Many older SanDisk flash drives have two common faults that account for 90% of failures (aside from broken connectors / PCB damage) including the dreaded “endless blinking light” fault. The 20-99-00092-2 & 20-99-00121-1 controller PCB’s are interchangeable however there are…
We received an unresponsive SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 (CZ80) flash drive that heats up when plugged into a computer. The computer didn’t recognize the flash drive and the LED didn’t blink. After opening the SanDisk flash drive and diagnosing the…
The short answer is you can't, here's why. Assuming you've taken your flash drive to another computer and ruled out a computer issue your flash drive has a serious internal problem. Generally, it boils down to two possible problems. Flash…
We have seen a few of these BGA-149 NAND chips in Verbatim flash drives from China. At first, they look like eMMC chips but they are actually custom NAND chips. Toshiba’s marketing material says they’re BGA-153 and intended for “high…
Even if a monolthic flash device isn't visibly cracked there can still be internal damage. In electronics, all connected wires have a path to ground, using a multimeter we can measure voltage drop in diode mode to get a rough idea…
There are a few "PRO" file recovery programs like R-Studio used by data recovery companies, but there are some lesser known free applications that are just as good. In this video, I show how to use Image Explorer from Soft-Center…
We're starting to see a new generation of SanDisk Flash Drives com in with BGA-132 NAND chips. These circuit boards have a manufacture code of 54-50-07004 R1 and are dated 2013 with a 82-00515-5 controller. So far they've come in…
Flash drives are mini computers with their own operating system called firmware. If the firmware is corrupt or unable to load because of an issue with the flash memory chip, the flash drive will boot into safe mode. When a…
Thank you emails are always awesome... :-) Jeremy, I received the new flash drive on Friday. I cannot tell you how happy and relieved I was to be able to open my files again. When my flash drive snapped in…
I want to do a series of videos demonstrating the general ideas behind off-chip recovery and the tools involved. Here is an example of an off-chip recovery from an SM321 QF USB Flash Drive Controller using Flash Extractor. This is…