Small device. Big job. No shortcuts.
A broken USB stick or a dead SD card is rarely a dead memory chip. We repair the board, bypass the broken path, or pull the flash out and read it directly on the bench.
Free evaluation. No recovery, no recovery charge. Huntsville, AL.
Media we work on
- USB-A flash drives (standard and high-speed)
- USB-C thumb drives and OTG drives
- SD, SDHC, SDXC cards
- microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC
- CompactFlash (CF) and CFexpress
- XQD and SxS (broadcast cards)
What we do not need
A working device. Broken, snapped, soaked, or dead on arrival are all cases we work every week. If the chip is intact, the data usually is too.
What we see every week
Six ways small media gets broken.
Snapped or broken connector
USB stick fell while plugged in. The USB-A or USB-C tongue broke off, or the pad lifted. The NAND and controller are usually untouched.
Water and liquid damage
Washed laundry, spilled drink, dropped in water. We clean the board, dry the flash package, and image the chip before corrosion spreads.
Heat and short circuit
Overheated ports, failed power surge, or a shorted controller. Burned solder and cracked traces mean the NAND has to be read directly.
Dead controller
Card or drive is not detected at all, or reports 0 bytes. The flash controller is stuck. Chip-off bypasses it entirely.
Logical corruption
Card works but files are missing, file names are garbled, or the filesystem reads as RAW. Often recovered without any physical work.
Interrupted recording
Camera, drone, or dash cam cut off mid-write. Fragmented MP4 / MOV files are reassembled from remaining header and frame data.
Why this work is different
The device is small. The recovery surface is smaller.
A hard drive gives you options. You can swap heads, replace a board, or clone around bad sectors. A USB stick or SD card packs a controller and NAND flash onto a few square centimeters of PCB. If a trace cracks, it is cracked. If a pad lifts, it stays lifted. The work is solder, microscope, and patience.
That is why so many cases end with chip-off. The flash chip lifts off the board, goes on a programmer, and gets read directly. Every controller family has its own layout, its own ECC, and its own way of shuffling data across pages. We know them.
Physical work first. Reconstruction second. Files last.
Chip-off procedure
How we get data off a dead chip.
Visual triage
We inspect the device under a stereo microscope to map damage, find the NAND package, and pick the safest removal path.
Desolder or bypass
For BGA packages we reflow and lift the chip. For snapped connectors we solder fresh pads or jump across broken traces.
Raw NAND read
The flash chip is read on a dedicated programmer. Nothing writes back. We capture the full image, page layout, and ECC.
Reconstruct the filesystem
Page interleaving, XOR, and controller-specific translation are reversed. Files are verified and pulled to a clean drive.
Our bench
The work happens here. Not somewhere else.
No partner lab. No shipping your device across the country. The chip-off rig, the NAND programmer, and the technician reading the chip all live in the same room in Huntsville.
Stereo microscope bench
For inspecting traces, pads, and BGA packages
Rework and reflow station
For desoldering BGA and TSOP NAND packages
Adapters for every package
BGA-152, BGA-132, TSOP-48, micro-BGA, more
Controller-aware toolchain
For reassembling pages, ECC, and XOR layers
Transparent pricing
Three tiers. Firm quote before any work.
Evaluation
Free
No deposit to begin
- Device inspection and photo documentation
- Damage type and recovery feasibility
- Controller and NAND accessibility check
- Firm written quote before any work
Logical & firmware
From $295
Device is detected, NAND is readable
- Deleted, formatted, or corrupted files
- RAW filesystem or unreadable partition
- Fragmented camera / dash cam footage
- Typical turnaround 2 to 5 business days
Physical & chip-off
From $495
Broken, burned, water-damaged, or not detected
- Connector repair and board-level work
- BGA or TSOP chip-off NAND extraction
- Raw NAND read with ECC and XOR rebuild
- No recovery, no recovery charge
Severely damaged or encrypted devices without keys are quoted individually after evaluation.