Nobody repairs a USB stick and hands it back working — the components cost less than the labour to fit them. The job is to read the data off once, and how that is done depends on something you cannot see from the outside: whether the controller and flash are separate parts on a board or moulded together into a single die. That one distinction sets both the method and the price, and we establish it free before you commit to anything.
$ cdr diagnose /dev/sdb → Device: SanDisk Ultra · 64 GB USB → Status: SNAPPED — connector torn off, not detected → Client: confidential · Cambridge, Cambridgeshire $ cdr engineer-working → Connector: re-soldered · pads rebuilt → NAND: read direct · controller bypassed → Imaging: 61 GB / 64 GB · 100% read $ cdr verify → ✓ documents — 8,400 files → ✓ photos — 12,600 files → ✓ drive recovered — data back
Worth saying plainly before anything else, because it reframes what you are actually buying.
A USB stick costs less than ten minutes of an engineer's time. Nobody repairs one and hands it back working, and anybody offering to is not describing a service worth paying for. What you are buying is a single read — the data lifted off once, delivered to you on something else, and the original stick returned or destroyed as you prefer.
That reframing matters because it changes what counts as success. The stick is a write-off from the moment it fails. The question is only whether what was on it can be reached.
You cannot see it from the outside, and it sets both method and price before anything else is considered.
A small circuit board carrying a controller chip and one or more separate NAND chips. Where the controller has failed, the memory chips can be removed and read directly on a programmer. Well-understood work.
Controller and flash moulded together into a single package with no separable parts. Reading these means locating test points on the die itself and working through them, which is slower and considerably more delicate.
Construction varies between production runs of the same product name, so the model number does not reliably tell you. We open and identify it free of charge before quoting, because the answer changes the work substantially.
Nothing here is about the badge on the casing.
Small media, disproportionate consequences.
USB sticks reach this bench carrying things they were never meant to be the sole home of: a chapter written on a train, field notes from a conference, a dataset handed over on the last day of a placement, a presentation due the following morning. Cambridge produces more of this than most places, simply because more of its work is done by individuals rather than by systems.
The good news is that most stick failures are electronic rather than physical, and the NAND is usually intact. The complication is monolithic construction, which is common and which changes the work substantially. You will be told which you are holding before any money changes hands.
USB stick recovery starts at £250 +VAT. Discrete construction sits at the lower end; monolithic devices requiring test-point work sit higher, and the exact figure is fixed after the free diagnostic rather than estimated before it.
No fix, no fee applies to nearly all stick work. Recovered data comes back on new media — we do not return files to the device they came off, because that device is not trustworthy any more.
No. That prompt means Windows cannot read the file system, which is exactly what a logical fault looks like. The data is very likely still there. Formatting would write a fresh file system over the structures describing your files.
Usually not. A sheared connector is a board-level problem and the flash behind it is normally untouched. If the broken piece is still in the port, get it out carefully and send both parts.
More recoverable than people expect. Do not power it on to test — that is what kills them. Let it dry naturally, do not use heat, and send it. Water alone rarely destroys flash memory; current through a wet board does.
Either a controller fault, or the stick was never the advertised size. Counterfeit high-capacity sticks are common and report a false capacity while silently discarding data written past the real limit. The diagnostic distinguishes the two.
Two to five working days for discrete construction. Monolithic devices take longer because the test points have to be located and connections made by hand, and that is slow work that cannot sensibly be rushed.
We would rather you did not. A stick that has failed once is not something to trust with the only copy of anything. Recovered data comes back on new media or by secure link.
£250 +VAT, agreed before anything is opened. Snapped connectors usually break at the furthest point from the memory, which is why these recover as well as they do — and why repeatedly pushing one back into a port is the thing that costs you.