Article 3 - Water damaged device still recoverable

Most of us would think that when our flash media device, such as a USB memory stick or an SD card becomes immersed in water that the likelihood is that the device is likely to never work again and the information on it, if not backed up, will be lost forever.

We are delighted to disprove that myth with recent recoveries of devices that have been either sent through the washing machine or even indulged in a spot of surfing. In most cases the internal chips on a flash media device will not actually be damaged by a trip in the soup, only the board on which they are placed. Once the internal Flash NAND chips are removed from the board and read via external readers the data is normally recoverable.  One recent case indicates that your precious data is not always lost in the soap suds.  

This such case involved an author who was keeping his book on his memory stick. For safe keeping he placed the device in his shirt pocket to ensure he would lose it. Of course, the next day his shirt was washed along with his device. Despite the fact that the internal board on which the chips are placed did suffer from corrosion and failed owing to exclusive technology the data was not lost at all. Whilst the device itself was a write off the chips containing the data were not actually damaged by the water. After being read through a chip reader and then the algorithms were reconfigured meaning that the data (his book) was fully restored leading to a grateful customer whose only copy of his book was on the device. 

Therefore if your device has had a trip in the sea or the washing machine -DON'T BIN IT - without at least sending to us first!

posted 14/02/09