HDD GURU FORUMS

My flash drive is not readable anymore, I believe due to a corruption of the flash drive firmware. Is there anyway I can recover the data on the flash drive? are there any service providers that can help with the issue? if not in my location (Cairo, Egypt) then abroad. I will been Rome from July 14th till July 17th, can someone introduce me to a trusted service provider in Rome?
Thank you

What type of device is it? Maybe you can post a pic?

What are the symptoms of the failure?

FW corruption is unlikely IMHO

It's a SanDisk 16GB.
The exact error is drive is not readable and asking to format it. i am guessing its a firmware corruption as I can't get the info of the drive (ie size and file count)

What do yo mean by "IMHO"

It will almost certainly be memory degradation, so will require “chip off” recovery.

The cost would vary widely depending on what type it is (regular chip/controller combo or monolithic).

It also would be very unlikely to be recoverable in that short timescale, at least without a “priority or express” service which would be very expensive.

@Ihabnsm

What do yo mean by "IMHO"

It's a common acronym, he meant : “Firmware corruption is unlikely in my humble opinion.”

@pcimage

It will almost certainly be memory degradation, so will require “chip off” recovery.
The cost would vary widely depending on what type it is (regular chip/controller combo or monolithic).

A related question : I have a 16GB Lexar SD card which suddenly became unreadable, just like the flash drive in question here (more specifically : it failed during a write operation, I was copying a bunch of files to it and suddenly it was no longer detected). Problem is, it happened in 2011. I haven't attempted to access it since then and still have it somewhere in my mess. Could the damage have worsened in the mean time, or are the components stable when maintained offline ? What kind of controler is found on such memory cards, and what would be the approximate cost for a “chip-off” recovery ?

depends.. same types of controllers as on flash drives, but can be the "blob" version of them. They have same recovery method as any other flash drive. Price will change depending on if it is PCB + NAND or monolith.

From 2011 I don't expect it to be too difficult.. depending on what the actual issue is.

Hi,

SanDisk recommend ourselves, we are based in UK, Japan and USA: www.LC-Tech.co.uk

https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/deta ... ash-drives

You can contact me directly for information: Grant@LC-Tech.com

Grant wrote:Hi,

SanDisk recommend ourselves, we are based in UK, Japan and USA: http://www.LC-Tech.co.uk

That's nice for you, but anyone with a clue knows it's nonsense. I don't mean to disrespect you or your product, but any decent file recovery tool is able to accomplish the same.

Contact member https://forum.hddguru.com/memberlist.ph ... ile&u=7100
He is a data recovery professional in Egypt.

Arch Stanton wrote:

Grant wrote:Hi,

SanDisk recommend ourselves, we are based in UK, Japan and USA: http://www.LC-Tech.co.uk

That's nice for you, but anyone with a clue knows it's nonsense. I don't mean to disrespect you or your product, but any decent file recovery tool is able to accomplish the same.

I'm not sure what you are getting at, I wasn't talking software, I was talking our lab services. Thanks for the interjection anyway.