solder
USB Stick Data Recovery
It isn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. Today I had a client e-mail me in some panic, as her USB memory drive had stopped working. It was plugged into the computer, and someone walked into it, bending the connector.
Breaking the 64MB, chinese-made promotional USB key was not the disaster – it was losing the files on it.
I’ve had luck before re-soldering damaged USB key connectors, so I got my tools together and gave it a shot.
Quick Flip Fix
After a weekend at the Ottawa Pinball and Gameroom Show ’12, I came home to find that one of my Flip HD video cameras had stopped powering on. It functioned without problem when connected to the computer to copy the videos from it, but it would not turn on to record.
Today, I finally decided to open it up and figure out the cause. I suspected perhaps the power switch was bad, since it didn’t seem to be a major system failure. When I opened it up, the problem was as clear as day:
As you can see, something isn’t sitting quite right. One of the diodes became un-soldered, perhaps due to a shock, causing an already cracked solder joint to completely give up.
Simple enough to fix, a quick test with a multimeter, two points of solder, and everything was back to normal.
You never know if a task will be easy or difficult without first taking a look.