Basic Pen Drive Recovery -HowTo Explained

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Guys ,
We Got a Call From [ 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 .

[LEFT] 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 .[/LEFT]
[CENTER][/CENTER]
[LEFT]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 .[/LEFT]
[CENTER][/CENTER]
[LEFT]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 .[/LEFT]
[CENTER][/CENTER]
[LEFT]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 .[/LEFT]
[CENTER] [/CENTER]
[LEFT]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 .[/LEFT]
[CENTER][/CENTER]
[LEFT]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 In Chandigarh .Any comments On This Article Write To Us On PM Here

[BlackST]

Even simpler :

1) extract data from the flash (externally) , remove wear level algo and get data.
2) without affecting data on flash, reprogram controller (if it still works). Oh yeah, it is possible.
3) if the problem is electrical, repair the pendrive and put it on USB portand get data ...

[guru]

Whats the hammer for?

[hddguy]

Whats the hammer for?

Isnt there always that one annoying customer.....

[thatdellguy]

The hammer is useful after the green plastic melts to the memory chip or falls off the vise.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Whats the hammer for?

Lol ,
Thats a R&D Lab With just Some Basic Set Of Tools Lying Around ,The Story Is that The guy Has His Data And I Am Paid For ,Something Is Wrong With a Couple Of Guys Here Instead Of Commenting And sharing Knowledge They Are Pulling Legs For Each Other And Ruining the Essense Of The Forums .I Have Not Put This Here So That We Have Comments Like This .I Wonder Whats Going On ,It Does Not Matter Though As Some Of You Need A Vacation and I Think This Is the Only Place You Stroll When You Are Free ,So I Am Understand The Desperation To Comment Like this Lol .

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

The hammer is useful after the green plastic melts to the memory chip or falls off the vise.

Well ,
Its Also Usefull To Blow Someones Head Who Does Not Know How And When To Shutup

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Whats the hammer for?

Isnt there always that one annoying customer.....

I Agree ,
But Its Not Used For That

[craig6928]

thank you for the information Amarbir

[guru]

Yes... Nice Amarbir

[HDD Spaz]

Excellent thread. I will point PC Image and other Flash gurus here so they can learn a few tricks.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Excellent thread. I will point PC Image and other Flash gurus here so they can learn a few tricks.

,
Teasing Me ,They Can Teach Me I Cannot Teach them ,They Are too Senior To Me Here And Also In this Field . This is Just For Some People Who Think We People Have a Hardware In which We Pop Up the Flash Device And Data Comes Out

[code_slave]

Seriously you should not publish pictures like this.

I am not taking the piss out of you in any way, but rather explaining what I see.

so please do not get offended.

1. I see a tin of acid based paste rosin flux, this is far to aggressive for modern electronics.
2. your air nozzle is incorrect for removing such a chip, you warm the chip, not leaf blow the shit all over the place.( equal balance heating, NOT localized package/lead interface separating stuff)

3. I see 2 hard drives in the back ground , giving me an idea of how you handle valuable stock.
4. poor working practices , paper clip for wiping rosin flux on connectors
5. possibly a pile of solder in the back ground next to a paper clip, or is it drive screws from the PCB of the disk drives? (for god sake get some small containers)

6. I do not see any anti static , even though you employ a paper clip static charge "pin injector".

7. IPA whilst always suitable for busy engineers drinking is not always suitable for cleaning PCB fluxes.
8. Perhaps a few less ketchup bottles , or at lest label them correctly.
9. your desolder pump is not an Antistatic version, nor are any of your tools.

if you are going to present such pictures of your "business" take your photos on a neutral background of say "blue" or other colored paper.

Good points

You take pictures that are detailed and in focus.

As far as recovering data, without being able to read the content of the chip ,you are not really going to get very far.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Seriously you should not publish pictures like this.

I am not taking the piss out of you in any way, but rather explaining what I see.

so please do not get offended.

1. I see a tin of acid based paste rosin flux, this is far to aggressive for modern electronics.
2. your air nozzle is incorrect for removing such a chip, you warm the chip, not leaf blow the shit all over the place.( equal balance heating, NOT localized package/lead interface separating stuff)

3. I see 2 hard drives in the back ground , giving me an idea of how you handle valuable stock.
4. poor working practices , paper clip for wiping rosin flux on connectors
5. possibly a pile of solder in the back ground next to a paper clip, or is it drive screws from the PCB of the disk drives? (for god sake get some small containers)

6. I do not see any anti static , even though you employ a paper clip static charge "pin injector".

7. IPA whilst always suitable for busy engineers drinking is not always suitable for cleaning PCB fluxes.
8. Perhaps a few less ketchup bottles , or at lest label them correctly.
9. your desolder pump is not an Antistatic version, nor are any of your tools.

if you are going to present such pictures of your "business" take your photos on a neutral background of say "blue" or other colored paper.

Good points

You take pictures that are detailed and in focus.

As far as recovering data, without being able to read the content of the chip ,you are not really going to get very far.

1. I see a tin of acid based paste rosin flux, this is far to aggressive for modern electronics.

Well This is a Electronic Repair Table Not a HDD Recovery Center Or Something ,We In India Use a Paste From A Company Called Quickfix And Before Delivering The Repaired Product We Clean The Same Using a PCB Cleaner .Its Too Dusty and Many Time Using Normal Paste Its Immpossible to Work And BTw this Is Not a Acidic Paste

2. your air nozzle is incorrect for removing such a chip, you warm the chip, not leaf blow the shit all over the place.( equal balance heating, NOT localized package/lead interface separating stuff)

Well Using this Tip And Many Others We Do Routine Work ,We ARe Too Experienced Then You Possible Think In Air and IRDA Products Usage AS This Is There In The Lab Since 10 Years Plus .

3. I see 2 hard drives in the back ground , giving me an idea of how you handle valuable stock.

Lol This Is Not Your Drives BTW You Cannot Comment On Anything Until You Do Not See anything ,

4. poor working practices , paper clip for wiping rosin flux on connectors

Well I Do Not Use Paper Clip I Just Clean The Same Using The Two Antistatic Bottles At The Back .

5. possibly a pile of solder in the back ground next to a paper clip, or is it drive screws from the PCB of the disk drives? (for god sake get some small containers)

WEll Do Not Comment If You Do Not Know Thats Whats there First Paper Clip And Now Pile Of Solder ,Solder Is On The Left Of This R&D Table And No Where In The Picture

6. I do not see any anti static , even though you employ a paper clip static charge "pin injector".

Nonesense ,The Mat On Which The Vase Is There Is antistatic and Also Are The Two Bottles From Plato .


7. IPA whilst always suitable for busy engineers drinking is not always suitable for cleaning PCB fluxes.

So You Think We Only Have IPA ,We Have everything

8. Perhaps a few less ketchup bottles , or at lest label them correctly.

These Are Antistatic Bottles From Plato ,This SHows That You Always Jump To Conclusions For No Reason .Lol

9. your desolder pump is not an Antistatic version, nor are any of your tools.

I Have a Desoldering Pump From Goot .

10: if you are going to present such pictures of your "business" take your photos on a neutral background of say "blue" or other colored paper.

Next Time I am Going To Call You To Take the Picture Adjest the Light the Way You Like there .

11 :As far as recovering data, without being able to read the content of the chip ,you are not really going to get very far.

Ahha So That Means That With Your Post Count And the Time You Have Been Here Only You Know How To Do It .The Data Was Recovered And The Case Is Closed Long time Back .My Tools For Flash Have PC 3000 Flash Also .I am Not Interested in Describing What I did In After The Same As I Would Like To Keep This To Myself .


Oh I Forgot : Do Not Get Pissed Up

[BlackST]

I don't get what or where is the problem - except the fact that maybe the working conditions are not "optimal" ... anyway, in emergency, what count is the result

[craig6928]

first thing thank you for the post amarbir

allso to point out if you do data recovery and need to remove ics

Quickfix does a great job for you

its a good product

[poehere]

Amarbir:

Nice done. Do not take this guy too serious. I am sure his work area is more of a mess than yours and he is too embarassed to say so. This is normally what I find out. This one is not such a major deal but do not keep your clean room looking like this one OK. No jokes aside this was very useful to people who think that recovery work is a click of a button and the data is back there for them. They do not realize that having proper tools such as you and keeping them up is the most important part of the recovery and work on this one.

[code_slave]

It appears you wish to make it personal , which is a disappointment


"Ahha So That Means That With Your Post Count And the Time You Have Been Here Only You Know How To Do It .The Data Was Recovered And The Case Is Closed Long time Back .My Tools For Flash Have PC 3000 Flash Also .I am Not Interested in Describing What I did In After The Same As I Would Like To Keep This To Myself ."