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rickman

wrote on 6/22/2017 11:53 PM:
On Thursday, June 22, 2017 at 4:50:57 AM UTC-7, frank wrote:
Hi,
I already know the answer but we never know if anyone out there can make
miracles
I've been given a dead USB drive, in my linux laptop is identified as usb
storage device but it fails to read (probably) the capacity and the usb stack
keeps on resetting the device.
It's not possible to open it, looks like a small solid plastick stick with
metal tabs embedded on one side. It's just a bit longer than the typical
usb slot.
I tried heating and freezing it, just in case it was some temperature
sensitive fault, but behaviour never changed.
I don't think there's a way to expose the actual NAND-flash chip and read
it separately, but I'm asking the expert here
Did anyone ever found a way to open (or otherwise read) these little
data killer devices?
Thanks

Frank

A couple of years ago a coworker had a flash drive from his daughter that had research material for her doctoral work and she was very upset. I plugged it into my machine and it was indeed dead. I flexed it a little and got the Windows beep for USB. She had flexed it in the side of the laptop while using it in bed and cracked the solder connection(s) in the drive. I just stressed it while it copied off the data to the hard drive and copied on to a new flash drive. I never found out if there was any damage to the laptop but she was very happy to get her data back. I think she learned a lesson about backups.

If it's a 'portable' drive particularly with those wide USB 3.0 cables, I've seen those break too often but are easily available.

I'm no fan of the typical USB connection for flash drives in laptops. It is
far too easy to damage both the drive and the PC. I often use a short USB
extension cable for plugging in a flash stick. But that still leaves the
laptop connector vulnerable as the typical USB connector still creates are
pretty big lever arm. I don't even like the "micro" size mouse dongles. I
had a laptop bag ripped from putting the laptop in it with the dongle
installed. The tear ended up running and destroyed the whole bag.

--

Rick C