Ive got a USB memory stick here (its not mine)

can;t access it at all, no lights on etc.. not recognised by anything I do.... chips/bords look fine, contacts look good too....

data on it is worth thousands (apparently) so they guy who owns it doesen;t care about the cost of getting the data back.

can anyone recomend anywhere for this ?

Im googling, but getting boged down by american companies... and companies which look like they just do the software side and not the hardware

What type of device are we talking about? Make Model etc.

IF its a loose connection in the houseing and the chip is still intact you could butcher it to and rebuild it into a new memeory stick of the same make. Buy a seond for spares?

Some companies you could contact:
http://www.easyrecovery.co.uk/Contact%20us.htm
http://www.iomegadatarecovery.com/usb-flash-data-recovery.html
http://www.disklabs.com/memory-card-recovery.asp

Always worth backing up your data onto a second medium. I have my important stuff on two USB devices, a 2GB stick, a 1GB Xonix watch (from aria on special recently) which I wear constantly except in the bath and seperately on a 1GB SD card.

Chances are the chips are OK and it can be rebuilt. TBH its very difficult to distroy data on a stick accidentally and completely.

Crack the bastard open and check with a meter for continuity between the connector pins and the traces on the board.

You could try doing it youself. I managed to kill my gfs usb stick with her dissertation on. Thankfully I found some software that could get the files back.

Think it was this one. Although it only talks about images, it can do all file types  

Vogon : http://www.vogon.co.uk/ are very good.

Cheers
Tongy

Quote from: SeriousAlways worth backing up your data onto a second medium. I have my important stuff on two USB devices, a 2GB stick, a 1GB Xonix watch (from aria on special recently) which I wear constantly except in the bath and seperately on a 1GB SD card.

Chances are the chips are OK and it can be rebuilt. TBH its very difficult to distroy data on a stick accidentally and completely.

this is exactly what i told a student in our department yesterday.

its all well and good having data on a stick, but if the stick is damaged or lost and its your only copy of the data, youre screwed.

thing is... I cant anything to recognise that its plugged in...

its not mine anyway, and the owner has money to burn so Ill print out those links and let him choose.

thanks guys

Quote from: Badabing

Quote from: SeriousAlways worth backing up your data onto a second medium. I have my important stuff on two USB devices, a 2GB stick, a 1GB Xonix watch (from aria on special recently) which I wear constantly except in the bath and seperately on a 1GB SD card.

Chances are the chips are OK and it can be rebuilt. TBH its very difficult to distroy data on a stick accidentally and completely.

this is exactly what i told a student in our department yesterday.

its all well and good having data on a stick, but if the stick is damaged or lost and its your only copy of the data, youre screwed.

Same in my uni, "my computer died" is no excuse for late or missing coursework. Its the students responsibility to keep it backed up.

Quote from: Badabingits all well and good having data on a stick, but if the stick is damaged or lost and its your only copy of the data, youre screwed.

Bang on. Try telling some people that.

Cheers
Tongy

Quote from: Tongy

Quote from: Badabingits all well and good having data on a stick, but if the stick is damaged or lost and its your only copy of the data, youre screwed.

Bang on. Try telling some people that.

Cheers
Tongy

its always been the same way...

i knew people who saved ALL their data to 3.5 inch floppies! they wouldnt save to the hard drive, thinking it was a bad idea, as it would take up hard drive space - they saw it as HDD for software and removable media for saving data - one guy put a floppy disk in his jacket, next to his Motorola brick phone (when they had an aerial like a fishing rod) and the EM radiation from the phone must have damaged the disk - he was literally in tears as it had his dissertation on.