How does PC-3000 Flash work?

PC-3000 FLASH HARDWARE-SOFTWARE SOLUTION

Purpose

PC-3000 Flash is a professional tool for recovering data from physically and logically damaged flash based storage devices. Based on hardware and working in conjunction with software, it creates a powerful algorithm to recreate data structure in automatic and manual modes.

Supported models

It supports almost all popular memory cards (SD, SM ,MMC, USB Flash, MemoryStick, CompactFlash etc.), with damaged controller, or with serious physical PCB's damage.

PC Flash Reader

Flash drive has a controller chip and flash memory chips. Controller chip is responsible for the order the data is written/read among the memory chips, defect lists and some other functions that are necessary for Flash drive proper functioning. Memory chips are only used to keep the data.

Most Flash drive cases are connected with controller damage. With PC-3000 Flash it is possible to unsolder memory chips and directly access their raw data. That's why PC-3000 Flash has a specialized reading device – PC Flash Reader.

Controller emulator

As it was said before, controller is responsible for the order data is spread among the memory chips. PC-3000 Flash is used to emulate controller actions and to set the data to readable format. When the data order was restored, it is possible to proceed recovering user data with similar to PC-3000 for Windows UDMA, Data Extractor software.

Automatic and manual modes

Each controller has its own method of spreading the data, and this method is called «Data mix». PC-3000 Flash has the database of widely spread controller «Data mixes». Special mode analyses mix of your Raw data and helps you to select the most suitable solution for your flash storage device.
Moreover, if the controller is unknown, it is possible to try to restore the data order manually, with applying the operations to raw imaged data.

Database

Database with Controller "Data mixes" is regularly updated with new types of controllers.

PC-3000 Flash suite

The most frequent reasons of any flash drives damages are the problems of electrical and thermal character.

Electrical damages

Static electricity, wrong power supply cable connection and other problems with power are the reasons of the burnt controller which makes any access to the contents of the flash-memory microchips impossible. In case of short-term disturbances in power, the controller is unlike to become damaged but it can cause the failure at data modification on memory microchips, that's why the logics of translator mechanism work is damaged, which is similar to the damaged controller judging from the outside features.

Taking into consideration that the controller operates with the data blocks of the minimal size of about 128 kb, this short-time failure can cause full deletion of the main file system structures, which will make the further functioning of the drive impossible.

Overheating

While working, the components of flash storage devices produce heat. They are often cooled not enough, because of the tendency to minimize these drives and make them look pretty.
It causes overheating and damage of the controller or the flash-memory, in other words the flash drive itself is damaged.

Guilde for Flash chips data recovery with PC-3000 Flash

If the flash storage device is not recognized in your system or it is impossible to access the data on it, next steps can help you to get the data from it:
You may see free training video on PC-3000 Flash

"Recovery via controller" mode

Among automatic modes PC-3000 Flash has "Recovery via controller" modes, when you need to indicate the type of the controller applied in the flash drive controller. In this case all operations necessary to restore the correct access to the user data will be done automatically, which will result in the disk image with the user data.

Database of flash-memory microchip information

To automatize the reading process, PC-3000 Flash has a big database of flash-memory microchip information.

"Collect information" mode

To learn new types of flash drives, we realized "Collect information" mode in our product. It helps to gather information about the task including data on controller and algorithms used by it and to pass them compressed to the developers. It will allow to study the new types of flash storage devices, add them into the support by our product and in some cases to help the users to recover data at distance.

User Manual

Besides guidelines how to work with PC-3000 Flash, the detailed user manual shows the main principles how the drives on the basis of NAND-based flash memory function. It also gives direct recommendations on the data recovery process from them.

Features we are going to add to the next versions:

Add fully automatic algorithms and modes enabling to make your participation minimal while working with PC-3000 Flash
Increase the number of the supported controllers and applied algorithms
Increase functionality of the tool, adding to support more operations with NAND flash-memory microchips
Add specialized modes enabling to make the full analysis of the task in the complicated cases
Make possible data recovery from flash drives which use data coding algorithms.