of course, you manage to find them), or to yourself.

And one last thing. Since I strongly doubt that the topic of my article will interest novice computer users, I initially count on a trained reader. Therefore, I will try to present 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 in special cases) to those actions that are part of normal computer work. That is, for example, how to launch the “task manager” (and what it is in general), where the “address bar” is located in the browser (and why it is even needed), you, dear readers, should already know. If you (suddenly!) don’t know this, then it’s clearly premature for you to read my article - except as information for “general development” to know that “this also happens.”

Why is this necessary, or why are we not looking for easy ways?

To answer this question, we will have to start from afar.

As is known, in the period lasting approximately from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s, the main carriers of more or less significant amounts of information were optical compact discs - first CD discs with a capacity of up to several hundred megabytes appeared, then they were slowly replaced various modifications of more “advanced” DVDs with a capacity of up to several gigabytes. At present, despite their greatly weakened positions, CDs have not yet completely lost their importance (at least in such areas as, for example, the sale of “boxed” software).

Around the mid-2000s, CDs, which had previously almost reigned supreme 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 many-year delay before their widespread distribution is explained exclusively by the small volume and high cost production of the first production samples. However, from the very beginning, flash memory technology had such obvious advantages over traditional methods of storing information that it was only a matter of time before bringing certain specific parameters to perfection.

Despite the fact that modern flash memory modules are superior to conventional CDs in almost all comparable parameters (volume, speed characteristics, compactness), the vast majority of flash memory drives have one very serious drawback - security. Or, more precisely, the lack thereof. An interesting, but understandable, fact is that the viral “stock” transmitted through storage media existed at a small but stable level until the mid-90s (during the era of floppy disks) and practically disappeared by the mid-2000s, since The widespread use of flash drives is developing at an unprecedented pace. The answer lies in the fact that optical discs, due to their 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, writing to which is impossible in principle. Until CDs had a viable alternative, both users and manufacturers were forced to put up with the inherent recording difficulties of optical discs. But at the same time, it was precisely these difficulties that were an almost insurmountable obstacle for viruses! Virus writers would have to build into each of their “creations” a full-fledged program for writing optical discs, which would immediately negate such important characteristics for viruses as secrecy, 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, on a par with a floppy disk, hard drive, does not require any information to record third party software and any operations can be performed through standard Windows Explorer; all barriers to viruses that prevent them from penetrating to a flash drive and back have disappeared. And considering how popular this type of media is now, one can imagine the level of interest in them from the authors of viruses and the approximate extent of the epidemic. Sometimes it’s quite simple. to plug flash drive to the infected computer so that it can immediately take up residence on it someone(I had to deal with viruses that automatically scanned USB ports for the presence of storage devices and, if any were found, immediately wrote a copy of themselves to them or carried out some 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 that blocked the ability to write to a flash drive (although there were very few such models at that time), however, unfortunately, nowadays such flash drives are almost never found. The reason for the refusal by manufacturers to such an inexpensive but extremely useful improvement is not known to me. Judging by some reviews posted on the Internet, such microswitches have a short mechanical life 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 flash drive may indeed be unnecessary - it is enough to have a more or less adequate antivirus on the computer... But what to do unusual users - administrators, repair engineers, information recovery specialists? After all, they often have to work with a completely unfamiliar computer, in conditions where it starts and works at all! No self-respecting surgeon would perform an operation with a dirty, unsterile instrument. In this sense, the work of a doctor and a professional computer scientist has much in common - in both cases, sterility is extremely important. You can, of course, take a “step back” and write the entire necessary set of programs onto the good old optical discs of the “...-R” modification, but...

First of all, a complete set professional programs to restore the computer's functionality, as a rule, it has a volume significantly greater than the capacity of one disk, so you will have to carry with you not just one, but a whole set of disks, which, you see, is no longer good...

Secondly, optical disks, which serve as “workhorses”, constantly transported whenever, wherever and in anything, deteriorate quite quickly, becoming dusty and covered with scratches.

Thirdly, even the most “advanced” modifications of DVDs provide very mediocre, by modern standards, reading speed. It happens that loading the system from such a resuscitation disk takes up to 10-15 minutes. I don’t argue that some people will agree to wait 10 or 15 minutes, or even a whole hour - it would be just something to wait for, but, you see, if there is an opportunity to significantly increase the productivity of their work, it would be a sin not to take advantage of this opportunity.

Fourthly, such a once standard and mandatory device as a DVD drive is increasingly becoming persona non grata in a modern computer; it hasn’t been in laptop computers “from birth”, and I won’t say anything about Blu-Ray drives at all.. At the same time, not only are almost all types of computers equipped with USB ports, but the number of these useful ports is steadily growing. So you may well encounter a situation where you only have a set of CDs on hand, and the computer being restored has only a free USB port instead of the expected drive.

In general, I really don’t want to give up the now familiar flash drives in favor of optical disks! “But there’s no need! - an experienced user will say. - Isn’t the Internet littered with programs that allow you to write an “image” to a flash drive? the desired disk? And he will be right... Partly. Most of these programs - DirectGRUB, WinSetupFromUSB, WinToFlash, UnetBootIn, ROSAImageWriter - and dozens of others like them really do a good job, but, firstly, they do not give the user “freedom of maneuver”, clearly “tying” him to the “image” of this or that other type; and secondly, despite the opportunity to boot from a flash drive processed by them, your information remains completely unprotected. That is, the flash drive can still be easily formatted, delete some files from it, or, conversely, add some information.

However, there is a method that allows you to write absolute contents to a flash drive. any the disk you need with the ability to boot from this flash drive, and its contents will be reliably protected from "invasion" - CD-ROM creation(DVD-ISO) partition on a flash drive and recording 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 various modes, including in the mode of emulation (simulating) an external CD/DVD drive. Thus, manufacturers leave themselves a “loophole” to create various cunning “branded” flash drives. After some time, information about this one way or another becomes available to the general public, and after another period of time, versions of “proprietary” utilities appear on the Internet that make it possible to switch the controller mode in practice.

What is needed for “reflashing”?

To successfully complete this interesting procedure we will need:

• a computer running Windows XP or later with Internet access;
• a flash drive equipped with a controller that has a CD-ROM emulation function;
• flashing program;
• in fact, the “firmware” itself (in 99% of cases it is supplied with the program);
• ISO image of the desired disk;
• any instructions (for example, this article);
• approximately one hour of free time;
• straight arms and crooked brains (but in no case vice versa! ;-))

As I already said, you must know what an ISO image is and have it available (download from the Internet, “remove” it from an existing optical disk, “assemble” yourself). If you don’t know what it is and can’t download/remove/build an ISO image, then, sorry, I won’t describe this procedure here for you personally, since the topic is so vast 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 issue, 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 stage. The most difficult thing is to choose a mutually suitable “flash drive - program” pair. If you managed to pick such a pair, then with a 99% probability everything that follows will end successfully.

Why is this so difficult to do? Yes, simply because nowhere to get information. Since “reflashing” the controller is not included in the concept of “normal work” with a flash drive, manufacturers do not consider it necessary to indicate such uninteresting details (why do you need it, poor things?!? ;-)). Moreover, it is enough to mentally put yourself in place major manufacturer flash drives to understand that there is no point in even hoping for any, so to speak, “internal constancy” of the products - he (the manufacturer) produces millions of them, and at the same time he must take care of their continuous supply to the market. It follows from this that he has dozens of contracts with various companies producing controllers, memory chips and other electronic “stuffing”. Today, one specific model of flash drive is produced on the A-001 controller, in a month the same model (!), in exactly the same case (!) will be produced with the B-002 controller, and in another six months, when the previous controller supplier has problems with production, another company will take over the baton, offering its new Yo-030 controller. Of course, sooner or later service utilities appear on the Internet even for the newest types of controllers, but how much time will pass between the start of sales of flash drives on this controller and the appearance on the Internet of a suitable utility for it, only God and Chinese computer pirates know;-)

This leads to three possible strategies for our search:

• borrow every flash drive bought by a friend, colleague, or issued at work by the supply department for an hour, and check it special program(I’ll tell you which one below). The flash drive will not suffer from this and all information on it will remain safe and sound. 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 for ourselves.
• search for the information we are interested in on the Internet (for example, using the phrase “controller + “flash drive model”). Sometimes people on specialized forums, when describing a particular flash drive, also 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 if you buy such a flash drive, you will be very upset, because it will 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 according to point 1. Obvious disadvantages this method are a big investment of time and money.

The most preferable for beginning sewing mechanics... oh, no - programmers, are flash drives on SMI controllers. Phison controllers are a little more complicated to flash, but in general, it’s also not bad, but it’s better not to mess with Alcor and SSS controllers unless absolutely necessary. With regard to flash drive brands, the products of greatest interest to us are “A-Data” and “Apacer” (most), “Kingston” and “Transcend” (minor).

If you fundamentally do not want to spend time and money searching the desired model flash drives, but you want to “reflash” an existing one at any cost, try first looking for a suitable “flashing” program here: and here:. The site listed first - usbdev.ru - contains a more complete and detailed file archive, and the likelihood of finding the most latest version the desired program it's much higher here. At the same time, its “completeness” and richness of information also have a downside - for a beginner, as a rule, it is very difficult to decide which software from the ones available on the site he really needs. The site listed second - flashboot.ru - has a simpler structure and a rather nice appearance, 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 latest. Also, when selecting the right software, you should not forget that both of these sites are dedicated to USB drives at all, therefore, programs that make it possible to “turn” flash drives into CD/DVD-ROM are not specially separated or sorted by anyone, getting lost in the total mass of their colleagues designed to restore the functionality of flash drives, monitor, diagnose media, low-level formatting, provide loading from a flash drive and other things.

Demonstration equipment

I chose an eight-gigabyte flash drive as a “guinea pig.” Transcend JetFlash 520S". Why did I choose this particular flash drive? It's simple:

• Since I decided to combine useful with... useful - to write this article and create a new repair flash drive-DVD-ROM for my needs, I first of all paid attention to the type of case. In this model of 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 “ workhorse", which 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 checked ;-)).
• The ISO image I have, which I was going to “upload” to a flash drive, occupies a volume of approximately 3.3 gigabytes, so, of course, I could get by with a four-gigabyte one, but flash drives with a capacity 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 based on one of the modifications of the “SMI” controller - just what you need!

The flash drive comes in a small cardboard box, inside of which there are: brief instructions, an insert with advertising information and a transparent blister, which, in turn, contains the flash drive itself and the branded “Transcend” strap (cute, but extremely short, clearly intended to increase the convenience of manipulating the flash drive, but not for wearing):

The flash drive itself isn’t exactly full-size, but it’s not miniature either - dimensions(length*width*thickness in millimeters): 37*12*4.5. In general, “slim” ;-)

Controller Model Definition

First of all, let's create “in the root” of any of the local disks of your computer working folder, into which we will place 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 local disk"C" of my computer. It won’t hurt to immediately add this folder to the exceptions of your antivirus, since, for example, my vigilant “watchman” “Dr.Web”er, when he first accessed this folder, moved about a third of the program modules to “Quarantine”, considering them “ potentially dangerous" and "possibly infected".

After we have decided on the working folder, we launch the browser available on the system (in my case, “ Mozilla Firefox") and in address bar we type the following: . On the page that opens, click on the “Download program” link located below (2). The archive with the program offered for downloading takes up approximately 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 your browser settings), find the “usbflashinfo” archive and, using any archiver available on the system, unpack it into the previously created “USBreFLASH” folder. As a result of this, a folder of the same name “usbflashinfo” and a text file “File_id.diz” containing short description program versions. Since this file is not needed for the program to work and is only an eyesore, we delete it with a clear conscience.

Next, go to the “usbflashinfo” subdirectory and launch the only exe file “GetFlashInfo.exe” from there. A program window opens with a warning text and a single button “Get information about the flash drive” (see figure):

We connect the flash drive we have at our disposal to a free USB port.

Please read the warning carefully before taking further action! The program shows it to you 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 the flash drive, that is, before starting and during the diagnostic process itself, you should not read or write anything from or to a flash drive. Otherwise (very nasty! :-)) when you click on the “Get information about the flash drive” button, the program will roughly “cut off” everyone else’s access to the flash drive, and what will happen after that with the data on the flash drive (if it is there, of course) exist), no one knows. As you yourself understand, this is especially important if the flash drive being tested is not yours, and, in addition, is filled with important information for its real owner, the safety of which you have no right to risk. Please note that some antiviruses (Kaspersky and others like it), acting by default, rush to check the newly inserted flash drive with all their might, so it is better to either wait for this process to complete, or, if the information on the flash drive is very a lot and the scan is delayed, interrupt it through the antivirus menu.

So, we make sure that no one or nothing is working with the flash drive at the moment, and click the “Get information about the flash drive” button. 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 encounter a situation where a program downloaded several months ago, upon subsequent launch, refuses to work and asks you to download an updated version - there is no need to worry or be afraid of this, the program developers do not require money from you (at least for now ;-)), so you should not neglect the update O it.

Search for service utility

So, we managed to determine specific model controller on which our flash drive is assembled. Now is the time to start looking for a suitable flashing program. I hope you haven’t forgotten the address of this wonderful site - ? As I already said, when visiting this site you can easily get lost among the abundance of software presented on it, so I’ll give you 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 for certain models of controllers and memory chips. Therefore, you need to not just download the latest version, but make sure that it supports your particular controller model.

To find the version of the program we need, we again launch the browser available on the system and type in the address bar: :

Slowly “scrolling” the page that opens, pay attention to the models of supported controllers indicated in square brackets to the right of the name and version number of the production utilities. Let me remind you that in this case we are interested in the line containing . After the required line is found, download this version utilities by clicking on the word “download” in the found line:

We find among the downloads a freshly downloaded archive with a service utility and, using any archiver available in the system, unpack it into the previously created “USBreFLASH” folder. 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 does not have any 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 or Cyrillic characters), I would advise, for convenience, to shorten the name of the folder somewhat , to, for example, this: “smi_mptool_3257enba”. I repeat - the flasher program will launch perfectly and will work even without renaming the folder in which it is stored, so the purpose of renaming is just to make it a little easier for the user to navigate the working folder.

Editing the configuration file

At first I wanted to call this section “ Creation configuration file,” however, I remembered that the configuration file itself, although in a form unsuitable for our purpose, is still present in the folder with service program, so I called the section “ Edit configuration file."

So what kind of file is this, 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 firmware program to in what way you need to “flash” the flash drive controller. Since the configuration file, despite the unusual (in the eyes of a layman) extension “.ini”, as already mentioned, is a regular text file, it can be edited even using standard Windows text editor"Notebook". True, this is a thankless task and a bit complicated for beginners, so we will make changes to the configuration file directly through the interface of the flasher program, which has a special button exclusively for this purpose (well done, Chinese!). In general, the need to edit it is explained by the fact that the configuration file included with the service utility is intended, first of all, to restore the functionality of ordinary flash drives, so there is no possibility of “transforming” a standard flash drive into a “default” CD/DVD drive » does not provide.

To make the changes we need 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 of the service utility opens in front of us, in which we need to sequentially:

• click 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 your 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 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):

There is nothing stopping you from creating several different configuration files over time so that you can choose the one most suitable for your specific task before starting work. The program, immediately after launch, “by default” works with the “default.ini” file located in the program folder, so neither rename nor delete this file do not do it. 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 one, 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 this, the program will “think” for a few seconds, and when it “comes to its senses”, the file you selected will be installed as a working file. Determine which configuration file is used in currently, you can look at the title of the window of the running program, in the center of which, delimited on both sides by continuous underscore characters, 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 and should not contain spaces or characters from the Russian alphabet.

Since the topic of creating multiple configuration files, as well as clarifying the differences between them, is beyond the scope of this article, I will not dwell on this in detail, but will simply describe what changes should be made to the existing configuration file “default.ini” in order to After “reflashing” the controller, the flash drive began to be defined as a CD/DVD drive. After you have completed all the previous steps and opened the “default.ini” file 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” - and we are only interested in this one tab for now - can be divided into five groups:

• extended USB device identifiers (1);
• abbreviated USB device identifiers (2);
• USB device type (3);
• USB device indication (4);
• the actual “flashing” settings (5).

From the first group of settings we will need only two lines - “Vendor Str” (“Vendor Name”) and “Product Str” (“Product Name”). In principle, the information they contain only affects the “name” under which your flash drive, after flashing, will appear in the Windows Explorer window and in the BIOS boot menu. The full “name” of the flash drive will be displayed as: “manufacturer name” space “product name” . When filling out these fields, it is acceptable letters, numbers and even the space character. Since I create bootable USB flash drive in the form of a CD/DVD drive for repairing broken computers, then the ISO image that I plan to “upload” to a flash drive is called “Repair”. Accordingly, it will be more convenient for me if my repair flash drive is designated as “REPAIR USB DISK”. This means that in the “Vendor Str” field I need to enter the word “REPAIR” (without quotes), and leave the “Product Str” field as is. Of course, you can change the contents of these fields to your liking, for example, by 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 manufacturer name and product name in exactly the same form as you entered it earlier. In the same group there is a “switch” for the current consumed by the flash drive “ USB Power“, but I wouldn’t advise you to use it, and here’s why. The real, “physical” current consumed by a flash drive depends directly on design features the flash drive itself and cannot be changed in any way programmatically. The value determined by this “sort 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 supply. It follows that it is quite possible that a 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 reduce the current to the specified 200 mA, and The flash drive, of course, will stop working. Therefore, it is better not to win 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 set to “USB-ZIP”; and in the “Disk Label” field you must repeat (yes, for the third time!) what you indicated 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 flash drive, and nothing needs to be changed here.

Finally, the fifth group of settings is of greatest interest to us. Here are the parameters directly related to the “flashing” process:

• "Boot Blk" - boot sector. By default, the checkbox is checked, but the file is not selected. It doesn't matter to us.
• “Erase Info” - erase all information. By default there is no checkbox. It doesn’t matter for us, since when “flashing” all the information on the flash drive will be lost in any case.
• "Pretest" - " pre adjuvant test" This refers to a test of flash drive memory cells. By default, the “daw” is checked, the “Erase Good Block Only” option is selected (“to erase only good blocks”). Flash drives, like hard disks, during manufacturing they undergo full memory testing, as a result of which unstable memory blocks are identified and marked in a special way in order to prevent their further use. If the “Erase Good Block Only” method is selected, then the flash drive controller does not overwrite the table of “bad” blocks created at the factory and tests only those blocks that were marked as “good”. Some older types of controllers “did not know how” to implement this method in practice, therefore, if problems arise during “flashing”, you can change the value of this parameter to “Erase All Block”. This will slow down the flashing process, but may help if problems arise.
• “Write CID” - “a method of recording information.” By default, the “daw” is checked, “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 a specific type of firmware.” By default, the checkbox is checked, but the file is not selected. The point does not make much sense - if the program “recognizes” the connected flash drive, then it will select the appropriate type of “firmware”; if not, then select something manually in our specific case It’s pointless, since you won’t really “flash” the flash drive anyway.
• “Copy Test” - perform a preliminary test of copying information to a flash drive. By default, the “daw” is checked, the amount of information to be copied is selected in the amount of 2% of the capacity of the flash drive. For us, this item does not play a special role - in order to once again verify the quality of the flash drive, you can leave it turned on; To speed up the flashing process, you can disable it.
• “Make Auto Run” - “create an autorun”. The name is not entirely accurate, since it is precisely the inclusion of this item (checked) that gives us the opportunity to load an ISO image of the desired disk onto a flash drive during flashing. After the item becomes active, a field to enter the path to the ISO image opens to the right of it. 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, must 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 flash drive after recording the image is blocked (until 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 of an external CD/DVD drive and a regular flash drive. On my own behalf, I would like to add that, despite the seeming tempting of this method, which consists in the fact that you are allowed to use the entire volume of a honestly paid for flash drive, this method is fraught with problems in the future, since not all computers can boot via BIOS from such a “composite” flash drive. Personally, I’m willing to sacrifice the remaining half of the flash drive’s capacity to ensure maximum compatibility, so I’ll enable this option. If you still choose the option with a “composite” device, then by checking the checkboxes on the checkboxes below, you can immediately set the formatting mode for the remaining capacity of the flash drive and select the file system type.
• "Preload" - "pre-load". By default, there is no checkbox and this item is inactive. We don't need to change its state. Activating this item involves simply writing some of your data to a flash drive during the “flashing” process - in much the same way as you do using a regular Windows Explorer. Of course, such data loading is only possible if you Not create a CD-ROM, or at least leave free space on the flash drive (see previous paragraph). The question is, why add this option to the settings? What, after “reflashing” the flash drive, it will be impossible to write data in the “usual” way? Of course it is possible. But only they will not be protected from change. That is why the program developers added this item and the next one to the settings, which is called...
• “Disk Read Only” - “read-only disk”. By default, there is no checkbox. In relation to our task, it does not play a special role, since the CD/DVD disk obtained after flashing a flash drive, even with the “Disk Read Only” parameter inactive, will still be “read only”. But if 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.” The default is "daw". It is advisable to leave this item active to once again make sure that the “flashing” process was 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 bottom edge of the settings window (1), then in the standard window that opens, select the existing “default.ini” file (2) and click on the “OK” button (3) :

I remind you that if for some reason you do not want to “spoil” original file"default.ini", 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 complete the described actions, the settings selection window will close, and the program will automatically switch to working with the updated configuration file (in case of creating a new configuration file - before restarting).

After the configuration file has been properly edited, you can proceed directly to the “flashing” process.

“Reflashing” the flash drive controller

Before starting the “flashing” (or even better, before connecting a flash drive), it is highly advisable to pause the antivirus. Yes, yes, I, of course, remember that you have already added our working folder to the antivirus exceptions, however, do not forget that in the process of “flashing” the service utility will have to contact “outside” - where the one specified in the settings is stored image file, and braking antivirus monitor the flow of data “flowing” from one disk to another is fraught with the emergence of the most unexpected errors. All other application programs that are not related to the flashing process should also be terminated. Additionally, I note that it is very rare and not on all computers, but, nevertheless, it happens that the monitor’s energy saving functions, forgotten by the user and activated at the wrong time during the “flashing” process, hard drives, motherboard, as well as turning on the screensaver, make it impossible to complete it correctly. Therefore, instead of taking risks and checking in practice with a result unpredictable for a flash drive whether you have the “right” computer, I would advise you to temporarily disable all energy saving functions for the above devices, and either turn off the screensaver for a while, or set a longer interval activation - at least one hour. During this time, firstly, you will take some actions in any case; secondly, it will become clear how great the chances of success of our event are.

After work antivirus program paused, the energy-saving functions of the hardware are disabled, and the time before the screen saver is activated is increased, insert a suitable flash drive into a free USB port:

We launch the flasher program. If your computer has the Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 operating system installed, then use the “Run as Administrator” function. Because I have an old one good Windows XP, then I do without such problems and simply launch the program file for execution. The main window of the service utility opens in front of us:

First of all, use the mouse to click the “Scan USB” button, 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 the keyboard. If at the moment you press a button - on-screen or keyboard - it makes no difference, a suitable flash drive is connected to the computer and nothing interferes with the program’s operation, the following changes will occur in the program window:

• firstly, in one of the lines of the list of 16 possible USB ports (what a scope! :-)), the status value “Ready”, 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, an obscure index “2” (the second representation option?), and to the right and below the main square there will be a small additional one, filled with blue, corresponding to the same controller status “Ready” (3);
• thirdly, in the lowest information window the name of the flash drive controller model and the corresponding binary firmware will appear, automatically selected by the service utility (4).

If, after pressing the “Scan USB” button, the listed changes do not occur to you, then this indicates either some physical problem with the flash drive/USB port, or that the program does not “know” anything at all about the connected flash drive. Sometimes it happens that, based on the scan results, the information fields are filled in, but the controller status value is indicated as “No ready” or “ISP can"t be found!” and is displayed in red rather than blue font (the small additional square in the graphical representation field (3) also becomes the same color. Unlike the previous situation, when the program “knew” nothing at all about the connected flash drive, this means that the program I “recognized” the flash drive, but it (the program) does not have at its disposal the binary firmware suitable specifically for this type of controller. In this case, all that remains is to look for a newer and (or) one. suitable version flasher program.

Let's hope that you correctly identified the model of the flash drive controller, took the choice of the service utility very seriously, and that everything is in order with the USB ports on your computer, so the program window is blue, symbolizing inspiration (what, you didn’t know? : -)), the promising status “Ready” is displayed. This is the last step when you can “painlessly” refuse to “reflash” the flash drive if you suddenly change your mind. And if not, then all you have to do is click with the mouse on the “Start” button (the top one at the right edge of the program window), or, which is the same thing, press the “Space” key on the keyboard (1):

After this, in the very first line, which previously had the inscription “Ready”, in the “Progress” column a progress indicator similar to the one that is standard for Windows (2) will start. Please note that it will fill up and reset again some times, since the “flashing” process consists of several successive stages (have you forgotten many settings in the configuration file yet? ;-)), and the indicator shows the current progress everyone process one by one. You can find out exactly what stage the flashing process is currently at 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 “reflashing” process will be displayed in the form of a text inscription (3). In this case, it is clear that the screenshot was taken at the moment when the preliminary testing was performed, as clearly evidenced by the inscription “Test” in the background of the first square. In the lower right corner of the program, a 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, writing the image file require considerable time - sometimes up to several tens of minutes. Despite the fact that the data transfer speed USB bus is strictly regulated by relevant standards, the duration of the “flashing” process is influenced by many factors, both obvious (the number of stages during “flashing”, USB port standard, ISO image size) and hidden (configuration and characteristics of the computer’s disk subsystem, parallel performance system processes, controller modification). In any case, you should be patient and under no circumstances interrupt the “reflashing” process if the counter continues to count seconds, the indicator scale moves slowly, and the inscriptions on the square symbolizing the USB port change. Of course, if, for example, for a whole hour the inscription “Test” is not replaced by the inscription “Load”, and the indicator either stands still or cyclically fills/resets, you will have to make a sad conclusion that that the “flashing” has currently failed and the program will crash. But, I repeat, this is - extreme a case that should not be resorted to unless absolutely necessary and without clear evidence of the “freezing” of the “flashing” process.

Evidence of the successful completion of the “flashing” process is a “reset” progress indicator, a 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 mine On the computer, “reflashing” an 8-gigabyte flash drive with preliminary testing and recording an ISO image with a capacity of 3.3 gigabytes took a little more than 13 minutes and ended quite successfully.

After the long-awaited “OK” inscriptions “light up” in the service utility window, close the program and safe using this method we extract our flash drive.

Remember - at the first moment after flashing, you only need to safely remove the flash drive with the obligatory preliminary stop of the device!

Checking the results

Let's say you did everything correctly and the flashing process was completed successfully, after which you turned off in a safe way flash drive and remove 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 delaying the matter (as a rule, human nature is designed in such a way that you want to quickly see the result of your work), let’s start testing. To do this, we again connect our experimental flash drive to the computer:

But what do we see? A computer that has long been “familiar” with our flash drive (it identified it even at the very first connection and installed the appropriate driver), has just worked with it and into which we, after just a few seconds, 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 it is clarified 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 is classified as a “Devices with removable media”, and is displayed as a CD/DVD drive (in my case it is assigned the letter “G:”) with a “REPAIR” disk inserted into it.

Do you still have doubts that the drive is “not real”? Then let's look at its properties:

From what the operating system showed us in the properties window of this device, we can make an unambiguous conclusion that the drive is the most “real” one, with file system CDFS, which is the “calling card” of real CDs, and the complete absence free space for recording.

How are things going with his security? Maybe the flash drive only skillfully “pretends” to be a CD/DVD drive, but in fact remains a standard random access media accessible to everyone? To answer this question, let’s try to write some arbitrary file to it (for testing, I’ll try to copy the “readme.txt” file from the archive with the flasher program):

Does not work! We are politely but firmly made to understand that this, so to speak, “disk” is “read-only” and you cannot copy or move files to it. Well, I’m actually repeating the standard Windows message? 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 can write or change the data stored on it (or everything). “on it”?) files are not possible, but - I hope you haven’t forgotten yet? - we are interested in one more important feature our “reflashed” flash drive, namely the ability to boot a computer from it via BIOS. Therefore, the last and most important stage of verification lies ahead of us.

Leave the flash drive connected to the computer and reboot it. While the BIOS firmware is running, we call up the boot menu (usually by pressing one of the “F+digit” keys - which one depends on the developer of your computer’s motherboard) and make sure that our flash drive is present in the list of devices from which you can download:

After we confirm our choice by pressing the “Enter” key, we make sure that the computer actually boots from our flash drive (of course, the resulting “picture” on the monitor will depend on which ISO image you chose to write to process of “flashing”):

Congratulations - you have not only become 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 among the most reliable and thoughtful, during such a delicate and non-standard process as “flashing”, a wide variety of errors and problems may arise. I sincerely wish you a successful completion of each “flashing”, but if it does happen that the process ends with an error or does not complete at all (“freezes”), 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.” Alone person who owns one(well, let’s say, even two or three) computers, and having “reflashed” only two dozen flash drives out of thousands available for sale, it is simply physically impossible to “catch” all possible “glitches” and “bugs” that arise due to 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, it is quite possible that in the process of implementing the actions outlined in this article, you will encounter a certain problem, and I, in turn, will not be able to help you. In this case, I can advise you to search for information about the problem that has arisen 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 a direct description of possible problems and ways to solve them: