No-one fixes a USB stick and gives it back so that it works — the parts cost less than the labour involved. What does matter is recovering your data, just once. How your data will be recovered will depend solely upon something you cannot see: whether the USB stick was built with individual components or as one single piece. Deleted photos instead of a non-working USB stick? Recover deleted photos shows what "carving" retrieves and what it costs in filenames.
A USB stick that only reads when held at an angle has broken solder joints and each time you insert it further breaks the solder joints. A USB stick that offers to format itself has either a damaged file system or a faulty controller — and by agreeing to format it, you write through the exact same part that is going bad.
Honesty about what most people actually look for.
Nobody repairs a USB stick and then passes it back to you working. Components are mounted on a circuit board the size of a postage stamp and many are embedded in resin. There is little economic sense in repairing one, since a replacement costs a few pounds. What can be done is to recover your data, just once. That's a completely different process.
The way the data is recovered will depend upon what you cannot determine by visually inspecting the product: whether the memory stick was made of multiple parts or if it was an integrated unit. Everything else about how the recovery process proceeds will depend on the answer to the above question.
Identical appearing products may offer very different possibilities.
There's much more work involved than just extracting your files from your NAND. This needs some explanation.
Reading NAND directly off your flash memory (either through removing the IC or reading through test points), does not provide you with files. What you get instead is a straight-up image of what's stored inside the flash, which is organised in interleaved planes across the controller. To make sense of that image, you need to correct for error correction codes (ECC), figure out how the planes were arranged in order to unscramble them. And after all that, finally something resembling a file system becomes visible and now you can carve out actual files.
Each manufacturer does their own thing and therefore, two identical sticks may take different amounts of time to recover depending on how they were built. A stick which still enumerates but refuses to mount is generally a quicker job than a dead stick.
One price regardless of what the construction ultimately proves to be.
USB sticks and memory cards can both cost from £250 +VAT. The price is confirmed after our free 48-hour diagnostic, and on most occasions, there's nothing to pay if it fails. However, hardware encrypted sticks are going to be a different story and we'll explain this right away: Without your password, no-one will open these sticks, and we'd rather let you know before we bill you to find out.
Just send us the stick as-is, do not straighten the connector if it is bent; do not open the casing; if a part has come loose, include it too. You can drop it off at Peter House on Oxford Street, Manchester, or post it insured.
Send the stick over, and give us a short fault description. The diagnostics you will receive cost nothing and we will provide you with one price in writing for the work prior to commencing it.
We do not start working on a case until the stick is on our bench. Please include all of your contact information along with your stick when you post it to us. The diagnostic that follows is at no cost to you and one quote will be provided in writing prior to any work being done.
Posting it? Use a tracked and insured service. The value of what is on the drive far exceeds the cost of postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays from 9am to 5:30pm, and it still needs packing as described above for the journey.
Do you need to know if it is even worth sending the stick to us for evaluation? If so, provide as much detail as possible regarding the stick and the problem you are experiencing including what has been attempted so far to troubleshoot the issue. An engineer will review each submission and provide you with an honest assessment of the likelihood of recovery and a price range, before you post anything.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
These are some of the most common technical questions we get regarding a failed USB stick.
No, there is no economical method by which a USB stick can be returned to service as the individual components are surface-mounted on a small PCB. A replacement costs a few pounds. There is however a possibility to recover data from the device but that is a completely different process.
Don't do it. This is typically due to either damage to the file system header or failure of the controller, not because your data has been lost. Formatting essentially writes across the failing component making subsequent recovery far more difficult.
It's highly unlikely you'll lose your data as well. In general, the failure occurs in the solder point connecting the two components together. This usually means the memory attached to the opposite side of the solder remains intact. Broken connectors are the safest type of USB connection to fail. Please send the broken piece along with the rest of the damaged device.
A monolithic USB stick contains both its control circuitry and storage in an integrated sealed unit. Most contemporary USB devices come pre-fitted with monolithic units. There is no removable component or chip from which recovery can proceed; therefore, recovery takes place via test points inside the casing of each individual module with appropriate pin-out for each respective module.
Because data stored in raw flash memory is not in a file system format. It requires de-interleave processing of the recovered data; error correction due to ECC (Error Correction Code); and scrambling/de-scrambling to match the specific arrangement used by the particular controller involved. Recovery times vary based upon whether or not the stick is electrically functional, i.e., if it still enumerates, then the time required to recover the data will be considerably less than if there was no signal at all present.
A fixed price from £250 +VAT, for sticks and memory cards; with no charge in most cases where it fails, after a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic process.
The flash stick can be either discrete; that being a controller and individual memory chips, or monolithic in design. Monolithic sticks are read through their test points, and the make tells us which type to expect.
Names with an arrow have their own guides, i.e., brand-specific failures and what those will mean for the recovery.
£250 +VAT, agreed prior to opening anything. A broken connector will generally snap at its furthest point from the memory module. This is why we can recover so much of the data — and why pushing a connector back in repeatedly will cost you.