Dead USB flash stick

D

David_UK

New Member
My USB flash memory stick died. I think it may have been killed by an old PC I was reformatting (I cant get the USB wireless to work - I suspect the USB ports to be dodgy). Anyway, I plugged the memory stick into several PC's, one recognised it as a device but failed to acknowledge it as a drive, and then all other attempts have done nothing. Plug it in - PC does nothing - no error, no disk activity, nothing.

Any tips on what I can try to recover the lost data (eg clean contacts, take it apart to look for loose connections etc) or does this mean it has simply died.

Thanks.
 
Probably just dead. USB sticks are pretty vulnerable to power spikes and the like, which is why I don't recommend them for long-term storage or back-up duty. You can try some of the stuff you suggested, but I doubt that will really help...
 
Flash drives are solid state memory, so taking them apart to look for a loose connection would not really help much, unless you want to look through all the dizzyingly small IC wires and chips. Odds are that something inside one of the small chips went bad, and short of working as an engineer for the company that made it, you really wouldn't have a prayer in fixing it.

You can always try to clean the connector, unless you have reason to believe that there is physical damage. You can simply take a cotton ball or a q-tip and dip it in a little alcohol and use that to wipe off the connections... Please make sure that everything is completely dry before you try to plug it back in again.
 
maybe you can wigle it around and hold it there until you hear the BLIP of the new hardware,once you see the files maybe you can quickly grab the files out of there before it dies again,
i was in a similar situation but i'm not sure about your case
 
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