Sandisk monolithic USB Flash Drive Revisit - is it fixable ?

[@Jim_M_75]

10/10 for effort Alex, I like the fact you listen and respond to your viewers. Top man, love your content.

[@TexasTimelapse]

I'm subscribed to over 300 channels on KZbin and this is my favorite! I love tinkering and fixing electronics. I have failed many times, but I've been able to fix many. I think it's time for me to quit being a cheap ass and purchase a microscope and proper tools from you. I need to get approval from the wife first. Thanks for all you do! I've learned more watching this channel than I ever could from taking classes.

[@HazeAnderson]

The microscope is a game changer. :)

[@projects4home]

Exactly

[@RejectedManiac]

Make the purchase then tell her of your approval 😂

[@forum42087]

Alex's Law @ 2:58 : "Even if you try to throw that piece in the pupil its not gonna hit, but when you cut it its gonna go straight to the pupil." So true👍

[@khatharrmalkavian3306]

It's really disturbing if you think about it. Horizontally the piece could fly in any direction, vertically it can fly at any upward angle. If you figure the eye is about 2 degrees tall on the vertical and each eye is 3 degrees on the horizontal, then you're talking 6/360 * 2/180 = 0.00018519 odds that the piece goes for the eye, but we all know that in reality they do it every damn time. It's proof that the universe hates us.

[@David..R]

I think you're very good at what you do! I enjoy watching your process of elimination and thinking through each issue!

[@jonmedders3866]

A little piece of blue poster tack would work wonders for holding something tiny like this in place while you work. Also, you are really brave plugging random USB drives into your computer.

[@Quasam]

Great video. Your first conclusion was correct, but you still learned more about the problem this time around.

[@pierresakurai4812]

This channel got me to practice more my soldering skills. Now started to fix old consoles for leisure (Neogeo AES, Famicom, Arcade boards...) ! Thank you for taking the time to make these amazing content.

[@featheredskeptic1301]

The led has a current limiting resistor in series with it, it's usually around 1K. Even if it's a dead short that shouldn't affect the drive. If there's a leak from the led to something under it, the leak is most likely happening between the tracks of the chip rather than between the tracks and the led itself. So that's a no go either. I can't imagine a scenario where the led is going to kill a device like this.

[@SubjectiveFunny]

He didn't think so either. But people suggest things and he tries it. That's how we learn.

[@Jonnyweareten]

1: Clamp a small heatsink/thermal paste to the drive. 2: Try soldering to the USB3 pins as it could bypass the internal fault. 3: Check the drive using a partition manager to see if the drive is visible and to see what type of partition it has. If you plug a Mac or Linux drive into Windows without having special software installed it will ask you if you want to format the drive.

[@erleykenneth]

does it include with this case, that the chip itself is cracked?

[@Quasam]

Actually. Since the drive is recognised the controller part is probably ok, and sadly the data storage part is the one broken. Might be a cracked silicon.

[@generalbutz8477]

i doubt with the heatsink solution..

[@wakkowarner7391]

It's knackered. Give it up already!

[@grproteus]

using the usb3 pins is an interesting approach, but since it recognizes it as a drive, the usb2 controller is clearly working.

[@ThriftyToolShed]

Is it possible that the 3.0 is a different interface to the chip and could work even when 2.0 does not?

[@HamSammich88]

Never Fear! Alex is Here! 💪💪💪💪

[@bblod4896]

It's commendable that you tried again. Let a data recovery company dig into it.

[@ncarrasco2006]

I am impressed of your work!

[@honda2363]

"That small piece can go straight for your pupil. It happens. Bull's eye" That had me laughing harder than it should have.🤣

[@rvmeushaw]

I have had a couple instances where a usb drive was not recognized by Windows or Mac, but when I connected it to a Linux machine the drive was recognized. I don't know if this will make any difference in your case, but it might be worth keeping in mind for the future.

[@MattBeaver]

This is exactly what I was thinking, maybe it's ext3 or ext4 formatted.

[@kozakalex222222]

My thought exactly

[@anisakid-kg3zn]

Great detective work!

[@HazeAnderson]

I appreciate you giving this one another shot!

[@whkiess]

Have you tried reading it using a LINUX machine? I have found in the past that Windows is quite finicky about reading (possible) corrupt file systems whereas LINUX can sometimes handle them.

[@Roman-cz3ws]

Thanks 4 the trays from yor Community 👍🖖

[@MuZ1777]

You know, its nice to see a business owner that listens to his customers, even on a comment. And a business owner who would show that he listened to a customer's comment and showed it on video. Proves your a good human, you dont know it all and your showing humility and to me that there shows Intelligence, Care and humility for your customers. A very good quality and aspect to have Sir. Hats off to you for this vid.

[@mr_shanes]

Damn, you are thorough. The best ive seen.

[@danielsaturnino5715]

temperature may expand or contract the contacts inside and allow for a diferent result. some people use the reflow gun or a freezing spray to detect faulty components components by making them work/fail

[@Nobbie248]

Try squeezing the chip together to hold the broken trace inside while making a dump of the drive image

[@gabrielgundulf7139]

Ever since I saw the first video I wondered if the USB drive was overheating from the beginning. You mentioned it was hard to pry the case open. Usually when I'm gonna work on data recovery on an USB, I'd go the software route first. Scan the drive with different repair software and try and see if the partition was corrupted to begin with, which could cause the drive to seem unreadable. Great video as always.

[@redangrybird7564]

For a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail, for a man with a soldering iron every device needs to be desoldered 😁

[@PhillipRemaker]

If you actually watched either of the two videos, you would have seen that the I/O channel freezes up hard so you can’t do anything with software.

[@stefanlechner]

Amazing and very interesting second part. Thank you for that video. Greets

[@fraenkiboii]

Do your windows and mac hosts support all filesystems? What if a customer brings you a drive formatted with ext4 or btrfs? If you plug these in a vanilla windows host, you will get the same error messages and you cannot tell if the device is actually broken or if it's just an unsupported filesystem. I would definitely "build" myself a little drive tester that supports all filesystems. Maybe like a raspberry pi with all the necessary filesystem packages installed.

[@YorkiesBitsandBobs]

Love your videos Alec, But I do miss the house hunting videos as well. One more think will you be showing us your new camera and bits?

[@carlosgarciaoropeza5480]

(10:22) Convinced. No objections. Thank you for your effort and time. You'll be lucky next time. All the best.

[@Azeraph]

I know it sounds silly but i would try and clamp the sides a bit and the top to bring the crack back in line and run test disk, probable 90% failure rate. If it was my own device.

[@aaronlong7155]

great job vids are great keep it from Canada

[@awhiting8966]

3:02 very true!! I always say to my apprentice "if it can then it will!!" lol

[@MrDeadrage]

We need Sulfuric acid 96% hot to 150 degree celcius for clean usb drive ( done atention you need a good mask a gas and a good ventilation ) steam its very toxic North you the best . i know you try always all the possible option

[@SuperKillerkarnickel]

the partition table is not valid or contains some unknown partitions. there are tools on the web to autoscan for partitions and recover the partition table. maybe that helps.

[@Jewelsonn]

There was a case where the led strip on NVME drive was overheating the drive board causing it to malfunction. I saw this on linus tech tips. So point to note is always consider led as culprit if nothing else is causing the issue

[@paultomlinson528]

Shame I was hopeful it would work I've never swapped a led in the past always gone for nand read, was really hoping it would work for you Alex... Nice work

[@GoodNewsN]

yoo northridge. great work love watching

[@detmer87]

I have two Sandisk Ultra 64GB usbsticks. Both still work for a few minutes but as soon as they get hot (which they do at idle) they stop working. Sandisk really made junk. Mine both died little over two years. If I had stress tested these when new I'm quite certain I could destroy these within a few days...

[@madushanweragama6702]

Thanks thanks brother.

[@rytjson4487]

Awesome channel

[@tvboxsamsung6213]

Alex has enough work an less time to do software recovery. There is another specialist for data digging. But USB flash disk is not inended to safely backup data. Just to carry data from one PC to another. Its a customer fault to have important data on the USB flash disk.

[@rodhester]

Great video

[@skyforce1983]

Nice job i love the hard work you do !

[@joehowell1464]

The data is never important until you can't access it backup backup backup

[@projects4home]

Outcome was a bit as predicted but knowing 100% what is the cause can ease the pain of the customer. At least customer doesn’t have wonder like : what if you missed something… 😃

[@snowman1185-v]

Nicely done. You are a wizard! Thanks for the content. It's like free education. lol

[@WXSTANG]

If you were getting contents of the drive, should have tried to throw a heatsink / fan across it. Might have been enough to pull the data off.

[@SpontaneityJD]

interesting idea

[@equalinfinity189]

I really like you're videos, every day when you post a video I watch it. I do also electronic fixing aka "hiroshima bombs", but just as a hobby. Currently I've replaced analog sticks on a PS4 controller and what I've learned from you is that you need to put heat into the board when you take the solder from the joints, and it's really works. Thanks for all the great content, and keep up 😊

[@Showstopper108]

You got this

[@joesammy4343]

could you try clamping the chip to bring the crack closed to recover data?

[@Imotepth]

Cracked chips do funny stuff sometimes. Once I got an old calculator with cracked chip (hard fall), and until it died, it did some pretty weird math. Like 2+2=5, 2+2=-174, 2+2=error etc. :)

[@Dave5281968]

Good eye spotting that crack! One of the hazards of not just repairing, but also using super tiny parts.

[@AdLast]

You talk like a meme bro Edit: “yesterday…I read comments, someone say I talk like meme…this is not the case” ❤

[@NowInAus]

Liquid nitrogen bath might help? Or solder to the Golden Gate Bridge and use it as a heat sink

[@dvsr5296]

I have been struggling with those enameled jumper wires. I can't solder through enamel. I keep my soldering iron temperature about 300 degree celsius. Do you have any advice what to do? I'm also wondering if the quality of wire matters since I ordered cheapest ones through Aliexpress.

[@twizz420]

Weird. I have one of these Sandisk Ultra 3.0 USB flash drives which looks EXACTLY the same on the outside and the board inside is NOTHING like this.

[@ernestmccollum2397]

You could run data recovery program called Test Disk. But the hot Chip is not a good sign.

[@CodyTheBear_]

Not one job you have done. I've not enjoyed. Love them all. Keep up the good work.

[@ToxicwasteProductions]

Try to apply more correct to the chip like a 5amp 5volt rail?

[@HardcoreEngineering]

The drive is working and its just in another format You can check it by using diskpart

[@re-fix9678]

👍👍😘😘

[@ricardoferreira2811]

Using a flash light from behind could show what's inside the pcb? Or too many layers?

[@miki_de]

I was expecting your "YEEES" 🤣...Great work, you've tried. Tnx 😊

[@jasonr9157]

its strange how you got different results with different plugs, its possible its runaway heat thats damaged the chip, i was going to suggest blowing a fan on it when you plug it in or leaving it submerged in alcohol to see if heat control is an issue,

[@totalgaara]

The format prompt is probably because the file system of the usb key has corrupt, it should be fixed with Photorec to get the data back while it's working. Dumb idea but.. if it work for few second, could we put the chip on a heatsink and recover maybe things ? I know it sound fools

[@GainingDespair]

I wonder, if two heat sinks with some thermal paste would prevent it from over heating long enough to recover the data?

[@crisnmaryfam7344]

Ive had one of these cheap USB sticks "half" fail on me, similar to this. I would insert it to the PC and I would get an error (windows USB unrecognized/fail error), remove and insert again, it would prompt needs formatted, do so again and eventually It would give me the ignore option and the file would open on screen with all my stuff. Tried to copy all the data to a SSD on my pc, all but one picture on the USB drive copied over, it failed the one picture likely due to some data/Bit rot scenario or hardware faults who knows.

[@TheEfX]

Love your videos

[@paulninnis14]

Hi Alex love your videos. I had a problem with SanDisk usb drive, after one use it had message that I had to re-format. I used Linux to see if same and it was. Did a lot of Google and found many, many people reporting similar. Seems SanDisk has inherent problems. I managed to get refund for drive.

[@jole23b]

how to get refund from sandisk , usb 3 drive lasted me 6 years , this 3.1 usb model stoped working in 6 months

[@paolomonai9511]

May the drive RIP in the ninth dimensioni...😀😀😀 Regards from Italy.

[@daichey]

GOOD EXPLAIN

[@meshacwekesa3383]

There tends to be a problem with these SanDisk USB drives 3.0 I had a SanDisk cruiser blade 128GB, it's chip looks exactly as this one. it was working just fine, I could store and delete files on to it but one day it just froze. I tried copying files on to drive, it really tried to receive the files but at a speed of less than 100kbs and then just fail though the files on the drive were readable i.e they could be retrieved normally. I formatted it but it never worked and I realised there was a problem with the hardware inside the chip

[@DrVinylBcn]

I told u yesterday is not a hardware problem is a partition problem and this is happening when you change your usb, between windows, android, mac, linux, create a new partition tables and then is not legible in windows. You need to try in Linux first and is still not working have some software recovery tools can help you to acces to the data.

[@zsck8h1qlj6]

Visual inspection is important

[@markdjdeenix6846]

Could you connect the usb 3 side of the chip Looking like the silicone is fluxed 😊

[@IFIXCASTLES]

Good find!

[@jumulka1309]

you can try testdisk/Qphotorec if some partition is detected

[@davesradiorepairs6344]

Would it be worth it to freeze the chip and see if it behaves the same...?

[@klazzera]

did you solder the components back or will the next repair shop gonna shoot a video and say "look at this prior repair attempt, they've compeltely botched this, this is why I hate to work on prior repair attempt devices"? :D

[@larryblake3048]

What kind of flux are you using and where do you get it?

[@erikdzuro]

I have exactly same usb drive and it gets pretty warm even when it is idle.

[@hammerjim19741]

Hmmm led, didnr really think of it, but it can run on many voltages

[@helbertgascon9624]

You didn't even bother checking it in disk management to see if the drive is readable or not? It could be that the partition has corrupted from what's happening in it and it is already working properly. If that was the case then you could have run a data recovery software and get the files.

[@amindersingh9194]

plz advice for oscilloscope meter used for audio systems dj amplifires

[@TundeEszlari]

King content. :D

[@neddy1287]

Another possible case is to freeze the nand chip with compressed air can turned upside down seen these can fix it temporary

[@engineerkohat]

Sahee farigh yay.

[@ThiwankaWimalasuriya]

have you ever encountered a usb drive that became "read only" due to hardware failure. one of my usb drive has become "read only" and none of the software solutions i tried, worked.

[@CrashnServers]

The 9th dimension may be somewhere close to the pupil?? Hence not being able to see it 🤔

[@Melamamoduro]

Could always run testdisk from Linux as a last desperate attempt.

[@FilmFactry]

Not for you, but could using Dry ice or liquid nitrogen?

[@aaronjamestayao4261]

Do not put any files after reformat to recover the unwritten files inside the drive. This is a sure recovery on all of your data recovery repairs. 😊

[@LaurentiusTriarius]

2:48 if you wear glasses it'll go under the lens and straight for the pupils. Evil cutters!

[@mpla13373]

Hey Alex, I was thinking about using a board separator to separate the two halfs(by saying board separator I mean a heat plate just like they use in iphone 10 - brand new board repair to separate stacked boards since they are small ) . I know the chip is cracked but the heat from the last video was at a tiny area and cracked chip is not always bad chip , you might be lucky that the chip is good. O would be happy to hear your guys opinions to know if I am wrong entirely

[@SHABNILINFOTECH]

I'm sure you can do it

[@sevagtankabalian91]

Because the way you're doing it now,it is a time consuming job to solder wires on two sides,one for socket and one for the usb drive

[@halaharfoush7877]

There is commends u can write in cmd it can fix the errors in the files chk/...... This will fix it

[@Razzaqabuali]

For data recovery Linux is the champ.

[@giedrius6726]

Best video keep it up

[@alialshams1043]

nice Vedio ☮️👍 alright alright alright

[@cmdstraker]

The LED did look cracked.