A quantity surveyor in Bootle knocked his laptop off a site desk with the pen drive still in it. The laptop survived. The drive's flat metal plug did not, coming away bent and chipped at the tip. The plastic body was untouched, which is the part that decides how these usually go.
| Media | A pen drive with its metal tongue bent out of line and a chip out of the tip, damage taken when the machine holding it went off a desk. Plastic body unmarked. |
| What was reported | Pen drive, still in the port when the machine fell. Flat plug bent over and chipped at its end. Body sound. Site files wanted. |
| Fault class | Physical, at the connector. The plug took the whole load of the fall and its contacts and joints were deformed. The NAND memory inside the body was undamaged. |
| On the bench | Connector and its solder joints examined under a stereo microscope, the plug reformed and its contacts and joints resoldered so the drive could be read normally, then read behind a write blocker, translation confirmed, filesystem parsed in R-Studio, files validated and written to fresh media. Chip-off with the NAND desoldered under hot air and read on a specialist programmer was prepared as the fallback and not needed. |
The plug is a lever and the board is what it levers. When a laptop goes over with a stick in the port, the whole weight of the machine goes through that little tongue of metal. It bends, and the force carries back to where it is anchored to the board.
The memory is nowhere near the impact. Your files live in a NAND chip in the body of the drive. On a bent plug the chip is intact and so are its contents. What is broken is the way the drive talks to a machine.
There are two ways back, and one is cheaper than the other. Either the plug is reformed and its joints resoldered until the drive reads normally, or the NAND is taken off the board and read directly on a programmer. The first is tried first because it is quicker and keeps the drive's own controller doing the translation.
Do not force it into a port to test it. A bent plug pushed into a socket can short contacts that were still fine and can tear the pads it is soldered to. Every attempt makes the repair route less likely and the chip-off route more likely.
The connector was examined under a stereo microscope. The bend was recoverable and the chip at the tip had not reached the contact fingers themselves, though two of the joints anchoring the plug to the board had torn.
The plug was reformed and the contacts and torn joints resoldered so the drive would sit properly in a port and hold a connection. It was then read behind a write blocker through its own controller, which meant the translation layer needed no reconstruction. The filesystem was parsed in R-Studio and the files validated before being written to fresh media. Chip-off was prepared as the fallback and never needed.
The plug was rebuilt, the drive read through its own controller, and the site files came back complete. The drive itself was returned repaired but is not something to rely on again.
Cards and USB pen drives are £250 + VAT. Reforming and resoldering a connector is electronic work, so 50% of the quote was payable upfront and the balance on success. No fix, no fee covers logical faults only and does not extend to soldering or to chip-level work.
Do not straighten it yourself and do not push it into a port to see whether it still works. Pliers finish off contacts that were merely bent, and forcing a deformed plug into a socket can tear the pads it is soldered to, which is the difference between a connector repair and a chip-off. Leave it exactly as it is, wrap it so the plug is not pressed against anything, and post it in a small rigid box. The memory holding your files is at the other end of the drive and is almost certainly fine.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Liverpool, Merseyside and the wider North West, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each one gives the reasoning behind the diagnosis, the method the fault actually called for, and the equipment it was worked on.
A knocked stick that stops being recognised has cracked something between the plug and the memory, and the memory is usually fine
A corruption error on a stick usually means the controller or the filesystem, and neither is the memory that holds your photographs
Flash soldered directly to a logic board sits outside what this lab takes in, and the honest answer is given before anything is posted
The diagnostic is free and takes 2 working days from arrival, the figure is fixed in writing, and logical faults run on no fix, no fee. Start online or ring the freephone.