The Joys of Thumbdrive Recovery

[Jared]

Took about 3 hours of struggling with it but I finally got the last thumb drive on my bench to read.

Hopefully the coming weeks bring more hard drives instead. I'm getting sick of breathing in solder smoke.

 

[pclab]

Nice work!

 

[w.simon]

There my last successfull connector recovery :F


USB 3.0 Kingston recover with USB 2.0 connector

 

[arvika]

3 hours? You must make some practice. It is about 5 minutes job

 

[Jared]

Usually yes, but all 4 contact points were ripped out of the PCB and it took a bit to figure out where the positive power channel could be connected since the trace went under. Then even when it was right it still wasn't working until I switched to higher guage wire (not sure why, but it wouldn't work).

 

[LarrySabo]

I was going to ask, what is that, 12 gauge? (jk) BTW, what do you use for magnification to work on these? I just got my microscope last week and find that 20x is a bit too much; 10x would have been better. I might still order WF5X eyepieces to yield 10X when combined with the 2X objective. Got a 0.3MP USB camera with it but damn thing doesn't work. Pictures of these repairs would be good for your web site, or not, depending on how it looks. :mrgreen:

 

[Jared]

Believe it or not, I use nothing but an actual magnifying glass for these. But then my vision is still 20/20 so far. For even smaller stuff I use a cheap USB microscope.

 

[LarrySabo]

Wait until you need trifocals! Not fun. I have one of those hoods with magnifying lenses you can wear over your regular glasses, and it's pretty good,actually. Has a fold-down auxiliary lens that makes it quite powerful.

 

[Jared]

I was going to ask, what is that, 12 gauge?

I am a licensed electrician you know, so I'm used to working with big wire.

 

[LarrySabo]

:lol:

BTW, what do you charge for these recoveries, where it's just ripped pads/connections? I asked my DR minimum of $125 CAD last week and got turned down.