USB Flash Drive Data Recovery Service
Recover My Flash Drive has been recovering flash memory recovery since 2007. We work at the chip level, which means a drive that no computer will recognize, or one whose connector snapped clean off we can recover. Send it in, we evaluate it for free and quote a price for recovery. If we cannot recover your files, you pay nothing. Questions? Email info@recovermyflashdrive.com
What We Recover From
Most drives arrive with one of these faults.
If your symptom is not on this list, send it anyway. The evaluation is free and we
have seen a lot of unusual failures.
Drive not recognized, nothing happens when plugged in
This can be many things. Anything from a blown fuse, broken connector or damaged controller, even corrupt flash memory. If necessary we can do a chip off recovery where by we read the flash memory chip directly bypassing the controller and manually reassemble your data.
"Please insert a disk into removable disk"
This typically means the controllers firmware is corrupt. To recover the data typically requires reading the flash memory chip directly (chip-off).
Connector bent, wobbly, or snapped off
Typically the connector is broken, the circuit board is damaged or there is a weak solder joint. We specialize in micro-soldering and component level repair. We can typically repair the damage or swap the broken part out with one from our extensive donor collection.
Drive shows as RAW, or asks to be formatted
This can be many things. Corrupt FTL (Flash Translation Layer), Weak NAND cells, or corrupt controller firmware. The data is typically recovered by doing a chip-off recovery.
Went through the wash, spilled on, or dropped in water
Typically we can repair the damaged components or read the physical memory chip to recover the data.
Worked yesterday, unreadable today, no obvious damage
This can be due to worn NAND cells or some “other” damage. The drive would need to be sent in and diagnosed first however we should be able to recover the data.
Drive is hot to the touch or the light never comes on
This can be due to a power surge or short circuit. Typically we repair the short or read the flash memory chip directly to recover the data.
USB Flash Drive Data Recovery Pricing
Prices vary depending on the capacity and complexity of job. Without physically having the media and diagnosing the fault it’s difficult to give an exact price but if you send an email to info@recovermyflashdrive.com with the description of the problem, make, model, capacity and a picture of the media we can try to give you an estimate. We provide a free pre-paid postage label to mail the drive to us, all you need to do is supply the bubble mailer. Below are general guidelines for pricing.
- Free Shipping Label
- No Evaluation Fees
- Damaged PCB’s
- Shorted Components
- Snapped Connectors
- Component Swaps
- Mild file system corruption
- Un-repairable Media
- Reading the NAND chip
- Manually reassembling data
- Heavy file system corruption
- Monolithic Media
- Pin-Out Discovery
- X-Rays
Data Recovery Methods
Physical Damage / Controller Level Recovery
Recovering data through the controller is ideal. We repair the fault and stabilize the drive long enough to get the data off the media. It’s a rush against time as we might only get one chance before the drive fails completely and chip-off is the only recovery viable option. When the drive starts acting “odd” stop using it, running consumer data recovery tools can further complicate the recovery as it might trigger the controller or operating system to try and repair the drive by transferring data in damaged areas of flash memory over to good areas. We also maintain a huge parts collection of flash drives and can use it to rebuild damaged flash drives whether that’s swapping out a controller or circuit board to replacing passives components on a failed drive.
Chip-Off and Monolithic Recovery
Chip-off and monolithic recovery’s are the most complicated and time intensive. Chip-off recoveries involve removing and reading the flash memory chip and emulating how the controller accesses data from the flash memory chip. This means fixing bit errors, locating or fixing corrupt mapping structures, because data isn’t stored sequentially in flash memory its like putting a huge jigsaw puzzle back together from the raw flash memory dump.
Monolithic flash devices integrate all the components (eg: passives, controller, flash memory chip, etc) into a single microchip. To read the flash memory chip involves soldering tiny wires smaller than a hair to the microchip. If no pin-out exists we need do develop one by probing every contact on the chip and seeing which signals belong to the flash memory chip inside the monolithic chip. Sometimes we need to get an X-Ray of the microchip to locate missing signals. After this we can read the flash memory chip and proceed as an chip-off recovery.
Our Process, Step by Step
1. Create a work order, it will generate a free pre-paid shipping label. Mail the media out in a bubble mailer with our shipping label and work order.
2. We evaluate it, diagnose the failure and email you a quote.
3. If you approve the quote we recover the data and send you a file list or thumbnails to verify the recovery, if we’re unable to recover the data we’ll mail the media back.
4. Once you’re happy with the recovery you pay for the job and we’ll upload the data to our secure server for you to download. Return media is available for an additional cost if you’d like the data mailed back on a flash drive.
Drives and Brands We Handle
We take every flash drive brand including SanDisk, Lexar, Samsung, PNY, Kingston, Patriot, Corsair, Verbatim, Toshiba, Transcend and promotional drives. These are the ones we see most, each with its own common failure pattern.
SanDisk Data Recovery
SanDisk Flash Drive Data Recovery – Cruzer, Ultra, Extreme and the rest. The most common drives on our bench, and the ones we have the deepest reference data for. See our SanDisk drive database.
Samsung Data Recovery
Samsung Flash Drive Data Recovery – including BAR and FIT monolithic drives where connector damage or FTL corruption is common. 
Lexar Data Recovery
Lexar Flash Drive Data Recovery – Including the JumpDrive TwistTurn and S Series Drives
Send your media in for data recovery
Fill out the form below and we will generate a prepaid shipping label.
🔒 Your details are used only to create your prepaid shipping label. Free evaluation — and with our no data, no charge guarantee, you only pay if we recover your files.