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A friend brought me her flash drive - 4 solder joints from connector to the board have cracked at the board. Thirty years ago I trained people for less demanding, but close to it work. The eye thing is a killer, too.

So, if there's any experience out there, I'd love to hear it. (And no, of course, there's no back up, not even hard copy (and yes, we're mostly all guilty of the same ))

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"Search carefully for kindred spirits. They are few and far between, and nothing is more precious."

"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason."

The irresistible, brilliant flame to the fabulous Monty moth!

Sorry no help here. I have at least three backups on different hard drives. Haven't lost anything yet even though one drive fails from time to time. I just throw them away.

Good luck though.

I solder electronic components for a living. Is there anyway to tell if it's just the solder joints that are cracked or are the traces cracked as well? A microscope would help.

As part of my job I do circuit board layouts and soldering. I've been soldering as part of my job for about 30 years. I have one friend that refers to me as the Solder Ninja. I've done lots of repairs to broken circuit boards. I have a microscope for small stuff. I'd be willing to attempt a repair. No fee. PM me if interested.

THANK YOU! It may come to that.

I've got a loop, a lighted magnifying lamp, and 'wearable' magnifying lenses. The loop gets me close, but ties up a hand, of course. I think I can see well enough with the latter two so that I can do the job, at least well enough to try.

I don't have it in my hot little hands right this moment, but there's not much in the way of visible circuitry on this thing. KTM, if I can't do it, and she's willing, then I'll PM you for details. This is a 'blown-up' family where the father walked out about two years ago and, at least from what I see, not living up to his responsibilities to his kids (6) that are still at home.

Thank you!

_________________
"Search carefully for kindred spirits. They are few and far between, and nothing is more precious."

"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason."

The irresistible, brilliant flame to the fabulous Monty moth!

Can't help on the flash drive, but for the future might suggest dropbox which is an online backup service. 2GB free, is easy to setup and use.

I'll second Joe812's recommendation of Dropbox. I use it mostly for sharing files but it make's for a very good backup. Kind of too late for this but for future use...

Phoenix too, if you can spot the breaks in the connections, and where they go to, I'd recommend 30 ga wire wrap wire to repair the connections. To make it easier to solder, if you do not have one get a flux pen, it makes it MUCH easier to solder those tiny connections. The flux pen is more like a marker though... Best wishes with the repair! Let me know if you have any questions.

Not fixed one, but I've run two through the washer. One I caught before it got into the dryer, and it still works after lying in the sun for a day. The other, nah.

CDFingers

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Fare and be well now. Let your life proceed by your own design.
Nothin' to tell now. Let the words be yours--I'm done with mine.

I always thought they were throwaway items....

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Ruger P89DC
Ruger LCP
Ruger LC9
S&W .38 Model 10

Phoenix too, PM sent.

KTM, thank you! If I can't do it I'll send it your way, assuming the young lady agrees.

PS: I'm thinking I should remove the existing solder so I can better see what's up. As I mentioned, I used to train to Mil Spec for some 'interesting' work, but we didn't do rework.

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"Search carefully for kindred spirits. They are few and far between, and nothing is more precious."

"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason."

The irresistible, brilliant flame to the fabulous Monty moth!

Ugh... KTM I'll be sending it along. If I could see what I was doing I might have been able to fix it...

Thank you for your kind offer to help a damsel in distress.

_________________
"Search carefully for kindred spirits. They are few and far between, and nothing is more precious."

"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason."

The irresistible, brilliant flame to the fabulous Monty moth!

Phoenix Too, I thought I should let you know that the flash drive arrived today. I am happy to report that I have it temporarily repaired, however a 2.2 Ohm resistor on the circuit board was damaged and I had to improvise with what I had on hand. Amazingly it does work. I have a bunch of the tiny surface mount resistors but none in the proper resistance so I went digging through some dusty boxes of old axial lead resistors and found 5, 11 Ohm precision resistors. 5 of them wired up in parallel = 2.2 Ohms WIN! Now that I know it works, I'll order a proper sized surface mount 2.2 Ohm resistor and get it swapped out. To be safe I copied the data off just in case it doesn't survive the resistor transplant. Hopefully it'll be as good as new, but just in case I'll also include a CD with the data. (I will hold off ordering the resistor until I have some other items to order from the same supplier. It could be next week before that happens. Just wanted you to inform you of that slight delay.) Here's what it looks like with my improvised repair.

OK - that makes me laugh... and resurfaces my overall awe at this forum. Ask for help, and there is always a hand out there to say - pass it to me and I'll see what I can do...!

How great!

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It would never occur to me in 100 years to try and fix a USB memory stick! I'm amazed & impressed!! I've recovered 80% of files off a formatted hard drive, but a flash drive?? whoo hoo! How cool is THAT?

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Best regards, Pete

"When we, the people ordained and established the Constitution, we created the Federal Government. It is our creature. We are the creator. It is the creature. It is not our master." Publius-Huldah

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