Broke a USB flash drive. What to do?

Speakeasy

New Member
Hello,

I dropped my Macbook on the hard floor with my USB stick connected, by tripping over a wire. Luckily, it was out of batteries was and not on. The Mac started up (although it has a nice dent in it). The flash drive snapped on the four pins that connect it. I'm a novice with this stuff and have data on there I want to back up.

Basically the metal part separated from the board. The pins also have this brown stuff on them (solder, glue maybe?) I tried holding chip to the pins while it was plugged in which didn't work. I have no soldering iron, nor experience with one. Is there anything I could possibly due to just back up my data without a soldering iron or having to pay somebody?

It's an 8 Gigabyte Sandisk Cruzer.

Any help at all would be very much appreciated.
 

mtb211

Active Member
O man thats a tough one... so the board on the usb stick snapped in half or just got bent from the male end of the usb?
 

Speakeasy

New Member
O man thats a tough one... so the board on the usb stick snapped in half or just got bent from the male end of the usb?
The metal part that plugs into the USB port got separated from the board. All four pins are still on the metal part, but they were pulled off the board.
 

cjmarsh81

Member
I think your only option is to try and get someone to solder it back onto the board and see if it works.

I have managed to do that in the past, you will need a soldering iron.
 

janrob

New Member
Just the metal part hu? Does the gold fingers(connector) still intact or does they got damaged? If so, putting altogether will be hard. But not impossible.
 

S.T.A.R.S.

banned
If it's a metal part which got pulled of the chip,just solder it with soldering iron.Just be careful to not solder all the pins on the chip together so that they are touching each other because in that case you will get a short circuit and it won't work.That can happen if you put too much solder.But it's easy to remove it too so it shouldn't be a problem.
On the following image you can see 4 pins soldered on the chip so be sure that they are not touching each other:
IMG_8702-560x420.jpg






Cheers!
 
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