My Most Important Flash Drive Just Broke! :(

Hi! I'm displeased to announce that, about half of an hour ago, my most important flash drive broke. I bumped into and snapped it while reaching for a towel. Thin flash drive contained mainly most of my computer work, documents to print out, a lot of dev documents and a lot of DOS and Amiga games. I've been backing the works, and the rest have to be replaced. Now, I just have to find a new flash drive.

 

It's worse than I thought: it seems that I have not been backing up the flash drive as diligent as I have thought: I'm missing a lot of documents.

 

Into every life a little bit of "Oh, @!#*^%" will fall. Ooops.

 

Well...I was able to restore some of the lost information, and some more is backed up at a day program, and I believe that most of the rest of the information is either print-out copies of my code or copied from elsewhere.

 

I usually take it out and stomp on it a few times. It never fixes it, but I feel little better about it.
Glad you saved some of your things off it.

 

That totally sucks. That is one of my big fears for my flash/thumb drives.

That said, are you able to post clear, well lighted but not washed out close up/macro pics (of good enough resolution to be able to zoom in on it real close without blurring) of the damage to the PC Board from all sides of the drive?

Only asking as it MIGHT be repairable enough to extract/copy/transfer the data off of it.

 

Another possibility. IF you can source the EXACT SAME thumb drive (version/model/vintage/country of mfg) in good working order AND it has the EXACT SAME chip set. Someone (possibly one of those cellphone/tablet/computer board repair places) MIGHT be able to transfer the memory/storage chips from the broken drive in the EXACT order and locations of each IC onto the good drive you sourced.

This provided the memory/storage ICs/chips aren't physically damaged AND are the EXACT SAME part #s as those on the good drive you sourced.

You now have 2 possible repair options.

Just a warning, it is possible that in the process of the drive getting broken while plugged in and powered up that some or all the data got corrupted and or totally bricked the memory/storage ICs (as in can't even access/read them).

You got nothing to lose except time and some money as it is DOA now and you MIGHT be able to get some or all the data off it.

 

D.H.: I thank you for your advice, but the drive was split in half, then I lost it.

 

I figured it was broken in half. Circuit Board repair could still be a possibility depending on various factors, thus me asking for detailed clear closeup pics.

Bummer about loosing it. IF you ever find it, those are still possible options for you to maybe get the data off it.

 

Thank you.

 

Another flash drive broke on me, and it had the same purpose as the earlier one. It stopped several times when I tried to make copies of some folders. Also, a disk scan stopped at about 1/8 complete. Copying some of its contents to another flash drive was easier this time, though.