Hello, I'm hoping someone can help me, whilst I'm newly registered to this forum and fairly new to data recover I'm no stranger to IT and SMD rework.
I've been passed an 8GB Lexar drive that had sustained damage to the plastic casing. It has subsequently been wiggled about in a USB slot to try and get it to work.



The controller was only partly soldered to the PCB, so I reflowed it with hot air, checked the few SMD components, soldered on a USB socket and plugged it in.
The drive is recognised and installed and given a drive letter but shows No Media under device manager.
After doing some searching online, I get the impression it's possibly something to do with the controller and have run ChipGenius and get the following output.

Description: [E:]USB Mass Storage Device(USB MEMORY BAR)
Device Type: Mass Storage Device

Protocal Version: USB 2.00
Current Speed: High Speed
Max Current: 100mA

USB Device ID: VID = 090C PID = 3000

Device Vendor: Silicon Motion,Inc.
Device Name: SM3255AA MEMORY BAR
Device Revision: 0100

Product Model: USB MEMORY BAR
Product Revision: 1000

Controller Vendor: SMI
Controller Part-Number: SM3257ENLT - ISP NONE
Flash ID code: 44444444 - 2CE/Single Channel [MLC] -> Total Capacity = 8GB

Tools on web: http://dl.mydigit.net/special/up/smi.html

I have followed the link at the bottom to some tools that suggest they reprogram the controller. I have downloaded a couple, and whilst i've tried to understand via Google translate how they work, they don't seem to detect this drive.

Am I going in the right direction with this software ? should I be doing something else ? or shall I go to my plan B, which was buy an identical drive and swap the flash chips over ?

Many thanks. Michael

1. If you reprogram controller your data will be lost or sure.
2. Controller do not see the memory chip.
3. Chip-off method will be best for this case
4. If you don't know what you doing better outsource the case. In UK there is pcimage and few other skilled guys.

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Flash Killer - everyday new resources (pinout, XOR, ECC,config) for flash devices

Agree.

The controller is unable to access the memory, either due to bad connection or memory degradation.

Chip off is the way forward as Arvika says.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Flash ID code: 44444444

Bad PCB, bad solder joint on the controller or NAND..
It's reading the ID wrong

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Recover My Flash Drive

If he legitimately says that he will quickly go insane off chipping so many broken connector jobs

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Recover My Flash Drive