Reρairing a ρendrive

[Electroenthusiast]

I have a ρendrive that is right now not working;
i gsearched the ρinouts of usb and the got the pin outs

**broken link removed**;
@ A:
1 +5 VDC
2 & 3 Data
4 Gnd

the outer case of pen drive and the pin1 or pin4( not sure which one) of ρendrive is somehow shorted.
but i dont know what xactly is causing problem and why its not working.
Can anyone tell how can i repair it? Atleast i want to know what problem it may be...

 

[mneary]

the outer case of pen drive and the pin1 or pin4( not sure which one) of ρendrive is somehow shorted.

The outer case of ALL of my pendrives is shorted to pin 4. Maybe that's why they named pin 4 = "ground".

 

[Sceadwian]

If it doesn't work when you plug it in throw it away, they're not repairable, unless you want to spends tens of thousands of dollars to a company that can remove the package and access the flash memory directly. A single spark in the wrong place at the wrong time can fry one of these devices, they should not be considered to be 100% reliable, no storage medium should, so you should have backups. If this information isn't on another medium... It's your fault for not backing it up properly. There is no such thing as a trusted data source.

 

[Electroenthusiast]

hmmm... why do they have such a very small life?

... flash memory directly.... A single spark in the wrong place.....

How is that possible? accessing the flash memory directly? and how can it spark at wrong place, infact it got spoilt when it was plugged to comp USB port...

 

[mvs sarma]

you may reach me, if it is transcend
the company has on line recovery software.

 

[Techie7]

you may reach me, if it is transcend
the company has on line recovery software.

I doubt it, if the exact problem is pendrive not detecting.

There is no such thing as a trusted data source.

What about a DVD?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

What about a DVD?

DVD's (at least DVDR and DVDRW) arer a fairly unreliable 'short term' storage medium, and have a specific stated life.

 

[Sceadwian]

I think DVD Rs are decent though generally 5-10 years if stored out of the sun.

How is that possible? accessing the flash memory directly?

It's possible because you can use caustic and acidic vapors to remove the package of most chips to expose the raw die internally. It's possible to reverse engineer chips in this manner. Once the raw die is exposed you simply use a very very small needle to tap the electrical connections yourself manually under a microscope. This is not possible to do for the general public unless you're a blooming genius with too much time on your hands and a lot of money. So IF the flash memory itself is intact and it's just the controller that fried (that's a very big IF) it's theoretically possible to extract the data at great cost.

 

[Birdman Adam]

I use flash drives all the time, and go through them like pencils. Use one for ~6 months, throw it out, start using the new one. I really work them hard.

I think they die easily because every component is the cheapest as possible. Everything from the controller to the flash chip are super cheap. The broads are very thin, and the traces are tiny. I take the cases off mine and put tiny heat sinks on them - Otherwise they get really hot when r/w a lot.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

Flash memory has limited rewrite cycles. Sometime only 10K or so. Modern SSDs use wear leveling algorithms in an effort to increase the longevity of the drive. I don't think pen drives are that sophisticated.

 

[Sceadwian]

It's certainly not from sector wear blueroom, do the math, even over 6 months 10000 writes would be 55 a day. No one uses their flash drive that much. It's probably simple physical failure, they're made to be small and portable and are often used in conditions far too extreme for flexing. You'll never see it either cause the plastic and whatever PCB is present will flex just fine, the substrate however won't.

I don't even use 'regular' flash drives anymore, my main flash drive is the micro SD card that's in my phone, much safer in there, my keychain has a USB adapter in it that has a micro SD Card slot (damned smallest thing I've ever seen) it's not tehcnically USB compliant though because to safe the form factor size it is possible to plug it in upside down

 

[Birdman Adam]

I probably write to my flash drives 100's of times a day. Often I will be running a program off of it. Its these programs (like Chrome) that R/W a lot.

 

[cowana]

It's the writes that wear it out - not the reads. I'd imagine a program like chome would do more reading than writing. Most of the information is written to the RAM.

 

[amando96]

It could have, and most likely was a manufacturer defect, check its warranty.
No point in trying to fix it yourself.

I prefer keeping my data in pen drives, than hard drives, at least normal ones, don't trust my precious data spinning at 10.000 rpm.

 

[Birdman Adam]

As I understand it web browsers build up a cache of webpages as you surf, so they can load them faster next time. I think that's really what causes all the writing.

 

[Sceadwian]

Techie7 all it takes to take out a DVD is a single scratch, and DVD Rs RWs will go bad over time.

 

[amando96]

Techie7 all it takes to take out a DVD is a single scratch, and DVD Rs RWs will go bad over time.

Exactly, flash data storage is the safest that i'm aware of, other than that the safest would be memorising it

 

[Sceadwian]

I'm not sure why you would think that Amando, flash memory is actually easier to damage than DVD's, they're subject to electric shocks, and strong alternating magnetic fields. Also with the drastically increased storage capacity of modern flash drives I would doubt that data retention time is very good. My point is that there is no such thing as trusted storage period. If the data is that important it should probably be mirrored on the local hard drive so that it's two separate places if the drive crashes, Personally for mass storage I like DVD or maybe blueray, flash drives are good too but for important data backup you should be using two separate backup methods. Online backup is becoming practical although not for huge amounts of data for things like code banks or what not online storage is incredibly secure.

 

[amando96]

I suppose it has to do with pen drives being the only things that have lasted me more than a 1 year in a row.
anyway i will cease with the oftopic.

 

[Electroenthusiast]

................damage than DVD's, they're subject to electric shocks, and strong alternating magnetic fields...........

Where does the alternating maganetic field come from(towards flash memory)?

The thread has moved from one topic to another; and now let it move to another!
Why cant you find a 1TB Flash drive? And what are the differences in USB1.0 /USB2.0 / USB 3.0 Technologies?