Salvaging a dead USB stick drive

[Lagmonster]

I have one of those little pen-sized 1gig flash drives you see everywhere nowadays, on which I keep most of the files I'm currently working on. Recently, for reasons I can't explain, it's stopped functioning - plugging it in results in nothing, no PC I've tried recognizes that it's even there.

There's no obvious physical damage, but the USB connector doesn't seem to be working (as in, doesn't even seem to be receiving power - normally a little light on the drive goes on when it is connected to a PC). Does anyone know of any way to test to see if the data is still intact, or to somehow physically replace components (such as the usb connector itself or other parts of the device) to try to salvage the data? I'm not adverse to opening it up and disassembling it if necessary since sticking it into PCs and crossing fingers is doing nothing.

As an aside, I have backups, but they're a few weeks old.

[MKSheppard]

This has happened to me, I am most interested in this as well.

[Mr Bean]

Dissembling it and re-wiring a new USB connector should do the trick. Failing that most data-recovery services offer USB stick recovery for only around 50$. Considering they charge between 200$-900$ for hard-drives, that's cheap.

The USB stick memory is pretty durable, even if you fuck up the re-wiring you can still fall back on a recovery service. I've had this happen to me before and it's always been a USB connector that goes bad, the memory is fine, the connect is bad/damaged in someway. USB is bad like that in that it's connector's can't take much damage before going kaput.

[Lagmonster]

That's encouraging, Bean. In the interim, I found a recovery service in Ottawa that wants to charge me 200$ for a 50-50 chance of recovery without explaining what they intend to do.

I assumed I could do what you suggest but wanted confirmation before I did anything that would prevent total recovery. All I need now...are parts.

[Vertigo1]

Do you know how to solder? If so, then just order a connector online (ie: digi-key, mouser) and solder it on. Hell, you could even just sacrifice a USB cable and solder the wires directly to the PCB itself. (which would make it a little more convenient in tight spaces if the case is a little too thick)

[Mr Bean]

Just checked, the service we use charges 50$ per gig of recovered data to clarify. 50/50 chance sound like it's some guy working out of his garage that does not know what he's doing. Thumb-drive chips are pretty resilient. This is not a magnetized platter designed to be read at high speeds by spinning it.

These are memory chips soldiered to a PCB. Even if the PCB breaks in half, it's only the support and paging functions not the memory itself. The chips can be read easy enough as long as you have at least two good contacts(Of the ten or so most of them connect to the PCB with).

[Lagmonster]

Just checked, the service we use charges 50$ per gig of recovered data to clarify. 50/50 chance sound like it's some guy working out of his garage that does not know what he's doing.

Ottawa's a small city; the options for data recovery services is slim. In all honesty, it's not worth a couple hundred bucks to me - I'll take the chance that I can do it myself. I don't intend to be delicate; I just want to get the data off and then chuck the thing in the trash bin, so I'll open the thing up and see the least delicate way to go about replacing the connectors. Soldering I haven't done in a decade, though.