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Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061
Hi all. Yes, Murphy's law of Computers has bitten me again. My new <2mo old 4GB pendrive has stopped working with the "USB device has Malfunctioned" warning.
Tried it in four different PC's and no luck. I opened it up due to the value of the data on it, and it is a single piece of chip-like ceramic with a USB connector at one end :(
Internal short present between D+ and D- which is a weird fault.
It does however have very thin traces on the underside so I can kinda see where the wires go.
I did see a small bulge near one end which *looks* like it might be a regulator which has popped but upon scraping off the coating I can't see anything obvious.
Registered Member #65
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155
Could that little bump have been plastic droplet protecting a die chip? :)
General file recovery: I.N.S.E.R.T. is free (read U3 uninstall, and drive backup image under Linux tutorials) Recuva is free and Win32
Perhaps a chip transplant with the identical drive would work if the memory chip is separate.
One may use the SPI interface to bypass the emulated ATA or USBMS interface MCU.
Depending on the file system one may "Quick" reformat using the HP drive utility or U3 uninstaller. Then attempt a data recovery effort on the blank drive.
Kingston drives are unforgiving to those who don't use subdirectories for FAT32 formats. Often they will start to get unreliable if everything in saved to root /
Registered Member #902
Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040
have you cleaned those bottom traces? i tried that once with the same error any it worked...apparently when I got tossed in the pool freshman year (and didn't have time to remove my wallet) some kind of residue remained, I used some rubbing alcohol... I also had a similar issue when I made my first PCB, same thing fixed it... but that it my suggestion, for all I know I got really lucky not ruining the drive but I'll never know...
Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061
Yup, tried that, I actually measured a dead short between the data pins :(
I also tried applying a slight overvoltage hoping to blow out the (presumably shorted) ESD protection diode, but that just resulted in an open circuit.
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Broken Kingston Fun 4GB flash drive?
