Devices · USB sticks & flash drives
Memory sticks were never anybody's plan for anything important. They ultimately hold your accounts (with nothing held elsewhere), or they are a temporary backup that hasn't been replaced in three years. Plugs snap off. Controllers stop responding. Typically the internal flash chip is unharmed either way, and that chip is where the real work begins. They come in from Hull most weeks.
An engineer will take the details
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| What you see | What the fault is | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| Device Manager shows Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed) | Nothing gets sent from the stick. Controller is down. | Give up on trying other ports. |
| USB device not recognized | Enumeration never completes. | Try another port. Give up after that. |
| Format the disk before you can use it | File system damaged; data intact | Don't say yes when it asks if you want to format. |
| Please insert a disk into removable disk, with 0 bytes shown | Controller has lost track of its own flash memory | It requires chip-level work. |
| 0x80070570 on open — file or directory corrupted and unreadable | Damaged FAT (or exFAT) structures | If no other data is written to the stick then it can be fixed. |
| Windows was unable to complete the format | The controller has gone and there's no getting it back. | It's doing you a favour by saying no. |
Every piece of gear that shows up receives a case number on the very same day it arrives. An engineer examines it and determines what is really wrong with it and there is no charge for this. We give you straight language about which files we will be able to copy from the disk and which ones we won't be able to. Then we provide you with a single price quote, in writing, based upon these findings. We don't begin working on anything until you agree to the quoted price.
When working with an older stick, we take it apart and the memory package can be removed from the board and read individually. Monolithic designs do not allow anything to be detached. This includes both flash and control circuitry in a single component. Access is via a row of test pads, each a fraction of a millimetre in width.
Wear levelling causes blocks to move around within the flash memory. For speed, they are also split across multiple planes using something called interleaving. Whatever comes off the chip still carries both. They must first be unpicked in software, layer at a time, until real file names and dates start appearing again.
You get the file list first. No charge until you agree to it. Files will be copied to new storage media.
You will not be charged while you think about this. First, you receive a list of everything that was recovered from the drive. Once you have seen the list and given us the go-ahead, the bill comes next. Files are returned to you on media purchased specifically for this job and we cover the return postage as well. Your job is kept open by us until you can view them on your personal computer.
An honest note on the odds: no failure rate for consumer flash has ever been published that is worth quoting. These things are not run in fleets, and nobody audits them like data centres audit their hard disks so the figures were never gathered. What we see is a narrow sample. It says the same thing every year: nearly all of the physical damage is a broken connector, and sticks that die with no warning are usually unbranded or given away at a conference.
It went under a boot on a site office floor, and the connector left the board. Seven years of invoices were on it, CIS records along with those, and a tax return was due. A monolith gives you no socket to work through, so the controller pinout was traced, and the read taken off the test pads. The return went in on time.
Most often not. The plug is just an electrical connection. The data you want is stored on the memory package which sits under it. Usually a two-piece "stick" will still read, unless the package has cracked (or the moulded plastic it is stuck into).
No. The controller has stopped communicating. The flash underneath continues to operate. Read the flash independently of the controller and communication with the controller becomes irrelevant.
Cheap flash and a cheap controller in front of it. A few sticks are lying about how large they are; a little die dressed like a bigger die works until you go into the memory that doesn't exist. Good enough to carry your film around on. Not good enough to be the only copy of your film.
There's only one type of damage that puts it beyond help: a memory die split down the middle. Dead controllers, a broken board and a mess of translation tables are just an average week here.
Leave it off. There are only a few start attempts left in your failing drive and each attempt uses up a little more of what remains. Our complimentary diagnosis will determine what files are readable.