How to Repair Dead Pen Drive

Guys ,

We Got a Call From Mr Kiran Joshi [ Our Dealer Partner ] In Pune Regarding This Case .According To Him He Had a Pen Drive That Was Not Working After Being Connected To Any Computer .NO DATA WHATTT .Well We Told Him To Send The Pen Drive To Us for Elavuation And Testing .The Drive Arrived To Us After Three Days By Courier Duly Packed Properly .Its Very Important That You Pack your Stuff Peoperly When You Send The Same .Anyways Upon Opening Up Of The Parcel I Found Out The Following .

This Was a 4GB Transcend Pen Drive .Well The first Thing I Tried To Do Is To Connect It To The Computer And See What Happens .Well The Drive Was Detected But Abit By a Little different Name And Also Nothing Was Being Shown In The Computer .Well I Though Its Time To Open Up The Same And Check The Same .Well Have a Look At The Two Sides Of The PCB Once It is Pulled Out From The Plastic Casing.

This Is The Controller Side Of The Pen Drive Circuit .The Controller [ Also Called The Microcontroller MCU ] Is a Small And Tiny IC That Controls The functioning Of The Pen Drive .There Are Many Manufacturers Of Pen drive MCU And Each MCU Basically Stores Data In The NAND Flash IC [ Memory IC Of Pen Drive ] Differently .For a Data Recovery Technician Its Very Important That He Reverse Engineers The Functioning Of This Microcontroller And Then Read The NAND Flash Memory And Reconstructs The File System From The Nand Flash Memory IC To Get The Data Back .Here Have a Look At the NAND Flash IC Of The Pen Drive .

Here You Will See The NAND Flash IC That Is Actually the Memory IC Of The Pen Drive .This is The IC That Stores Your Data .But Its Not Like That That You Can Extract a NAND Flash IC And Install It In a Working Pen Drive And Get DATA OUT .It Does Not Work Like This .Anyways Once We Saw The NAND Flash IC And The MCU Controller We Knew What We Had To Do .We Turned Towards Our Max 8550 Hot Air Station And started The Process Of Extraction Of The NAND Flash IC .Here Have a Look At the station i Was Talking About .

Well Once You Start The Hot Air station Its Always Advisable To Run The station Idle for 1 To 5 Minutes So that It Reaches Its optimum Temperature And operating Speed .In My Case I Have Bend The Hot Air station gun Nozzle To suit My Working On SMD Components Long time Back .Here Have a Look At The Nozzle .Here I Am Just About The start The Extraction Of The NAND Flash IC .

Once The Hot Air Is Applied To The Pen Drive NAND Flash Side The Nand Flash Is Extracted and Carefully Placed At The side Of The Pen Drive PCB .Here Have a Look At The Same .In This Stage The NAND Flash IC Cannot Still Be Read Due To The Fact That The NAND Flash IC Has Solder On All Its Legs And That Is Not Uniform .In The Labs Once We Extract The NAND Flash IC We Then Use a Goot soldering station and Then Clean Both The Sides Of This NAND Flash Memory IC .This Shape Of The IC Is Called TSOP 48 .Once the Pads Of All 48 Contacts Are Cleaned This Has To Be Super Cleaned with Iso Propyl Alcohol .Here Have a Look At The Cleaning Process .

Well As Now the Pads [ Contacts ] Of All 48 Legs Are Cleaned The NAND Flash Is Read Using Our Classified NAND Flash Readers And The Contents Are Extracted .Once We Have The Dump Of The NAND Flash We Use Reverse Engineering Method To Simulate The Controller And Get the File system Out .Once The File system Is Out We Get the Data Out .Bingo Its Done and Its Done In Style @ CDR Labs C/o Lynx.

Reposted; Courtesy of Chandigarh