Can I FIX 3x KINGSTON 32GB USB FLASH DRIVES? 

I think you could have shown the gory photo no problem. Can't be worse than the yellow mat 😀

You've inspired and motivated me to fix things as a hobby, and my kids love getting involved. Thank you for what you do, Vince.

I suspect the 50gb found on a 32gb card is due to crosslinked files, some that were previously deleted, but partially overwritten, so that the recovery software believes it has found something valid (and it may indeed be partially recoverable) but it will likely be corrupted due to parts of the file 'belonging' to a different file.

Hope your finger gets better soon Vince! Sucks to have such an injury especially given you use your hands more often than most. Got my fingers crossed for you (put intended lol)

My dear Vince, sorry to hear of your mishap and hope you will be in the mend quickly. Great video as always. One note, most flash memory type devices actually have far far more raw storage than they sell for. If fact many have upwards of 500g raw capacity. During manufacturing they are tested for how much is in fact working and as such they are graded and this often determines the amount of storage they can safely be sold for. This is also why some unscrupulous manufacturers sell larger storage devices cheaper, because they sometimes sell closer to the amount tested as good. Out of the Safe amount they then divide that by some factor (usually 8 to 16) and that fraction will be what its sold as. The software in the controller in turn maps the good regions. After a certain number of writes failures start to appear. When this happens the data is remapped to one of the spare areas. This is what provides extended life for some of the more reputable brands. When the available good space becomes exhausted they become read only. Unfortunately often the most updated areas of the disk are the file descriptor blocks which contain the directory entries. As space becomes low, if it us unable to update these the root directory becomes corrupt making the device unreadable by the OS but yet still recoverable. Other times the are of the storage that holds the block map itself becomes corrupt rendering the entire device completely useless. It's a simplified explanation but gives you an idea of what is going on internally.

Sorry about your finger! Hopefully you have a speedy recovery! Love the video's. Been a fan for many years!

Hey Vince I hope your finger heals up soon without any issues. although this was a non-fix I always enjoy your videos as every video is a learning experience.

Great video! Wish you a speedy recovery! Note; in case you're unaware, normally in Windows command prompt, instead of typing back a previously entered command, you can just press the up arrow to get the command back saving you the time/effort

Sorry to hear about your finger Vince, I hope the healing all goes well and wish you a speedy recovery.

What a pleasure to watch your videos. I some of these just for writing once and then just reading from them.

sorry to hear about your finger thats horible! Hope it heals soon and good luck with your projects moving forward. Irony of fixing thumb drives just about the size of a finger while recovering from the damage. Thanks again for the great and wonderful educational content you make.

Oh my!! I am sorry for your injury. Get better soon! I very much enjoy your videos.

Great effort Vince 👍👍. It's not a failure if you learn something in the process! Sorry to hear about your finger! Hope it gets better soon! Best wishes.

Horrible that you suffered that injury, Vince. All the best for the recovery. You’re absolutely right that your nail is missing, but it doesn’t mean it won’t grow back. If the nail bed is intact a new nail will grow. I’ve had it happen with a toe nail that came off. It’ll take a few months to fully grow back if it does. I hope the same happens during your recovery.

it still amazes me how far you have come sense i first started watching your vids .

Bro I be lovin your content it only improves and content is always great I've learned loads from just watching you (and LLT) I've been watching since like 2018 and your content has always been so enjoyable especially the trying to fix series.

Think the 50GB showing on one of the drives is just because the recovery software uses a couple of different methods to look for files, and it has added together the results from both of those searches. So there will be duplicates between the two methods, where the same file has been found both ways. It probably can't tell for sure that the files are duplicates either as they might not be 100% complete or the metadata may be missing from them. The methods are probably looking at what's left of the file allocation table (basically the index of files on the disk) and the other way would be to read through all the data sectors bit-by-bit and see what you come across

In these failures that prevent formatting, there is an order to follow until one of them repairs it: 1.- Recover the data with programs like the one you have shown in the video. 2.- Use a disk editor like WinHex and delete the initial zones, partition and boot. Then try partitioning and formatting with Windows Disk Manager. 3.- Use low-level formatting programs that format the controller and the memory. Windows formatting only formats the memory. They are provided by the manufacturer of the flash drive. On the internet there are some like ALCOR that I used to correctly repair one.

God speed on your recovery Vince ❤️

Ouch , speedy recovery Vince .

Wow. I wish you a speedy recovery, Vince. I broke my knuckle once and I was due to fly out the next day. A&E had put my hand and forearm into a cast. That very night I cut the cast off because the airline would not have let me fly. As soon as I landed I had it re-cast and it stayed on for the next 3 weeks then a splint for another 4 weeks.

Speedy recovery Vince! Your nail should grow back.

Sad to hear about your accident! When it comes to SSD, you can put important data on them, but make sure to have backup! But backup is important even if you store your data on a hard-disk-drive! About the memory stick that is marked read only, the last thing you can try is to ( delete the volume ) and create a new one! /Lifooz

Looks like Mr. fix-it was the subject of his own possible can it be fixed video... I hope your finger is indeed fixed and a hope for a speedy recovery as well!

So sorry to hear about your finger. Hope you have a speedy recovery.

Woot !! Another Vince fixing Video 🥰❤️😍

You are being too harsh on yourself when you call this a failure. You should call it a non-fixable. Good Job Vince!

Love the yellow mat! Hope you are healing well. I once tried to use an awl to clean gunk from a small space and it somehow slipped, flew upwards and split my thumb open an inch lengthways on the side, proper deep cut, so you have my sympathies!

Always excited to see you attempt fixes on things for the first time. Good show. Best of luck in all your 2023 endeavours. 👈 I put a "u" in there just for you.

Remember a few months ago you said you want to travel to different techies' and do collabs? I'm moving soon, would be pretty cool if we could arrange something like that in the near future

Jaysus, that injury must suuuuuck, made me shiver! anything to do with your hands bloody hurts

I love this video, Vince! But I highly recommend having a trash computer to do USB drive testing from unknown or partially known sources. Never plug it into anything connected to the internet or anything with any real data on it.

Good attempt at fixing those thumbdrives. I hope your finger heals quickly, looks like you did quite a number. Being a natural born clutz through and through I've had my fair share of finger injuries among others. Luckily my husband is a nurse so I keep him on his toes.

What a great commercial for the Kingston brand.

Nice video Vince, I did not know about these chips having a life time. Also, I hope your mates make good fun of that accident you had. Try not to lose a finger next time you're cutting butter or strangle yourself while opening the pickle jar ;)

Get better soon I love your videos ❤️❤️🙏

Big yikes about the finger. And here I thought I had it rough when I levered off a toe nail last week, but that's on another level. Hope you'll recover quickly!

Sorry to hear about your finger, Vince. I had to see a plastic surgeon a few years back. I fell whilst holding a cup and ending up severing the nerve to my index finger and also nicking the ligament. Thankfuly the ligament wasn't totally severed and they managed to reattach the nerve. The side of my finger was numb for quite some time, but as the nerve regenerated the feeling came back to about 90%. Being a musician, the worst part was not being able to play for a while. Bit of a data breach with all that Uni info on it.

A little tip when you're using CMD. You can get previous used commands when you use the up and down keys.

Much respect to you, for your attempt to fix an item like this, I will watch the whole episode later. Me, it's small, not expensive, item, so I wouldn't have the time knowledge or experience, to even attempt a repair? Saw enough of the video, to learn of your finger dismemberment; as for myself, the little finger on my right hand suffered a similar fate, when I was about 3-yo, I have no memory of the event, all these years later I still have a finger nail that grows from what was reattached. Wishing you all the best with that. Yes I will catch up with the rest of thi video later.

Sorry to hear about what happened to your finger, hope it gets better soon! I also now have a feer of doors 😆

Stay safe and a speedy recovery

And my mate Vince you make the best videos

all the best for you and for your finger. get well soon.

When you get your bandage off used moisturiser cream so you don’t get problems with scar tissue or hard skin.

Vince, In future, please open the USB drives to check they are legit, as people can make and hide capacitors in them which will kill your USB controllers in what ever machine you plug it in to, Keep up the great work bud!.

Normally I don't comment before I watch the whole video but love the thumbnail! Also, I hope your finger gets better soon! Can't have your moneymakers out of commission!

I understand your pain and frustration with not being able to work at your usual 100% as am sitting here at home watching your video and nursing a fracture and a dislocated shoulder ☹

Well done regardless Vince. You need to come up with a better story for your finger though. At least make it involve bear fighting at a minimum. 🤣 Only kidding.

Yellow mat, OH YEAHHHHH. Vince's Mangled Finger, OH NOOOOO. That's gnarly. I hope it heals up nicely.

Hope you heal up quick Vince! It will keep pulling and feeling tight until the scar tissue softens up. Almost cut through the nerve in my last 2 fingers a few months ago. Just be gentle when that bandage is off, if you bend too much, it'll feel like it's on fire for a little while :)

Get well soon, Vince! 👍👍

Sorry to hear about your finger Vince! It could be worse, when I had an accident the plastic surgeon kept my finger 😅

28:34 Ah, love it! Nice one Vince! 😄

Hope you finger gets better soon and thank for providing an excellent video as always despite the injury. It would be interesting to see if the flash was swaped on the read only drive, would the controller check the flash to see if its stable and open the drive, is the flash locked or the controller locked?

I had a similar issue in the 2010s at a warehouse I worked at. I had determined the controller was firmware locked from malware that was going around the warehouse from people bringing in their drives when they weren't supposed to. I had to go to a sketchy Chinese site and get the firmware tool for the controller and do a firmware flash to it to get it working again. Note that the drive was only a few months old, so wasn't at its EOL fine frame.

Good job mate 👍

You can't write to HDs forever, they have an end of life as much as anything else. But while it was true for some years that the durability of mechanical HDs exceeded the durability of SSDs - by quite a bit at first - in the last few years it's mostly gone the other way around, at least, at the same levels of quality. The advantages HHDs have at this point is storage per cost, which is a genuine advantage, and in extreme data recovery cases, if you're willing to pay enough, you can have some _very_ expensive work done to reclaim platters from dead HHDs slotted into new cases (in a recovery centre, obviously) and have better odds of getting partial recovery. But in either case you're way better off having good backups on a RAID drive of some sort, with error recovery. That's what we do. It's worth it. And that's where we still use mechanical hard drives, because that's where the speed is partially made up for by parallelisation - enough that it's not an issue - and we get lots more storage per dollar.

I used to do a little data recovery work, when a thumb drive is read only that usually means that it has gone into protection mode for not having enough good cells to safely write data to, this is just to let you copy out data before it fails completely. You can change that with the manufacturing tool for the controller it is using.

Ohh man the finger bit kinda freaked me out a little. Hope they can fix you up mate ... take it easy man

Hi Vince ... I think I put it in the letter or messages. I bought four of them from ebay with the intention of playing around with them. one was blank, but I formatted it anyway. the rest just got thrown in a drawer ..... You had me panicking when the photos came up! ....... I will send you a link to the original ebay listing, if nothing, just to cover myself ... lol

I had a similar incident with a door , it hurt a lot son i understand what you are going through although mine only ended up with black nails , get well soon . Those driving license files etc might be to do with a scam setup

Get well soon My Mate Vince ❤️

ooch that finger! Its a good thing it was you that was testing that university drive. I know you will destroy it to protect the poor people who's info was just left on the drive. Really companies that use data like that need to firstly NOT put it on a flash drive which might get copied or pinched and secondly, have a way to completely wipe it out when its not needed any more. Not really surprised that you couldnt save the drives. I had some files sent to me to try and save from a camera memory(I didnt get the card). They were garbled mostly but after quite a lot of searching I found some progs that allowed me to grab back images for about half the lost pictures. Those data saving progs are miraculous.

Physical hard disks are just as likely to fail. Thanks for the video.

It's a good way to learn how to deal with flash drives and their limitations. Btw, your voice reminds me a lot to the missed Rik Mayall when you talk softly.

After watching hours of data recovery videos, I know that you should always buy two flash drives. One is unused, act like doner for controller. You need the same controller model, version, series, firmware installed. Only controller got algorithm how to scramble data across NAND memory. If controller is dead and doner board isn't available - you need to connect directly into NAND memory chip using low level NAND protocol and lab tool called PC-3000. Then this tool got database of controller algorithm and firmware, so can mock controller behavior to merge data across whole NAND memory chip into readable files. Without controller algorithm, data inside NAND chip looks like garbage

HI Vince, have you tried solder both NANDS on the working drive to see if it doubles the memory?

I'm so sorry to hear about your finger, Vince!

Once a USB drive goes read-only, you can't re-enable it using Windows because it's a decision made by the drive's controller and not Windows itself. Depending on the drive controller, however, you might be able to give it a second life by using the respective controller's MPTool (Mass Production tool) which the manufacturer would have used to setup the drive in the factory. There are the USBDEV forums (in Russian) which have a lot of info about this sort of stuff.

Great fixing video vince. When will part 34 of fixing the Rolls Royce come out

does that mean we can call you My Mate Fingerbob? You remember that TV show from 1972!!!

Man Vince, you're lucky it didn't cut all the way through! I was trying to judge from the length of the cast if you were missing your fingertip. Here's hoping it heals fast!

Thanks for the videos 🎉🎉

Well ouch that sounds painful i hope you recover soon and i hope your finger's ok

Oh my gosh Vince! My wife and I are so sorry to hear about your finger. Please take good care of it buddy.

I was in a reliability engineering position at a disc drive company for 34 years, and I was a bit appalled that once we got into SSD type drives, the SSDs would 'wear out' after heavy continuous writing. I've been gone from there for a number of years, but it looks like solid state storage hasn't improved as much as I would have expected.

Talking about near severed fingers I almost lost the tip of my left index finger while splitting woods for kindling with a hatchet. The break in the bone was at a angle which means that the surgeon had to grind down the two bones to make them level and a titanium rod to stabilize the bones. Now it looks like it alot better now while it shorter so I can count 9.75 fingers

Hi Vince hope you’re finger gets better soon, I put a drill screwdriver bit though my finger, things are never a fail it’s a learning experience, great info, nice try though, on the subject of data recovery…. I got given a pc years ago and I just used it as it was and then I deleted some files I needed, I used a recovery program and BOY the stuff I got back off the drive including videos and pictures of the people that gave me the pc in shall we say interesting “compromising positions” I can’t look at them the same way now 😊 well not without giggling to myself 😂

You are correct about not storing important data on SSD, but any drive can fail including traditional mechanical HDD. The important thing is to store multiple copies of your important data. The rule is 3-2-1 meaning 3 copies, on at least 2 different types of media (e.g. SSD and HDD), and 1 of the copies must be offsite. Use a backup program that runs automatically so you don't forget.

One thing that might help with the SSD; I don't know if this is implemented by Kingston, but most Sata SSDs have a "recovery mode" that starts when you only plug in power and not the data connector. Usually it would take 3-5 attempts of only plugging in power and leaving it for a minute or two. Not sure if that is possible with your sata to usb adapter though.

What I like? The yellow mat and you and your videos. What I don't like? Your finger. Best wishes! P.S.: I mostly use a Linux live Stick to recover data. But it was interesting to see even the cmd commands for that.

I hope your suing the restaurant? Also heard your intro music today on Heart east midlands lol

I've seen far worse injuries Vince. Get well soon. I work in hospitality so you can probably imagine how many ways you can injure yourself doing that job.

What a shame about your finger. Hope it heals well and maybe hopefully your nail grows back. Best wishes!

At age 11 I managed to slam an elevator door shut over my right long finger. Almost the whole tip came off and on that tip the nail barely stayed attached dangling around. So I had to stick the stump back onto the tip of the bone. I guess this makes you "the door mate Vince" :) Finger is fine by the way. Lovely doctors

12:05 if an entry isn't there you add it manually. I'd say a lot of the time people go into regedit the entry they're there to change isn't even there by default, I remember it being that way for me

Ouch, that is bad accident with your finger, hope it recovers soon. Had an accident myself at work in 2009 where my palmar bone fractured and was unable to work in 3 months as it was x-rayed multiple times, and failed to pass the doctors inspection. Bought my PS3 just shortly before the accident, and couldn't play with it during the time I had my left hand in plaster :D Interesting problems with these usb memory sticks, I've got two exactly the same ones and one 16gb drive in white colour. I guess if they lock themselves as read only, you can't even delete the files from there, so they must be physically destroyed if there are some top secret information.

Interesting Vince, nice watch BTW.

Sorry about your hand! A lot of people wouldn't bother being courteous and try to prevent a door from slamming, so kudos, even if it bit you in the end!

Sorry to hear about the finger. I did wonder were the videos were this week. Hope it heals quickly, for your sake not ours. Take more care & sue em!!!

I actually was super excited about those gpd handheld pcs when they came out but the price was always a stopgap for me so ive been using the steam deck like a gpd handheld since i got one for christmas.

It all comes down to having back ups on multiple drives regardless of type as they all have failure modes.

Ouch. I did something similar in my mid teens. By catching my thumb in the hinge section of a spring loaded pub door. As I'm completely stupid and numb to most things I didn't even realise I had caught my thumb till I tried walking away and realised I couldn't move lol. Everything then went in slow motion as I watched my thumb slowly get crushed by the door and got a lovely split thumb which to this day the scar is still visible. I refused medical treatment but regretted it that night when I went through a sleepless night of pain. The next day a nurse had to heat up a paperclip and burn a hole through the nail to release the build up of blood that had pooled under it. It was the first and only time my thumb came all over a nurse lol. About a week later the nail just dropped off .....oh yeah you're fixing some memory sticks, wasn't watching lol

Somewhat ironic that you get 3 thumb drives to fix while having a busted finger of your own, hope it heals quickly and is no longer too painful.

Vince, I’d be skeptical about plugging any usb devices into my main computer. If I’d somehow bridged something while soldering I’d worry of something damaging the controller on my motherboard and killing usb functionality. Maybe an adapter,pci express card or less important pc. In regards to incorrect space showing for recovered files, these are likely just the totals of the file headers that the software found. All this data will not be recoverable and will be partially or fully damaged. I know I’ve seen specialists hook up the flash memory chips to independent socket readers and recover data that way, but you’d have to Google it.

While searching around for the chip types, I came across mentions of a "3S USB MP Utility" that may be able to fix the corruption on at least one of your sticks (not the one with the duff flash memory, obviously). Might be worth a shot. SSDs can be exceptionally reliable. You may not want to let them sit unpowered for years on end (keep them in a plastic bag with desiccant in the fridge or even freezer if you need to do that anyway), but generally you're not doing that. Some models are also just dogs with a controller chip that likes to corrupt itself (an issue with some cacheless Phison controllers) or have faulty firmware (e.g. if you have a Samsung 980 Pro, make sure it's up to date), and the elevated failure rate of particularly 1+ TB WD Blue / Sandisk Ultra 3Ds leads me to believe that those may have a controller overheating problem due to inadequate heat transfer (plastic case if memory serves - reflow / reball might be worth a shot). Samsung seems to have had some general issues with drives made in about the first half of 2021, and I'm not entirely sure whether it's all firmware-related. Particularly with cheap SSDs, you never quite know what you might get, e.g. the Kingston NV2 seems to be equipped either with TLC or QLC flash (yuck) and two different controllers of varying performance. I've never understood why people insist on skimping out on their storage devices. I must have gone through something like a dozen Samsung 850 Pros, both new and used, never had a problem with any of them. (I've read plenty of statements from people stating that their old 830s from 10 years ago still work fine, too. Haven't touched mine in a year.) Even the one I got used that turned out to have a lot of TBW on it (like 200 TBW on a 512 gig) recovered pretty OK after some TRIMming efforts. I always said that I would have been happy if SSDs basically kept the quality level of the 830s, which later became the Pro series. (Fun fact: I used to be hunting for used 850 Pros on eBay a few years ago, and the Pros went for no more or even less than the EVOs despite a considerable difference in new pricing, no doubt due to the EVO being the better-known product in the consumer space. I call that the "IKEA effect".) Meanwhile I've used some Crucial MX500s (the larger sizes of 1-2 TB are fine, the smaller ones can be a bit slow), and the handful of 250 gig WD Blues / Samsung Ultra 3Ds that I deployed have been fine, too. Speaking of TRIM, a lot of small USB thumb drives are using eMMC flash (potentially recycled from old phones, too) and are basically detected as an SD card in a cardreader, so SD formatting tools can be used on them. That's the only time an SD card will be TRIMmed. This can restore a lot of performance. Cheap thumb drives can be really cheap and nasty things in general, I don't really like the things much. Oh, and as someone who got a finger caught in a door before, I can fully relate. My injury at the time wasn't nearly as bad though, you seem to have gotten particularly unlucky with this ER special.

i used raspberry PI imager ...put in usb..."erase usb option"...job done!

I'm sorry about your finger, Vince. I hope that nail-bed is not too badly damaged. I sliced the end off my finger in a gate when I was 7 and the nail has grown back annoyingly unevenly ever since. It bugs me to this day. I suspect the plastic surgeons are better today than they were nearly 50 years ago

I've also read that not only are there write limits of flash, but SSD's will also slowly "rot" if they're unused. Not physically rot, but the data will slowly be corrupted. The flash memory cells eventually leak so a written-to-only-once SSD is still not suitable for archive purposes. The extra storage is also part of the approach to extend life of the devices. Flash storage controllers have "wear levelling" logic in them so that some cells may be worn out from extended use and they end up being mapped to fresh cells, transparently.