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Lexar Jumpdrive repair...

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rechargeable

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A friend of mine smashed up her lexar jumpdrive. (Naturally, there's data on it that I want to get at.) The USB connector was a little deformed, but it will still plug in. When you plug it in it's recognized for a second but then an error occurs. It's then recognized again, and the error occurs again. This just repeats, and you never get access to it.

Opening the drive up reveals that there's a burned out component labeled L1 which appears to be the first component in series with the outer metal sheath of the USB connector. The solder pads are still present and there still appears to be connectivity between them and the surrounding components, but the component itself is vaporized.

So, I assume the label L1 means this was an inductor. My guess is that its purpose was to filter out non-DC signals before they could enter the rest of the circuitry. My guess as to why it fried like this is that it took some damage during the smashing and created an arcing situation.

My first question for you all is, Do these suppositions sound correct?

My next question, which may or may not be ridiculous, is whether I can solder in a random inductor off some other device and simply hope for it to work? I don't know the inductance value. The best guess I could make is that it might be the same as the few other inductors (L2, L3, L4) that appear on the board, which all look identical.

Or, is there a standard inductance value for this sort of noise filtering purpose that I could safely go with?

Thank you in advance for any advice!
 
most likely you can just bypass the inductor its not needed because all you need to do is pull the data off, before you do this you should repair the connector or solder in a usb cable. alternatively you can desolder the flash chip and throw it into another jump drive
 
Okay, I just tried to jump it. It's still cycling, but now an explorer window actually opens for a split second and I can see the drive contents! So I know they exist still but before I can get at them they disappear and it goes back to cycling! ARGH!!!

I seem to have all the continuity that would have been there with the L1 in place, but no go. :(
 
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