USB Stick Recovery

USB Stick Data Recovery

No Fix - No Fee!

Our experts have extensive experience recovering data from USB Sticks. With 25 years experience in the data recovery industry, we can help you securely recover your data.
USB Stick Recovery

No Fix? No Fee!

There's nothing to pay if we can't recover your data.

Laptop data recovery

No Job Too Large or Small

All types of people and businesses avail of our services from large corporations to sole traders. We're here to help anyone with a data loss problem.

Laptop on charge

Super Quick Recovery Times

We offer the best value data recovery service in Swansea and throughout the UK.

Laptop in use

Contact Us

Tell us about your issue and we'll get back to you.

Swansea Data Recovery: The UK’s No.1 USB Flash Drive Data Recovery Specialists

For 25 years, Swansea Data Recovery has been the UK’s leading specialist in recovering data from all types of USB Flash Drives. These portable devices are incredibly vulnerable to physical damage, logical corruption, and internal electronic failure due to their construction and usage. Our state-of-the-art laboratory is equipped to handle these complex challenges at a component level, providing the highest possible success rate for data recovery from even the most severely damaged USB sticks. We support every major brand and model, leveraging 25 years of expertise in NAND flash memory recovery.

Top 30 USB Flash Drive Brands We Recover

We possess the technical schematics, donor parts, and proprietary tools to recover data from all major USB flash drive brands in the UK, including:

Manufacturer / BrandPopular Models / Series
1. SanDiskCruzer, Ultra, Extreme, Ultra Fit, Extreme Pro
2. KingstonDataTraveler, IronKey, HyperX
3. SamsungBAR, FIT Plus
4. TranscendJetFlash, StoreJet
5. PNYTurbo, Elite-X
6. ADATAUV, Superior, DashDrive
7. VerbatimStore ‘n’ Go, Vx
8. PatriotSupersonic, Magnum
9. LexarJumpDrive, V-series
10. ToshibaHayabusa, TransMemory
11. IntegralCourier, Fusion
12. CorsairFlash Survivor, Voyager
13. Silicon PowerJewel, Marvel
14. TeamGroupC145, C155
15. HPx700w, v250w
16. Dell(OEM Drives)
17. Emtec(Consumer Drives)
18. Iomega(Legacy)
19. MediaRange(Consumer)
20. Maxell(Consumer)
21. StrontiumPollex, Nitro
22. Angelbird(Premium/Pro)
23. Greenliant(Industrial)
24. Super Talent(Legacy)
25. OCZ(Legacy)
26. MushkinVentura
27. Ritek(Consumer)
28. V7(Consumer)
29. LaCie(Cobalt, iamaKey)
30. Crucial(Grip, Edge)

Top 25 USB Flash Drive Faults & Our Technical Recovery Process

USB flash drive recovery is a specialised field combining NAND flash expertise, electronic repair, and advanced logical reconstruction. Here is a detailed breakdown of our processes.

1. NAND Flash Memory Wear-Out (End of Life)

  • Summary: The flash memory cells have exceeded their program/erase (P/E) cycles, leading to a high rate of uncorrectable errors. The drive becomes read-only, fails to write, or becomes unrecognisable.

  • Technical Recovery: We perform chip-off recovery. The NAND flash chip is desoldered from the drive’s PCB using a controlled reflow station under a microscope. The chip is read in a dedicated NAND programmer (PC-3000 Flash). The raw dump contains a high bit error rate. Our software uses advanced error correction algorithms, often more powerful than the drive’s internal ECC. We perform read retry calibration, systematically adjusting the read reference voltages (V_read) to find the optimal threshold for reading the degraded cells. This involves applying voltage offsets to the word lines to shift the cell threshold distribution and extract a valid data page.

2. Flash Memory Controller Failure (FTL Corruption)

  • Summary: The drive’s main processor (controller) has failed due to electrical surge or firmware bug. The drive is not detected or shows zero capacity.

  • Technical Recovery: This requires chip-off recovery and Flash Translation Layer (FTL) reconstruction. After desoldering and reading the NAND, our software analyses the raw dumps. The FTL is a complex mapping table stored in the NAND that translates logical blocks to physical pages. We reverse-engineer this by analysing page metadata, spare areas, and data patterns to identify controller-specific algorithms for wear-leveling, bad block management, and read disturb management. This allows us to reassemble a coherent logical image from the raw physical NAND pages.

3. Physical Damage to USB Connector & PCB

  • Summary: The USB connector is broken off, the PCB is cracked, or traces are damaged from physical abuse.

  • Technical Recovery: For broken connectors, we source an identical donor and perform micro-soldering to replace the connector, ensuring all 4 data/power pins are connected. For cracked PCBs, we use conductive epoxy or micro-wire bonding (using 0.1mm enameled wire) under a microscope to repair broken traces. If the PCB is irreparable, we transplant the NAND and ROM to a compatible donor PCB.

4. Accidental Formatting (Logical)

  • Summary: The user has formatted the drive, erasing the file system structure (typically FAT32 or exFAT).

  • Technical Recovery: We create a physical image of the NAND memory (after any necessary physical repair). Using file system recovery software (R-Studio, UFS Explorer), we perform a deep scan. For FAT/exFAT, this involves searching for residual directory entries and FAT tables. We also use file signature carving (raw recovery) based on file headers (JPEG SOI, ZIP headers) to recover data without file system metadata. The directory structure is reconstructed where possible from orphaned directory entries.

5. File System Corruption

  • Summary: Critical file system structures are corrupted due to unsafe ejection or power loss. The drive may prompt to be formatted.

  • Technical Recovery: We image the drive and perform manual file system repair. For FAT32, we locate the backup Boot Sector (usually at sector 6) and use it to repair the primary boot sector. We then compare the primary and backup File Allocation Tables (FAT), using the most intact copy. For exFAT, we rebuild the $Bitmap file by scanning the drive for allocated clusters, which allows us to reconstruct the file allocation state.

6. Bad Blocks/Unstable NAND Pages

  • Summary: Individual blocks or pages within the NAND flash have failed, leading to read/write errors.

  • Technical Recovery: We use hardware imagers (DeepSpar USB Stabilizer) that employ adaptive reading. The software reads unstable sectors multiple times, using read retry and adjustable read timeouts to achieve a consensus on the correct data. It builds a logical map of bad blocks, skipping them after multiple failed attempts. We often reduce the communication speed (e.g., from USB 3.0 to 2.0) to stabilise the data transfer and minimise errors.

7. Water & Liquid Damage

  • Summary: The drive has been exposed to liquid, causing corrosion of the PCB and components.

  • Technical Recovery: The drive is disassembled and the PCB is cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner using high-purity isopropyl alcohol. The board is then inspected under a microscope for corroded traces and components. Damaged components (oscillators, capacitors) are replaced using hot-air rework and micro-soldering. The board is tested for shorts before power is applied.

8. Firmware Corruption (In Controller)

  • Summary: The firmware running on the drive’s controller is corrupted, preventing initialisation.

  • Technical Recovery: We use hardware tools (PC-3000 Flash) to put the controller into a technological or boot-mode by shorting specific test points on the PCB. This bypasses the damaged primary firmware, allowing us to directly access the NAND memory. We can then either re-flash the firmware using a known-good dump or use the tool to directly read the NAND chips, bypassing the normal operating system.

9. Accidental File Deletion

  • Summary: The user has deleted files from the drive.

  • Technical Recovery: We image the drive to prevent overwriting. Recovery relies on the fact that deletion typically only removes the file’s directory entry and marks its clusters as free in the FAT. We scan the entire drive for these orphaned directory entries and reconstruct the file by following the starting cluster pointer and calculating the file length. For raw carving, we search for specific file signatures in the unallocated space.

10. Partition Table Corruption

  • Summary: The Master Boot Record (MBR) that defines the drive’s partition is damaged.

  • Technical Recovery: We image the drive and then scan the entire storage area for a backup boot sector. On many USB drives, a backup exists. If found, we use it to rebuild the primary MBR. If not, we perform a signature search for the start of a partition and manually reconstruct the partition table with the correct starting LBA and size parameters.

11. Virus or Malware Infection

  • Summary: Malicious software has corrupted, deleted, or encrypted files.

  • Technical Recovery: After imaging, we use anti-virus software to clean the image. For data destruction or encryption, we employ standard logical recovery techniques (file carving, metadata analysis). We also scour unallocated space for temporary files or thumbnails that may contain uncorrupted versions of the data.

12. Electrical Overstress (Power Surge)

  • Summary: A voltage spike from a faulty USB port has damaged components on the drive’s PCB.

  • Technical Recovery: The PCB is diagnosed for failed components. We typically find shorted TVS diodes and damaged 5V-to-3.3V voltage regulators. These are replaced. If the controller or NAND has been damaged, we proceed with a chip-off recovery to read the NAND memory directly.

13. Wear Levelling Algorithm Failure

  • Summary: The controller’s algorithm for evenly distributing writes has failed, causing premature wear on specific blocks.

  • Technical Recovery: This is resolved during the FTL reconstruction phase of a chip-off recovery. Our software analyses the wear patterns and physical-to-logical block mapping to identify and compensate for the failed algorithm, allowing us to reassemble a coherent logical image from the unevenly worn physical NAND.

14. Unsupported File System

  • Summary: The drive was formatted using a rare or proprietary file system.

  • Technical Recovery: We image the drive and then perform reverse engineering on the disk image. Using a hex editor, we analyse the raw data structures to identify patterns for files and directories. We then write custom scripts or use flexible recovery tools to parse these custom structures.

15. Overwritten Data

  • Summary: New data has been written to the drive after the loss.

  • Technical Recovery: This is often unrecoverable. However, due to the FTL and wear-leveling, new data may be written to different physical NAND blocks. Advanced FTL reconstruction can sometimes recover “lost” data that remains in physical blocks no longer mapped logically.

16. Broken Crystal Oscillator

  • Summary: The surface-mount crystal oscillator that provides the clock signal for the controller has cracked or failed.

  • Technical Recovery: The faulty oscillator is identified by its lack of output frequency when measured with an oscilloscope. We desolder the damaged component and replace it with an identical donor oscillator with the same frequency (e.g., 12MHz) and load capacitance, ensuring the controller has the correct clock signal to initialise.

17. Manufacturing Defects (Bad NAND)

  • Summary: A inherent flaw in the NAND flash from the factory causes early failure.

  • Technical Recovery: We treat this as a case of severe bad blocks. Chip-off recovery is typically required. Our software uses aggressive ECC and read retry techniques to extract as much valid data as possible from the flawed silicon.

18. Drive Not Recognised by Any Computer

  • Summary: The drive shows no signs of life when inserted.

  • Technical Recovery: We follow a diagnostic tree: 1) Check PCB for physical/electrical damage. 2) Test voltage lines for shorts. 3) Attempt to put the controller into boot-mode. 4) If all else fails, proceed to chip-off recovery.

19. Read/Write Errors (I/O Errors)

  • Summary: The operating system reports I/O errors when accessing the drive.

  • Technical Recovery: This indicates communication failure. We use a hardware imager to send low-level SCSI commands, monitoring error responses. We may need to degrade the communication speed (e.g., force USB 2.0 mode) to stabilise the connection enough to image the drive.

20. File Transfer Interruption Corruption

  • Summary: The drive was removed while files were being written.

  • Technical Recovery: We image the drive. The corruption is often limited to the file being written and the file system metadata. We repair the file system. For the partially written file, we use file carving to extract the intact portion.

21. Heat Damage

  • Summary: The drive has been exposed to extreme heat, potentially de-soldering components.

  • Technical Recovery: The PCB is inspected for cracked solder joints and reflowed. The NAND chip is then read via chip-off. Heat can alter the magnetic properties of NAND cells, requiring extensive read retry calibration.

22. Cryptic Controller Lock (Password Protected)

  • Summary: A password has been set and forgotten, or the controller has locked.

  • Technical Recovery: We attempt technological commands to reset the lock. If not possible, the only recourse is chip-off recovery to bypass the controller and its security.

23. Damaged Flash Controller (BGA Failure)

  • Summary: The Ball Grid Array (BGA) solder joints under the main controller have cracked due to flex or impact.

  • Technical Recovery: We use a BGA rework station to carefully pre-heat the PCB, then apply focused hot air to reflow the solder balls under the controller, re-establishing all electrical connections. This is a high-risk procedure that requires precise temperature profiling.

24. Short Circuit on PCB

  • Summary: A direct short on the PCB prevents power from reaching the components.

  • Technical Recovery: We use a thermal camera or freeze spray while applying limited power to identify the overheating shorted component. Once located, the component (often a capacitor or damaged IC) is desoldered and replaced.

25. Logical Capacity Reset (Shows 0MB)

  • Summary: The drive reports a capacity of 0MB due to severe firmware corruption.

  • Technical Recovery: This requires firmware-level repair. We place the controller into boot-mode and directly access the System Area of the NAND. We repair these modules or use our hardware to force the correct capacity and read the NAND memory directly.

Why Choose Swansea Data Recovery for Your USB Flash Drive?

  • 25 Years of Flash Expertise: We have been recovering data from USB drives since their invention.

  • Component-Level Recovery: We perform PCB repair, micro-soldering, BGA rework, and chip-off recovery.

  • Advanced NAND Tools: We use PC-3000 Flash and DeepSpar for complex FTL reconstruction.

  • Vast Donor Inventory: We maintain a extensive library of donor drives and PCBs.

  • Free Diagnostics: We provide a clear, no-obligation report and a fixed-price quote.

Contact Swansea Data Recovery today for a free, confidential evaluation of your USB Flash Drive. Trust the UK’s No.1 specialists to recover your invaluable data.

Featured Article

Case Study: Recovery from a Failing NAND Flash Drive with Critical Firmware Degradation

Client Profile: Professional user of a 64GB Kingston Datatraveller USB flash drive.
Presenting Issue: The drive becomes unreadable after data transfer, persistently prompting for formatting on multiple host systems. The drive appears to function only when empty, failing after any write operation.

The Fault Analysis

The client’s description of a drive that requires formatting after data is written is a classic symptom of critical NAND flash degradation, specifically a failure in the Flash Translation Layer (FTL). The FTL is the internal firmware of a USB flash drive that performs several vital functions:

  1. Logical-to-Physical Address Mapping: It translates the logical addresses (LBAs) used by the computer into the physical addresses of the NAND flash memory cells.

  2. Wear Levelling: It distributes write cycles evenly across all memory blocks to prevent specific blocks from wearing out prematurely.

  3. Bad Block Management: It identifies and remaps failing memory blocks to spare blocks reserved in the drive’s Over-Provisioning area.

The client’s initial “cannot read” error and subsequent decision to format the drive was a critical point. The format operation itself would have triggered a massive write cycle, further stressing the failing FTL and likely exhausting the remaining pool of spare blocks. The drive’s behaviour—working when empty but failing when written to—indicates that the FTL could initially present a clean logical interface, but any attempt to write new data or update metadata caused a critical failure in the mapping table, rendering the entire logical volume corrupt to the host computer.

The Bracknell Data Recovery Solution

Recovery in such cases requires bypassing the drive’s internal, failing controller to work directly with the raw NAND flash memory chips. This is one of the most complex procedures in data recovery.

Phase 1: Physical Stabilisation and Controller Bypass
The USB drive’s casing was carefully opened in our ESD-safe lab to expose the printed circuit board (PCB). The drive consisted of a USB controller IC and one or more NAND flash memory chips.

  • The drive was disconnected from unstable USB power and connected to our PC-3000 system with the Flash Reader add-on.

  • We attempted to communicate directly with the USB controller in a technician mode to dump the FTL parameters and controller RAM. However, the controller was unresponsive, confirming its degraded state.

  • The decision was made to proceed with a NAND Chip-Off Recovery. This involves physically desoldering the NAND flash memory chips from the PCB.

Phase 2: NAND Extraction and Raw Image Acquisition
Using a rework station with precise temperature control, our micro-soldering experts carefully desoldered the NAND flash chips.

  1. Chip Identification: Each chip was marked, and its specific model number was documented to determine its Page Size, Block Size, and OOB (Out-of-Band) Area structure.

  2. Reading Raw Data: Each NAND chip was placed into the PC-3000 Flash Reader, which was configured with the exact parameters of the memory. We then performed a raw read of every single memory cell, extracting the data as a series of pages and blocks. This raw dump included both the user data and the critical OOB areas, which contain ECC (Error Correction Code) data and other internal metadata.

Phase 3: FTL Reconstruction and Virtual Drive Reassembly
This is the most critical and technically demanding phase. The raw NAND dumps are a chaotic jumble of data out of sequence, as the original FTL would have stored it.

  • Page Processing: Our software processed the raw pages, using the ECC codes to correct any minor bit errors that had occurred during the read process or due to cell wear.

  • Block Reordering & Translator Emulation: We analysed the data patterns to reverse-engineer the FTL’s algorithm for wear levelling and block management. We had to determine the block mapping sequence and XOR encryption keys (if any were used by the controller) to reassemble the data in its correct logical order.

  • Building a Virtual Translator: Using the deduced rules, we built a virtual FTL within our software. This virtual translator was used to process the chaotic raw NAND images and reconstruct a coherent, linear data stream that represented the original logical drive as it was before the final failure.

Phase 4: File System Carving and Data Extraction
The output of Phase 3 was a complete, sector-by-sector image of the drive’s logical content.

  • File System Analysis: This image was then scanned for file system structures. Despite the client’s format, we were able to locate remnants of the previous Master File Table (MFT) and the more recent file system, allowing us to reconstruct the directory structure for both the pre- and post-format states.

  • Data Carving: For files that were fragmented or whose metadata was damaged, we employed file signature carving techniques. This involved scanning the raw image for the unique headers and footers of specific file types (e.g., JPEG, DOCX, PDF) to recover data directly from the unallocated space.

Conclusion

The client’s Kingston Datatraveller failure was not a simple logical corruption but a catastrophic physical degradation of the NAND flash, leading to the collapse of the essential Flash Translation Layer. Standard data recovery software, which relies on a functional USB controller, was utterly incapable of addressing this failure. Our success was contingent on our ability to perform a physical chip-off extraction, reverse-engineer the drive’s internal data mapping, and virtually reassemble the contents of the NAND flash memory in software, bypassing the failed hardware entirely.

We successfully recovered 100% of the client’s identifiable work data from both the pre-format and post-format states of the drive.

Bracknell Data Recovery – 25 Years of Technical Excellence
When your solid-state storage suffers from physical or firmware failure, trust the UK’s No.1 HDD and SSD recovery specialists. Our investment in advanced chip-off technology and proprietary software ensures we can solve the most complex flash media data loss scenarios.

Client Testimonials

“ I had been using a Lacie hard drive for a number of years to backup all my work files, iTunes music collection and photographs of my children. One of my children accidently one day knocked over the hard drive while it was powered up. All I received was clicking noises. Swansea data recovery recovered all my data when PC World could not.  ”

Morris James Swansea

“ Apple Mac Air laptop would not boot up and I took it to Apple store in Grand Arcade, Cardiff. They said the SSD hard drive had stopped working and was beyond their expertise. The Apple store recommended Swansea data recovery so I sent them the SSD drive. The drive contained all my uni work so I was keen to get everything recovered. Swansea Data Recovery provided me a quick and professional service and I would have no hesitation in recommending them to any of my uni mates. ”

Mark Cuthbert Cardiff

“ We have a Q-Nap server which was a 16 disk raid 5 system. Three disks failed on us one weekend due to a power outrage. We contacted our local it service provider and they could not help and recommended Swansea Data Recovery. We removed all disks from server and sent them to yourselves. Data was fully recovered and system is now back up and running. 124 staff used the server so was critical for our business. Highly recommended. ”

Gareth Davies Newport Wales

“ I am a photographer and shoot portraits for a living. My main computer which I complete all my editing on would not recognise the HDD one day. I called HP support but they could not help me and said the HDD was the issue. I contacted Swansea Data Recovery and from the first point of contact they put my mind at ease and said they could get back 100% of my data. Swansea Data Recovery have been true to their word and recovered all data for me within 24 hours. ”

Iva Evans Cardiff

“ Thanks guys for recovering my valuable data, 1st rate service. ”

Don Davies Wrexham

“ I received all my data back today and just wanted to send you an email saying how grateful we both are for recovering our data for our failed iMac.  ”

Nicola Ball Cardiff

“ Swansea Data Recovery are a life saver 10 years at work was at the risk of disappearing forever until yourselves recovered all my data, 5 star service!!!!!  ”

Manny Baker Port Talbot Wales