Disassembled flash drive. Do-it-yourself USB flash drive repair: troubleshooting hardware and software problems

Repairing current gadgets is a thankless and often unprofitable task. There are fewer and fewer replaceable parts in them, the layout is increasingly dense, and meanwhile the prices (with equal functionality) are lower and lower. A handicraftsman cannot compete with industrial technologies. Nevertheless, repairers of mobile phones and laptops do not particularly complain about their lives.

The reason, as they themselves explain, is the fragility of the components - screens, cases, power circuits, a number of microcircuits, as well as unreliable connections. Flash drives - "USB sticks" and, to a lesser extent, memory cards - are confidently following the same path.

Almost every user has already experienced at least one flash drive failure, and many have probably wondered: is it possible to fix it yourself? In the old days, when a fashionable gadget cost a third of your salary, this was suggested by a well-known toad, and later by simple curiosity. Indeed, as for faulty “key fobs”, at least 50-60% of cases are treated with simple methods that do not require special training or equipment. Why not try it?

Today, repairs are once again becoming relevant as the capacity (and therefore cost) of flash drives increases, and most importantly, with their reliability declining. The flash drive market is fiercely competitive with regular price wars. Manufacturers save every cent of cost and do not care too much about the quality of their products (some exceptions are expensive flagship models). It’s easier for them to include a certain percentage of defects in the price and replace failed devices under warranty. “The sheriff doesn’t care what happens to the flash drive later.”

All flash drives, with the exception of monolithic designs, are arranged in the same way and quite simply: a USB connector, a printed circuit board, on it are a dozen or two wiring elements, a controller and from one to eight memory chips (on high-capacity models they are often soldered in pairs, like “ sandwiches"). Repair technologies are simple and accessible to anyone who has a soldering iron and a multimeter. Minimal skills in handling electronics will also not be superfluous.

Successful repairs bring not only legitimate moral satisfaction, but also material benefits. The “extra” drive that appears allows you to manage your data more flexibly (for example, duplicate) and generally feel calmer. According to observations, reanimated devices live even longer than new ones - weak points have already been eliminated, and the owner handles them more carefully.

Very often, the owner of a broken flash drive is not interested in the flash drive itself, but in the data recorded on it. Data recovery (DR) technologies are fundamentally different from repairs as such, since there is no need to worry about the functionality of the entire device. Flash memory chips, on which information is stored, fail very rarely (1-2% of emergency cases). They are protected from the vicissitudes of fate both mechanically - by the case and the design of the flash drive itself (the chips are usually removed from the USB connector, the most stressful part), and electrically - by the controller and harness. The latter take on all the risks of interaction via the interface, including polarity reversal, voltage surges or static discharges. The same is true for memory cards.

Therefore, “raw” data on chips, as a rule, is saved, and the most reliable way is to unsolder all the chips, read them at the physical level using a special device (programmer, or reader) and assemble a file system image from the resulting dumps. The last stage is the most difficult, since it is necessary to reproduce the algorithm of the controller. Manufacturers are not at all eager to disclose such things, so they have to carry out reverse engineering - the notorious reverse engineering.

The results of labor-intensive excavations end up in a database, sometimes called a decision system.

Through collective efforts, we have accumulated more than 3,000 solutions that allow us to emulate almost any controller. For assembly, specialized software is used, which is very expensive (about 1,000 euros) and difficult to master. In the territory of the former USSR, as well as in many other countries, two hardware and software systems have gained the greatest popularity: Flash Extractor from the Moscow company Soft-Center and PC-3000 Flash SSD Edition from ACE Lab (this Rostov developer is also known for its repair tools hard drives).

Reader from the Flash Extractor complex. Replaceable sockets allow you to connect microcircuits of all major types

It is clear that such technologies are the prerogative of specialists. But this is the only option in cases where the controller burns out or the service information on the chips is damaged. The flash drive is then not recognized at all or does not provide access to data, and even replacing the controller with a known good one does not help (the efficiency of this outdated technology is only 15-20%).

If hardware problems do not affect the controller and firmware, then after repair the data becomes available again - you can kill two birds with one stone. True, such a profitable “doublet” is possible only in the simplest cases, such as a blown fuse or other wiring element. A bent USB connector or a broken board (typical failures with which flash drives are brought in for repair), alas, do not apply to them. Often in such situations the firmware crashes, and even after fixing the board, you won’t be able to get to the files.

The reason is the users themselves: they try to work with a damaged flash drive by pressing the connector with their hand. And in vain - stable contact cannot be achieved anyway, but the controller is blocked from chattering (it is equivalent to repeated connection and disconnection). The flash drive is no longer detected, after which simple solutions no longer work.

You have to choose whether you need “info” or the drive itself. In the first case, the user can expect professional data recovery (if it’s worth it...), and in the second - repair, most likely independently. It brings the flash drive to a “like new” state, destroying everything previously recorded. So repair and DR technologies are generally incompatible.

How do flash drives and memory cards break? Let's look at the main types of faults, their causes and methods of elimination.

Mechanical problems are hard to miss. In relation to flash drives, these are defects in the case, breakage of the cap and other moving parts, damage to the USB connector (the most common case), cracks and chips of the printed circuit board and radio elements on it. Flash drives do not like moisture, and if they are drowned or flooded, they will not work.

The exception is expensive and rarer protected models, where the internal volume is filled with silicone (they often bear the marketing names Extreme, Voyager, etc.). By the way, this same silicone makes it quite difficult to unsolder chips during hardware repair or data recovery - you have to clean each pin with a scalpel. Monolithic structures stand out separately: they are relatively resistant to water and (minor) impacts, but serious damage is definitely fatal.

This Corsair flash drive, which arrived “on date,” had to be literally torn out of the silicone

A broken case, a missing cap, or jammed moving parts may not affect the performance of the flash drive, but it becomes inconvenient and even difficult to use, and its service life is sharply reduced. With a bent, wrinkled, or broken USB connector (as with other contact problems), the flash drive is either completely inoperable or is recognized only once and will not last long. A damaged board definitely requires repair, but it does not always lead to success - it is difficult to restore the internal tracks of a multilayer structure.

A cracked flash drive cap is one of the most common breakdowns. In cheap models this happens after a month or two of use.

Unlike flash drives, mechanical damage to memory cards is usually fatal: repairs may not be necessary. A paper-thin printed circuit board suffers under any serious impact - its conductive paths are torn and contact with memory chips is disrupted. And the chips themselves can crack with the loss of all “information”. So only minor faults can be eliminated.

Thus, with SD cards, there is delamination of the housing halves and (most often) the loss of the write-blocking slider. In the latter case, the card becomes read-only, nothing can be written to it (the slider itself is not a switch, it simply mechanically opens the write prohibition circuit in the card reader, so that writing is possible on some devices). An SD with a peeled or bent casing can be difficult to insert into the slot and, more importantly, remove from it. Using force (tweezers, pliers, etc.) only worsens the situation. There is also a possibility that the entire contents of the card will sooner or later fall out of the case - this will most likely destroy the device.

In the hands of an impatient user, the SD card did not last long

The cause of mechanical damage is most often user negligence. Flash drives are inserted crookedly and abruptly into the USB port of a computer or laptop; those already inserted are touched by a hand, foot, bag or mop. Outside the computer, key fobs are dropped on the floor, stepped on, sat down, run over by the wheel of a chair, and so on. Flash drives end up in the washing machine, in street dirt and under spilled coffee, they are bathed in seas and baths.

I've seen storage devices that have been in dog teeth.

Models with folding and sliding parts suffer from unnecessary effort during transformation. The moving parts themselves are not very durable and wear out quickly if they are made of cheap soft plastic. This is especially true for various latches - inserting such a “self-folding” flash drive into the port can be difficult. Wear is greatly accelerated in a dirty and aggressive environment (for example, in a pocket near your keys). Dust and moisture easily penetrate into a USB connector that is not protected by a cap, causing contamination and corrosion of the contacts (they are not always gold-plated, as required by the standard).

Manufacturers' policies also play a role in this. They treat cheap flash drives as a disposable product and save on everything. Hence - a flimsy case, a cap that cracks after a week, a thin PCB board, sloppy, skimpy soldering. More expensive models are usually made better and are mechanically more durable. When purchasing, you should choose them. True, if the money was spent on an elaborate design, then it is better to be careful - the glamorous body may contain weak and slow filling. By the way, these are mostly gift corporate flash drives - it is unwise to use them for business, problems will begin very quickly.

More about choice. In life, the strongest flash drives are egg-shaped, not too compact. Long and thin models break first. The more metal in the case, the better - metal provides not only strength, but also good heat dissipation. The more reliable cap is the one that is held in place by friction over the entire area of ​​the USB connector - it will not crack in the area of ​​the retaining protrusions. It’s good when the cap is secured against loss with a cord or cord. Sometimes the removed cap can be put on the back of the flash drive - this is not so convenient, but better than nothing.

The recently fashionable open connector (without a metal bandage, four contact plates are in plain sight) is unsuccessful in terms of reliability: it easily breaks and scratches, and most importantly, it is subject to destructive static. In addition, it is often combined with a monolithic design - elegant and compact, but not repairable. If, for example, a laptop falls off a table, then the connector of the inserted regular flash drive simply breaks off, but the monolith cracks in half, upsetting both the user and the repairman.

Broken connector on regular and monolithic flash drives. In the latter case, there is no need to talk about repairs and even getting data is a big problem. The circled contacts will not help here

Mechanical repair has the goal of restoring the functioning and reliability of a flash drive, its content is quite obvious. At the “do-it-yourself” level, this means gluing or replacing the case, selecting a suitable cap, and the like. In many cases, cyanoacrylate superglue comes to the rescue, especially with an activator (hexane), which allows you to glue any plastic, including “resistant” polyethylene and polypropylene. For a loose or bent USB connector, the fasteners should be soldered, especially the ears on the sides (they take the bending load and come off first), and then the contacts themselves. Roughly straightening the connector in the opposite direction is not the best method: it often breaks nearby traces on the board, and repairs become very difficult, if possible at all.

On SD, instead of the lost slider, a piece of a match is easily glued in - although without the possibility of blocking, but few people use it. Contacts are cleaned with a cotton swab with a special product “Kontaktol” or, at worst, an alcohol-gasoline mixture. It is advisable to observe antistatic hygiene (grounding bracelet on your hand, conductive covering of the table and floor, etc.) or at least touch a grounded object before work. Remember that cards are static sensitive.

It’s a good idea to check the contact pads under a magnifying glass - their gilding can be very conditional or absent altogether. Worn, corroded, discolored contacts (not uncommon on cheap cards stored in a humid environment) are a signal for decommissioning; such a card will not work reliably. This also applies to microSD→SD adapters.

Burnt out at work

Electrical malfunctions of flash drives are primarily the failure of the controller (“burnout”), as well as various defects of SMD wiring elements: filters, fuses, resistors, capacitors, stabilizer, quartz. These parts experience a break, breakdown, or deterioration of parameters (for example, a decrease in the output voltage of the stabilizer from 3.3 to 2.5-2.6 V, at which the controller no longer starts). This also includes problems with the board, including damage to current-carrying paths and poor contact of parts. Often during operation defects in the factory assembly appear (incompletely soldered connections, cold soldering, corrosion from unwashed flux).

This filter (circled in white) burned out due to a voltage surge. Treatment is standard - replacement with a similar one or simply soldering a jumper

Contact problems have become noticeably more numerous after the introduction of the European Union RoHS directive (it is aimed at eliminating lead, mercury and other harmful substances from circulation). Eco-friendly lead-free solders have proven to be difficult to use: they spread worse and wet contact pads, have a higher melting point, and are less durable. High-quality soldering with them requires a high production culture, and small Chinese factories are no different in this...

In such cases, the flash drive most often shows no signs of life, but is sometimes detected in the computer as "Unknown USB device." In particular, this happens when the flash memory chips are in unreliable contact with the board (a frequent case lately is that the flash drive bends slightly in clumsy hands and one of the legs comes off). If the soldering is poor, the device can only work in a certain position, and only if you press the case with your hand (usually in the area of ​​the USB connector). It happens that defects appear only after warming up, but a cold flash drive works fine. Over time, the intervals of performance become increasingly narrower and eventually it comes to complete failure.

Electrical damage to flash drives and memory cards can also include water getting inside - problems are most often caused not by water itself, but by insufficient drying of the device before use. Once you supply power to a damp flash drive, the controller easily fails, the reason being leakage currents between the terminals. Of course, prolonged exposure to water, especially sea water, can cause simple corrosion, but this is not fatal: it was reported that the memory card from a “drowned” camera started working after a year on the seabed.

The causes of electrical damage are unstable power supply, discharges of static electricity from the user’s body or PC case, as well as overheating of drive parts, primarily the controller (memory chips can withstand up to 100-120 °C and rarely “burn”). Overheating is caused by poor cooling in a cramped plastic case, prolonged active operation, or even just idling. Advice: remove the unused flash drive from the USB port, and the memory card from the card reader slot - depending on the OS driver, they can get quite hot, and this is hardly predictable.

A combination of several risk factors is especially dangerous. For example, with an increased voltage of 5 V, the flash drive heats up much more, and an intense data flow, especially for recording, can easily finish it off. The more productive (and more expensive) the model, the greater the risk of overheating under these conditions. This also applies to memory cards - there have been reports of damage to high-speed SD cards during serial photography or dumping movies.

Cheap desktop cases also shorten the life of flash drives: in them, the USB ports on the front panel are connected to the motherboard with an unshielded cable that collects all noise. This puts extra load on the connected device, which affects its operation - failures, slowdowns and increased heating. Failure under such conditions is quite likely, especially with ungrounded electrical wiring.

Increased mechanical loads, especially alternating loads (bent-unbent), as well as falls and impacts, contribute to the appearance of soldering defects. Although flash drives are considered shock-resistant drives, their circuitry usually contains a quartz resonator. And this (in standard SMD packaging) is a rather fragile part that cannot even withstand a fall from a meter height. If the quartz is cracked or detached from the contacts, the flash drive is recognized as "Unknown USB device" with zero VID/PID codes and is unusable. Bad controller contacts manifest themselves in the same way; Pure software glitches are also common (see below for details).

Hardware repair is already required here. You can’t do without a multimeter, a 25-30 W soldering iron with a thin tip and a technical hair dryer: you should ring connections, strengthen the soldering (warming up the board with hot air often helps), restore damaged contacts or current-carrying paths - primarily those adjacent to the USB connector. Failed parts are replaced. We are talking about strapping elements - most often resistors (including zero values ​​that act as jumpers), quartz and a 3.3 V stabilizer.

Previously, flash drives often had power fuses and inductive noise filters in signal circuits broken. This was treated by selecting analogues or even banal shunts, and a broken discrete stabilizer was changed without problems (issue price 20 rubles). True, sometimes the board smoked when turned on, which means that the controller was the first to fail, and the replaced part worked as a fuse.

Modern models no longer have such elements - manufacturers have “optimized” them. The controller takes all the hits. The stabilizer is also integrated there, so its breakdown (identified by the instantaneous and unbearable heating of the chip) requires replacing the controller, and with exactly the same model with the same firmware version (second or third rows of chip markings). Non-working quartz is identified by the absence of 12 MHz generation; For this you need at least a simple oscilloscope like the C1-94 commemorative for radio amateurs.

A pleasant exception is new models of flash drives with a USB 3.0 interface. The high-speed device consumes significant current (up to 900 mA according to the standard, in reality 150-250 mA at idle and 300-600 mA under load), so the designers returned to a discrete stabilizer, this time of the pulse type, as well as choke filters. With such an elemental base, flash drives have become more maintainable.

In most cases, it is not practical to replace flash memory chips - they are relatively expensive, and after resoldering, the flash drive requires a full software repair, which may not be possible if you do not have enough experience or the necessary software. The controller is also a peculiar thing: such microcircuits are not sold at retail (you won’t order a batch of 1000 pieces), so you can only get serviceable copies from donors. It is quite stupid to disassemble a working drive, so you are left with flash drives that died for another reason. Considering the current variety of controllers (each model is available in several modifications, which are often incompatible with firmware), a lot of donors will be required - at least several dozen. It is unlikely that a non-professional repairman will have such deposits.

A burned controller is physically damaged, but this is a rare case. Hardware faults are usually invisible from the outside.

Let's not forget about the technological difficulties - for an amateur they can be significant. It is not so easy to solder 64 or 48 pins with a pitch of 0.4-0.5 mm (typical packaging of controllers and memory chips, respectively) on the fly, without distortion, “snot” and miscontacts, especially if the tools are not the best. This is also why hardware repairs in most cases are limited to replacing piping elements.

As for wet flash drives, including “drowned” ones, a three-stage technology developed for mobile phones is applicable to them.

The board is first washed from salts and dirt in clean, preferably distilled water, then immersed in isopropyl alcohol (it has a concentration of 99.7% and actively displaces water from capillary slits, such as those found under microcircuits) and finally dried with warm air. Do the same with the body parts. Final drying before assembly should take several hours.

By the way, the first to use absolute alcohol as a desiccator was D.I. Mendeleev. In 1890, he proposed replacing the drying of pyroxylin (the base of smokeless gunpowder) by dehydrating it with alcohol, which is completely safe. Since then, throughout the world this stage of gunpowder production has been carried out only according to the Mendeleev method.

Naturally, all such work is preceded by disassembling the flash drive, which in some cases requires subsequent mechanical repairs (there are structures assembled with glue or fragile disposable latches). The variety of models makes their classification difficult. In most cases, the body consists of two halves or has the form of a sleeve into which the filling is inserted. Parts are held in place by a screw (better), friction, or hidden latches (worse). In any case, if you cannot gain access to the board, then further repairs are contraindicated.

Elaborate, unusual models are more difficult to understand than their ordinary counterparts

In the second part of this material, we will introduce you to software problems with flash drives and methods for solving them, and also give you some tips on how to avoid flash drive failure. Coming soon to your screens!

The author of this article has been recovering data and repairing various storage media for many years. In the first part of the notes, he talks about typical failures of flash drives of all kinds and repair possibilities, and also gives a lot of advice on extending the life of the media and improving data safety

This area of ​​computer service is relatively little known to a wide circle of users, and the repairmen themselves (I will call them that for brevity, although the main occupation of the masters has long been data recovery) are not very willing to make contact. This is understandable: everyone has their own secrets and proven technologies, and few are willing to share them. But today, when flash technologies have entered a period of maturity (SSDs alone are worth it), it’s time to break stereotypes.

I must say that the repair services with which I started are no longer so relevant today. During “clean” repairs, when the data is not important, but only a working drive is needed, flash drives are almost never brought in: prices for them have dropped so much that it is often cheaper to buy a new one than to go to the workshop twice (Moscow is a very large and very “traffic” city , where the law “Time is money” obscures much else), and even pay something for repairs. But the manual work of a repairman cannot become cheaper at the same rate.

A few words about my instruments.

We must not forget that the percentage of successfully repaired flash drives is constantly decreasing for an objective reason - their design is becoming less and less “repairable”. There are almost no standard parts left on the board, and a burnt-out controller or a fallen memory chip cannot be replaced at an affordable price. Software repairs (the so-called low-level formatting) at current volumes last many hours and do not always lead to satisfactory results due to chip wear.

And people began to pay more attention to the guarantee than a few years ago, when flash drives and memory cards were taken from the first stalls they came across, and the receipt and packaging were immediately thrown away (they say, what can happen to a flash drive, it’s eternal). The sellers have become civilized in many ways and have no problem accepting “fallen fighters.”

Nevertheless, observations about the causes of flash drive failures will hopefully help you handle them more carefully and extend the life of both the media and the data. To bring readers up to date, I will provide typical customer questions with my answers and comments. Perhaps this will save someone from similar problems.

Word to users

- The flash drive was in my pocket, I physically broke the plastic, the insides seem to be alive, but it doesn’t work. The photographs on it are important, and besides, they are not mine. What to do? Where to go and not expensive...

If you are in Moscow, you can contact any company engaged in data recovery. Most likely, the case is not complicated. Get both photos and a working flash drive.

- Today the flash drive is no longer visible on any computer. It worked in the morning, then I inserted it into another computer. After that she was no longer defined. The indicator is constantly on. The operating system does not detect the USB device. What can be done to resuscitate data that is located in both open and protected areas?

It looks like a burnt-out controller - it often fails due to a voltage surge or static discharge when connected. If dropped, the quartz resonator may crack, filters and fuses are also damaged. Repair in such cases is not cost-effective, but data can be read directly from the memory chips. The closed section is easily “raised” - there is really no protection there, there is just a flag in the service area.

- I have a Kingston DataTravel 4 GB flash drive. When writing to it, a message appears that the file does not exist. What is this?

The culprit is either unstable voltage in the USB port (check the computer's power supply), or a defect in the memory chip: when it is affected by recording, the flash drive fails. Low-level formatting with a special utility will help here (for this you need to find out the exact model of the controller). But the best way is an exchange under warranty.

- The flash drive worked, nothing beat or knocked. I just came to the office in the morning, inserted it into the port, but it didn’t work. The LED does not light up and is not detected. How much will such a repair cost? What is important is not the flash drive itself, but the information, and it is necessary to restore everything 100%.

The prices are generally reasonable. Usually everything on flash drives is restored completely, or nothing is restored (but such sad cases are very few, no more than 2%). This, by the way, is different from hard drives, where the situation is much less predictable.

- Yesterday I connected a flash drive to the front panel of the guest computer, and that’s it... Now there is no LED indication, and it is not detected in the system in any way. Help me recover the flash drive.

Probably, the wiring of the front USB port on the guest computer is mixed up; this occurs during unqualified assembly and leads to a reversal of the polarity of the power contacts. Static discharge is also possible when connected, especially if the system unit is not grounded (outdated two-wire electrical wiring and sparking carpet on the floor have destroyed, I think, more than one thousand drives).

In both cases, the power supply circuits on the flash drive fail. Repair is advisable if the controller is still alive, otherwise it is easier to buy a new copy. Diagnostics will show what your situation is.

- My Kingston DTI 4 Gb flash drive is broken. There was no information on it, so there is no need to restore it. Just one day, when connecting to a PC, a message began to appear asking me to format the flash drive. After formatting, you can write medium-sized files (10-100MB) onto it, but then you still can’t read them from the flash drive. Can it even be repaired?

Most likely, there are defects in the memory chip; low-level formatting or, at worst, replacing the chip will help, but this is completely for the “stubborn”. In principle, you can download the appropriate software yourself (the best site is flashboot.ru) and figure it out. But keep in mind - the utilities are production and user-unfriendly, the settings are not always obvious. It's easier to give it to a repairman.

- I bought a Transcend JF V85 8 GB model for 1,800 rubles, it worked for about a month, and one fine day a girl dumped information on it on her computer at home, took it out without safely removing it, as was done before and by me in that number, and brought it to me. But my flash drive no longer wanted to work - the light did not light up, and the computer does not detect it in any way, and does not even heat up, as usually happened. It’s lying on the shelf collecting dust, it’s a pity, it’s still eight gigs. The problem is that the receipt was thrown away, and even if there was one, it doesn’t say that the flash drive can be returned under warranty. Well, okay, I'm interested in how much it will cost to repair it. Yesterday I found one service in the center, it says 1,500-3,000 rubles, free diagnostics within 15 minutes, repairs within an hour. I’m just wondering if this is a normal amount or is it still too high?

If the flash drive shows no signs of life on any computer, it means it has burned out. This happens if you fail to pull it out during data exchange (when the indicator blinks, for example). The general rule is that repairs should cost no more than 40% of the cost of a new item. Otherwise it's easier to buy. Normal prices for repairing flash drives are from three hundred to five hundred rubles, in rare cases the cost of components is added. As for the service in the center, its specialization is data recovery, which is a more expensive service. Repairs are done as an option, prices are inflated, if only because of the rent. I think that giving 1,500 rubles is unreasonable.

- I recently inserted a flash drive into a computer with unstable power supply, and it burned out. There were no signs of life, and an acrid burning smell came from the body. Having disassembled the flash drive, I did not visually find any burnt elements. Memory Micron 29F16G08MAA, controller Alcor AU6986. On the other side there is a wiring for the second memory chip and some other copper contacts. If I think correctly, then these contacts are for direct reading from the memory chip. So, can you suggest the equipment for reading or where to start recovering information from a flash drive?

To read data from a faulty flash drive, you will need a special device - a programmer, which is not cheap. You also need to carefully unsolder the memory chip without overheating it (you need a soldering station with a microhair dryer), and place it in the clamping socket of the programmer. Contacts on a flash drive will not help here.

The main stage of work is converting the read raw data into a file system image. You need to choose the right algorithm from thousands of possible ones, and here only your own experience and advice from colleagues can help. The first time, you can tinker for a long time and never get to the end. The software package also costs money.

For one case, it is clearly impractical to do all this, so I advise you to contact a data recovery specialist. If there is none in your city, you can send the flash drive by mail to Moscow. The repairman can send the data to the customer via the Internet.

- Transcend 16 GB flash drive, the computer detects it, but does not open it. It says “Insert the disc into the drive.” The LED used to shine evenly, but now it lights up slowly and goes out slowly. What happened to her? Is repair possible? How long and how much does it cost?

The firmware crashed (more precisely, the internal translation tables collapsed). Repair is possible and inexpensive, data recovery is also possible, but at a different cost. At the same time, one excludes the other: during repair, all data is irreversibly lost, and to restore data, the flash drive is disassembled and then sent to the trash bin. Choose what is more important to you.

A word to the repairman

During the work, a number of observations have accumulated, some of which are simply entertaining, but many may prove useful in practice. I presented them in the form of several micronovels.

About the dangers of optimizations

Every day they bring faulty flash drives or ask about them. What’s surprising is that even well-known brands sometimes suck. Everything is clear about noname, no one expects high quality, but Kingston or Patriot surprise. It seems that everyone is excitedly “optimizing” costs.

They even started saving on solder! Even without this, after the introduction of the European Union's ROHS directive in 2006, lead-free solder began to cause a lot of problems for repairmen. It spreads worse and wets contact pads, requires higher soldering temperatures, and is less durable. Cold solders are now a common problem. The flash drive bends slightly in clumsy hands, and one of the legs of the microcircuit flies off, and the drive begins to play the fool. The USB connector is also attached to the board by soldering and can easily break off if there is insufficient solder.

"Mix-ups"

From time to time I encounter mixed up wires on the front panel USB ports. There may be errors here that are fatal for flash drives. Most often, assemblers confuse the polarity of the power lines (turning the entire connector upside down), then the stabilizer immediately burns. It's easy to replace. But if the data lines are mixed up (indicated by D+ and D-), this causes the controller to fail, while the power circuits are in order and the LED lights up as usual. The controller is a scarce microcircuit and is not available for free sale, so repairs in such cases are difficult.

Miracle in rhinestones

They brought an 8 GB Kingston flash drive covered with Swarovski crystals for repair. A red light flickers from underneath them. Quite beautiful, but you can’t tell it without damaging the exterior. I got hold of a technological utility, launched it and see: the real capacity is 128 MB. Moreover, the test does not pass - memory failure.

It turns out that the Chinese installed a defective chip from an old release, flashed the flash drive so that it was recognized as 8 GB, and sold it for $100! Well, masters, they’ll cut the soles off as they go. Just what should the owner do? I could solder a normal chip, but when disassembling the rhinestones will fly off. It turns out that the decoration is thrown away.

I’m slowly coming to a conclusion - an elaborate, showy, non-standard case reduces reliability (primarily due to poor heat dissipation - this is important for modern high-speed flash drives), and most importantly, it has a detrimental effect on maintainability. Everyone should keep this in mind when purchasing.

Well? - Wildebeest connectors!

Often customers ask us to fix a flash drive with a bent USB connector. As they explain, it was hit when it was inserted into the port, after which the drive died. Indeed, in many models the connector is a weak point; its attachment to the board is not strong enough and does not protect the contacts from breaking. A damaged flash drive sometimes comes back to life if you lightly press it in the direction opposite to the bend.

So, in such cases, DO NOT try to straighten the connector yourself! Leave it as is and take it to a repairman. When roughly bent in the other direction, the current-carrying paths near the connector finally break and repairs become significantly more complicated. After all, the board of modern flash drives, although thin, is four-layered. Sometimes all that remains is to remove the memory chip and read the data. The work is difficult, and the flash drive is being thrown away.

Cruel Games

Women sometimes bring flash drives broken in half for repair. I could only do this if I purposefully broke the device, and even then not right away. And they, smiling sweetly, say that they accidentally touched a flash drive inserted into the USB port, after which it does not work. There are women in Russian villages! The other day, a client brought a Transcend JetFlash 2A flash drive - the USB connector was broken with meat, the PCB was broken and all connections were torn. I know this model well, I use several of these myself. Workhorses - they last for three years, the body is strong, the board is thick, the soldering is oak. Even if you step on it, nothing will happen; it survives even after dog teeth. I didn’t expect to see a corpse in a woman’s hands.

In this case, the flash drive could not be repaired: the internal tracks near the connector were damaged. I recovered the data directly from the memory chip, fortunately the capacity (2 GB) does not cause problems.

You need to be more gentle

I would venture to give some banal advice: be careful with flash drives inserted into the USB port on the front panel - due to the large lever, they are quite vulnerable to accidental impacts. You hit it with your hand or foot - and that’s it, hello. Often not only the flash drive suffers, but also the port itself, which turns out of its socket and breaks the fasteners. This is the problem with many inexpensive cases, where the remote ports are secured with latches made of flimsy plastic.

A suitable solution is a small (up to 1 meter) extension cable or USB hub; they allow you to place the flash drive in a safe place and connect it to more reliable ports on the rear panel. It would be nice to fix the hub on the table (for example, using double-sided tape), then when connecting you can do it with one hand. Some people tie the extension cord in a knot around the monitor leg.

By the way, there are more and more monitors with a built-in USB hub, so don’t neglect this useful feature. I prefer those models (Dell, Asus) where the USB ports are on the left side: when working, the left hand is usually free, with a little skill you can make all the connections without looking. Many Dells are also equipped with a card reader, which is also convenient.

Extend wisely

Since we're talking about USB extension cables, I'll pay attention to their quality. As was previously the case, they are no longer included in the package of flash drives. Users take the first lace they come across, but in vain. The Chinese desire to save money has also made its way here: often a thin cable is not shielded and consists of conductors of small cross-section, and not copper, but copper-coated aluminum (a favorite trick of small factories, hidden under the abbreviation CCAW). Both the signal and power will arrive at the flash drive weakened and mixed with interference.

All this has disastrous consequences: the drive is either not recognized in the system at all, or operates at an unacceptably low speed (at the USB 1.1 level - about 1 MB/s), or periodically “falls off” due to external interference. External devices with a USB interface, such as printers and scanners, can also fail, and are especially sensitive to the quality of the cables of the HP model. Of course, in such circumstances, you should pay attention to the selection of an extension cord - saving a penny is completely unjustified.

High-quality extension cords are certified according to the USB 2.0 standard, which is directly indicated on the packaging. The cable must be thick enough (at least 5 mm in diameter), have a tinned copper braid plus an aluminum solid screen and consist of pure copper wires of at least 28AWG caliber (it is better if thicker wires - 24AWG) are allocated for power supply. Reputable manufacturers have this information printed on the packaging or directly on the cable itself.

You should also pay careful attention to the size of the extension cord and do not take more than necessary (the principle of “there is no extra space in your pocket” is harmful here). Although according to the standard, the length of a USB 2.0 cable can reach 5 m, in practice, sections longer than 3 m are already unstable. For long distances (10-20 m), active extenders with built-in signal amplifiers are designed. Flash drives do not require this: in most cases, an extension cord of 0.6-1 m is enough for them, and in the rest, a 1.8 m cable, the most frequent guest in our stores, is suitable.

Slow and unstable operation is often observed with flash drives connected to the front USB ports of the system unit. The reason is powerful interference on the unshielded cable connecting the port to the motherboard (high-quality cases are equipped with shielded cables, but most people choose cheaper options). Moreover, weakened power supply on thin wires sometimes does not allow the flash drive to identify itself: “unknown device”, and that’s it. Therefore, I recommend that you always connect the flash drive to the ports on the rear panel, which is why you need an extension cord.

When the computer feels bad

A USB hub is only good if it is active, with its own five-volt power supply. Unfortunately, most people still use passive devices, and here we have a problem: the load capacity of a USB port is limited to 500 mA, and in laptops it is often 250 mA. If the port is overloaded (on a laptop, all you need to do is plug 2-3 flash drives into the hub), then anything can happen. Physically, most likely, nothing will happen to flash drives - they will withstand a voltage drop, although troubles such as a missing translation table are possible if data was being exchanged at that moment.

But when overloaded, a computer can easily freeze or restart. An interrupted work session will clearly not improve your mood. Moreover, several times when connecting flash drives, physical damage to the motherboard was observed - the south bridge burned out from the surge of current (I remember these were Gigabyte boards on the 965 chipset). So miniature hubs may be pleasing to the eye with their design and ease of use, but for a computer it is a heavy load.

Ilya Zaidel

In the modern world, people are accustomed to using flash drives to transfer information. A few years ago there were disks, and before that there were floppy disks. Compared to these already outdated devices, a flash drive is much more productive and smaller in volume. Of course, with such popularity, they began to develop quickly, and now you can already find external drives from 1 GB to 516 GB.

Unfortunately, like any other equipment, they can break. This happens for various reasons: they took out the flash drive while recording, or it broke due to heavy loads, etc. Users began to look for options on how to repair the flash drive. If the problem is related to the hardware, then you can simply throw it away. Another case is software glitches. In this case, you can try restoring the external drive. You should not immediately take your USB drive to a service center, since it is not difficult to bring a flash drive back to life, the main thing is to follow the rules. Let's look at how to repair a flash drive yourself.

Flash drive won't open

You may have connected a flash drive, the computer sees it, but errors occur when you try to open the contents. If your computer says “No access,” then most likely you need to clean your external drive of viruses.

What is the problem? Once the malicious files entered the flash drive, they created an autorun.inf file. This is the reason why the external drive does not start.

How to repair a flash drive? In this case, you need to check the external drive with an antivirus. Once you remove the malicious files, we need to manually remove the autorun.inf file. Go to “My Computer” and right-click on the flash drive. Then select “Open”. The flash drive will open in a new window, all we have to do is delete the malicious file.

USB drive is not formatted

The reason why the flash drive does not open may be a memory failure. How to repair a flash drive? In this case, it is enough to format the external drive. Unfortunately, all content will be erased.

Go to “My Computer” and right-click on the external drive. Next you need to select “Format”. Unfortunately, this method does not always help. If you were unable to restore your external drive, then you need to try the second method.

So, we need to go to the Disk Manager directory. To do this, press the key combination Win + R. In the new window you need to enter the command diskmgmt.msc and click “Ok”. The “Disk Manager” will open, where we need to select the flash drive and click “Format”.

on the computer

To make sure that the problem is with the external drive, you need to take it out and try to insert it into other USB connectors that are located on the motherboard. If the problem persists, then you need to check the USB drive on another computer.

How to repair a micro-SD flash drive? First you need to check it in other USB connectors. If the problem persists, then the problem may lie in the card reader. Try changing it.

If the external drive is detected on another computer, then you need to try removing the drivers. How to do it? Go to the “Control Panel”, where we select the “Device Manager” directory. In a new window, look for the line “USB storage device” and remove the drivers.

After these steps, disconnect the flash drive and restart the computer. After this, connect the USB drive and install new drivers.

If the reinstallation does not bring results, then you need to clear the registry branches. They contain all the information about your device. First we need to collect this information, or rather, find out several parameters (PID and VID). To find out this data, you need to return to the “Device Manager” directory and right-click on the flash drive. Go to the “Information” item, where the device code will be displayed.

After that, press the Win + R key combination and enter the regedit command in a new window. So we will open the registry editor, where we need to find two parameters, the first ends with the word USB, and the second USBSTOR. We open these directories and look for identifiers, after which we delete them. Reboot the computer and check the functionality of the external drive.

External drive is detected, but dimensions are not displayed

If you find yourself with such a problem, then there are memory failures. How to repair a flash drive? In this case, you need to download the ChipGenius program. This way we can find out the VID and PID of your external drive. After you have found the model of the flash drive chip, you need to go to the website flashboot.ru, where you need to enter the received data. Let's start the search. So what did we find? These are the appropriate drivers and utilities for your removable drive. After installation, your flash drive should work.

How to repair a USB flash drive if all else fails

Of course, there may be various problems with an external drive that do not allow you to restore a flash drive due to the problems already described. There is another way to bring a removable disk back to life. However, this method is suitable specifically for a flash drive; memory cards cannot be restored this way. If you are wondering how to repair a Transcend flash drive, then try this method.

Where should I start? Take your USB drive and remove the plastic cover. We need to put our device into test mode. Turn the flash drive over as shown in the picture. There is a small button in the corner that will need to be closed. As a rule, you need to close contacts 29 and 30. How to do this? Take a needle and press in the right place.

We insert the removable disk so that the computer detects the flash drive and it becomes accessible. Only after this do we open the contacts. However, you should not disconnect it from your computer, as it will not work yet. Next, you need to install drivers and utilities; we have already covered how to do this.

Conclusion

After these steps, your USB device should work. If this does not happen, then there may be problems with the hardware. In this case, it is easier to throw it away than to restore it. As you have already noticed, it is not difficult to repair a flash drive if the problem lies in the software part. However, in order to quickly and efficiently restore your device, you need to immediately identify the problem.

It so happened that my favorite shockproof flash drive with a capacity of 4 gigabytes stopped working. And no specialized utilities could restore it.

I really liked the design of this flash drive. I spent a lot of time searching in stores for exactly the same one, but to no avail. But while I was running around the shops, I had the idea to transfer the insides from another flash drive to the body of my dead one. When I returned home, the first thing I did was disassemble my dead flash drive and evaluate the features of mounting its board in the case. Having assessed the situation, I concluded that a board from a regular retractable flash drive could fit into this case. A donor was immediately purchased, which turned out to be an 8 GB Transcend retractable flash drive.

Having disassembled the new flash drive, I unsoldered the USB connector from its board and installed it in the new case. It fit and there was some space left. Having tried it to this place, I cut off the part with the USB connector from the board of the old flash drive using metal scissors. By carefully soldering the contacts of the USB connector of the old flash drive with wires to the contact pads of the board of the new flash drive, I got the following contraction:

All that remains is to check and assemble everything. Carefully inserting the fragile structure into the computer, I heard from the speakers the familiar sound of connecting a new device. The flash drive was detected and opened, which means I didn’t damage anything and soldered everything correctly. After that, everything was carefully placed in the case and assembled. This operation can be done with many flash drives. Many manufacturers have the same type of case and in many cases you don’t even have to solder anything, and in some you will also have to glue the case together. The main thing is to carefully disassemble and reassemble everything, without mixing anything up. That's how I got an 8 GB flash drive in my favorite case labeled 4 GB. Only my friends were interested for some time in how I increased the capacity of my flash drive.

Modern flash drives - USB drives and memory cards - are not very reliable. Their cases break, connectors and power circuits fail, microcircuits fail, and finally, the firmware fails and defects multiply. Many users have already experienced at least one flash drive failure, after which they wondered: is it possible to fix it yourself?

Practice shows that 50-60% of malfunctions can be treated using simple methods that do not require special training or equipment. This is justified in cases where a return under warranty is not possible (the warranty period has expired, there are no documents, the place of purchase is far away, etc.). Successful self-repair provides not only moral satisfaction, but also material benefits. Repaired drives sometimes last longer than new ones - the weak points have already been eliminated, and the owner handles them more carefully.

Often the owner of a faulty flash drive or memory card is not interested in the drive itself, but in the data stored on it. Data recovery technology is fundamentally different from repair technology, since it is not necessary to repair the entire device. In case of failure, the contents of the flash memory are preserved and can be read out independently. To do this, the microcircuits are desoldered from the board and placed on a special device (reader). The most labor-intensive stage is assembling the file system from raw dumps, which requires reproducing the logic of the controller. Specialized software and hardware systems are used here, for example. Obviously, this is a matter for specialists.

In turn, repairing a flash drive does not imply the safety of the data on it. Moreover, software methods destroy information on a flash drive, bringing it to a “like new” state. Fixing hardware failures can make previously recorded data available, thereby killing two birds with one stone, but this only applies to the simplest cases.

Let's look at the main types of malfunctions of flash drives and memory cards, their causes and the possibility of self-repair.

1. Mechanical problems

For flash drives, these are defects in the case, damage to the cap and other moving parts, damage to the USB connector and printed circuit board. SD cards have delamination of the case and loss of the slider that blocks recording in the reader. Both drives do not like moisture and do not work when flooded.

Minor damage may not affect the performance of the flash drive, but it becomes inconvenient to use and its service life is reduced. If the USB connector is bent or broken, the flash drive is inoperative; at best, it is recognized only once and will not last long. A cracked board requires repair, which is not always successful. An SD card with a broken slider becomes read-only; nothing can be written to it. An SD with a delaminated casing can be difficult to insert into and remove from the slot; using force only worsens the situation.

The cause of mechanical damage is mostly user negligence. Flash drives are inserted crookedly into the USB port of a computer or laptop; they are touched with a hand or foot. Outside the computer, flash drives are dropped on the floor, people step on them, etc. The drives end up in the washing machine, under spilled coffee, and just in the dirt. Folding and retractable structures suffer from excessive effort - their parts wear out. Wear is accelerated in an aggressive environment (for example, in a key ring). If the cap is lost, dust and moisture enter the USB connector, damaging the contacts.

A little about flash drive casings. The strongest ones are egg-shaped, not too compact. Long and thin models break first. The more metal, the better. The more reliable cap is the one that is held by friction on the USB connector. It's good when the cap is insured against loss. The fashionable open connector is unreliable: it breaks and scratches easily, and is susceptible to static.

Mechanical repair aims to restore the functioning and reliability of the flash drive. This includes gluing or replacing the case, selecting a cap to replace a lost one, etc. On a loose USB connector, the mounting ears and the contacts themselves are soldered. A bent connector must be straightened with extreme caution: adjacent tracks on the board may break, making repairs more difficult. On SD cards, instead of the lost slider, you can glue a piece of a match. Contacts are cleaned with a cotton swab and an alcohol-gasoline mixture. When working, you must avoid static - cards are sensitive to it.

2. Electrical faults

This is primarily a failure of the controller, as well as defects in the wiring elements - filters, resistors, capacitors, stabilizer, quartz. These parts exhibit breaks, shorts, and deterioration of parameters. Electrical faults include violations of current-carrying paths and contacts with parts. Assembly defects often appear (cold soldering, etc.).

In such cases, the flash drive does not show any signs of life, or is defined in the OS as an “unknown USB device.” In particular, this happens when the flash memory chips are in unreliable contact with the board. If the soldering is poor, the device can only work in a certain position. It happens that defects appear only with heating, but a cold flash drive works fine. Gradually, periods of performance narrow, reaching complete failure.

Electrical damage to flash drives and memory cards can also include the ingress of water and other liquids. Problems are caused by poor drying of the device before use. If you connect a damp flash drive, the controller may be damaged due to leaks.

The causes of electrical damage are surges in supply voltage, static discharges, as well as overheating of drive parts, primarily the controller. Overheating is caused by poor cooling in a cramped case, prolonged active work, or simply idling, especially in Vista/Win 7. It is dangerous when risk factors are combined. So, with an increased voltage of 5 V, the flash drive heats up much more, and an intense data flow can finish it off. The more productive the model, the higher the risk of overheating under these conditions.

Mechanical loads, as well as falls and impacts, contribute to the appearance of soldering defects. The flash drive circuit usually includes a quartz resonator - the part is quite fragile. If the quartz is cracked or detached from the board, the flash drive is recognized as an “unknown device” and, of course, does not work. Non-contact of the controller with the board has the same effect.

It is already required here hardware repair. Using a thin soldering iron and a technical hair dryer, soldering is strengthened and damaged contacts and tracks are restored. Defective parts are replaced. We are talking about the wiring elements: resistors, quartz and a 3.3 V stabilizer. Previously, flash drives often had power fuses and noise filters in signal circuits that failed. This was treated by selecting analogues, and the burnt stabilizer was changed without problems.

You will no longer find fuses and filters in new models - savings are at their full potential. The stabilizer is integrated into the controller, so its breakdown (identified by instantaneous heating of the chip) requires replacing the controller with exactly the same model and firmware version. At least the top two lines of the markings must match.

The controllers are not sold at retail, so you can only get working copies from donor flash drives. Considering the current variety of controllers and firmware, a lot of donors will be required: an unjustified expense for an amateur. It is not practical to change flash memory either. Chips are quite expensive, and after replacement they need to be initialized - in fact, software repair (see below), which may not work.

There are also technological difficulties. Carefully soldering 48-64 pins in increments of 0.4-0.5 mm is not so easy for an amateur. This is also why hardware repairs in most cases are limited to replacing piping elements. As for “drowned” flash drives, they are treated similarly to other gadgets. The board is washed from salts and dirt, then immersed in isopropyl alcohol (it displaces water from the cracks) and finally dried with warm air.

For hardware work, the flash drive must be disassembled, which sometimes requires subsequent mechanical repairs - there are models assembled with glue or fragile latches. In most cases, the body consists of two halves, or has the form of a sleeve. The parts are held in place by a screw or hidden latches. If you cannot gain access to the board, hardware repair is problematic.

3. Software problems

This includes many cases when a flash drive has no visible damage, when connected to a USB port it shows signs of life - the indicator blinks and is even recognized in the OS, but does not provide access to data. The drive has the wrong capacity (zero, 1 MB, or a couple of terabytes), and any time it is accessed, the messages “Insert disk”, “No access to disk”, etc. are displayed.

The main reason is damage to the microprogram, or firmware. The firmware includes unchangeable controller microcode and service data in flash memory, which are updated quite often. This is where the vulnerability lies. Let's imagine that the controller changes service fields or rebuilds the translator. If at this moment the flash drive is removed from the USB port, a drop in the 5 V supply voltage or a static discharge occurs, then the recording will remain incomplete and the data in memory will be inconsistent. This will be the “firmware crashed” situation.

Another reason for failures is failures of the flash memory itself. Each chip contains a reserve capacity to replace faulty pages. Defect management is one of the main functions of the firmware, and if the intensity of reassignments exceeds the threshold, then a block is placed. Sometimes a flash drive is write-only: the data is visible and readable, but when you try to delete a file or format it, the message “The disk is write-protected” is displayed. NAND memory is damaged when written, but reading can be left in mild cases. Degrading memory cards behave similarly: for microSD, switching to read-only mode is not uncommon.

It also happens that the flash drive works, but corrupts some files. There are special utilities for testing drives - MyDiskTest, H2testw, Flash Memory Toolkit, etc. They identify bad blocks, translation failures, real performance, as well as fakes. Flash drives and cards with higher capacity are often found in markets and on the Internet.

In all the described cases, the flash drive needs repair. Software repair includes testing flash memory to identify defects, compiling a new translation table and writing it to the service area on the chips. These actions are often referred to as "low-level formatting." The same thing happens when a new flash drive is initialized at the factory, so production utilities of the MPTool class (MP - Mass Production) are used for repairs.

The utilities are strictly specialized, so you need to look for a version suitable for a given controller that would understand soldered flash memory. On flash drives of the same model, the options for controllers and memory chips change frequently, so previous solutions are not suitable. All that remains is to sort through all the utilities of one category or another, plus games with settings.

Where can I get the utilities? In RuNet, this is the site www.flashboot.ru, where almost all available repair software is freely available. There is also a large forum where repairmen share their experiences and problems.

Let's give two tips for repairs. The first piece of advice is that low-level utilities should be run in Windows XP; they often do not work under Windows 7. The production tools are conservative and do not follow fashion. In all cases, administrator rights are required.

The second tip concerns putting the controller into test mode. Often the problematic flash drive is not detected in Windows (“USB device is not recognized”) - then the utilities will not work. This is due to corruption of service data in flash memory: the controller freezes on them. In test mode, memory polling is disabled and the controller operates by default. To do this, you need to short-circuit pins 29 and 30 of the memory chip on the flash drive board (with a needle or tweezers) and connect the flash drive in this form to the USB port. After it is determined, open the conclusions. Then you can run repair utilities.

You should start software repair of a USB flash drive from the manufacturer’s website - service programs for the main lines are posted in the technical support section. These are simplified versions of production utilities, they have a minimum of settings and are suitable for simple cases. If proprietary software does not work, the above resources will help out. Factory utilities with fine settings will allow you to revive most models. Even Chinese fakes are coming to life. A non-repairable case is a controller of an unknown brand and memory chips without any markings at all.

If nothing helps, it means that the drive is not being treated by software. For example, fallen memory chips require replacement. For an amateur, this is unprofitable, and the flash drive goes into the bucket. It happens that you can’t find a utility for a relabeled controller, then there’s no need to worry either. Complex cases include SanDisk flash drives: there is no repair software for them. The company produces flash memory chips, controllers and drives themselves using non-standard solutions. SanDisk does not disclose this information, which is why there are no utilities available for its products.

4. About memory cards

The technologies described above apply to USB drives. Memory cards are practically irreparable - hardware repair is unrealistic, and software repair requires hard-to-find equipment (readers). The fact is that ordinary card readers do not pass the technological commands necessary for low-level formatting of cards. Repair utilities are also attached to special readers, so the latter are useless in themselves and no one posts them.

All that is available for maps today are high-level formatting utilities. Utilities can be both universal (SDFormatter, HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool) and specialized, designed for a specific family (Sony Memory Stick Formatter). The latter handle defects better, but require card readers from the same manufacturer. If the utilities do not help, then the junk card remains to be returned under warranty or thrown away.

There is only one exception: a device known as a “clip” (full name – “Adapter for unlocking MMC and SD cards”) allows you to hardware remove the write lock and password from SD/SDHC/microSD cards. This is a self-contained device that is powered by a 9-volt battery. After inserting the card into the slot, a complete erase command is sent to it, which resets the flash memory and service fields on the card. A few seconds - and the card is like new. Of course, all data is irretrievably lost. However, in more serious cases (flat firmware, damaged translator, etc.) the clip will not help.

Some cameras and smartphones that have their own driver for working with cards can replace the clip. Thus, Nokia E72 on Symbian OS can remove protection from microSD. The “low-level formatting” option in a number of Canon cameras does the same with SD - apparently using the same All Erase command. You can try to format a blocked card on all devices you can find, and the simpler the gadget, the greater the chances.

The non-repairability of memory cards raises the question of their quality. To avoid running into a fake, shop at trusted places. It is best to return a failed card under warranty - for this, save the documents and packaging. Of course, backup is also required. All valuable files on the card must be archived on another medium - a hard drive, flash drive or second card. Saving on backup will sooner or later backfire (we are not talking about freebies from torrents).

If the card fails, the user will save his time and money: data recovery in such cases is not cheap. If a regular SD or CF will cost 3000-6000 rubles, then for monolithic structures such as microSD the prices reach 30 thousand. It is difficult to solder to the memory chip bypassing the controller - not all Data Recovery companies undertake such work.

5. Dispensary

Preventing a breakdown is easier than fixing it. Proper use of flash drives and memory cards eliminates many problems. Here are some simple recommendations.

• The life of flash drives is shortened by mechanical stress, temperature changes, dampness and aggressive environments. Other threats include static discharges, strong electromagnetic fields and radiation. Protect flash drives from all this.
• Regularly check the file system of flash drives using built-in OS tools - this eliminates most logical errors.
• It is undesirable to use a flash drive in intensive recording mode (working accounting databases) - its service life and reliability decrease.
• Remove memory cards from the slot in mobile devices less often and do not work with them when the battery is low. Before removing, wait until operations are completed and turn off the power.
• Remove USB flash drives from the port only in a safe manner. The drive often fails when it is pulled out while recording.
• If the flash drive starts to malfunction (falls off, freezes, etc.) - do not rush to treat it with service utilities, they lead to data loss. First, copy important files to another medium, and only then proceed with the repair.