Keyboard might have bricked my flash drive.

[doubldragon]

I just plugged in a USB flash drive into the keyboard dock for the first time. It read the drive fine, and I started working. After a bit, the icon disappeared from the system tray and wouldn't read. I assumed it might be poor usb support from adroid/asus, but when I got to the office, my office computer wouldn't read it. I've tried 3-4 different machines and none will read it. Any chance that data is recoverable? If not, I've lost countless hours worth of work thanks to this thing. Can't say I'm real happy at the moment.

 

[bob smith]

In the worst case, it might have electrically shorted. If nothing else works, you might carefully (research helps) disassemble it and see if there is any obvious physical damage. Some flash drives can be easily disassembled to inspect.

E.g. if a diode obviously burned you could try to wire across to recover your files. The research bit is trying to identify if the burned component is a diode.

Normal flash drives all fail at some point. Typical flash drive is MLC rated at 10,000 writes per memory location. Leveling algorithms balance writes across flash memory, and there are reserved sectors to replace detected faults. Normally this design is sufficient for years of life.

If the device is full, some leveling algorithms are faulty.The reserved sector for defects is per chip and once the sector is full the entire chip fails. With really bad luck on a heavily used and full flash drive you can have poor lifetimes. This sounds bad, which is why I think of SSD and flash memory as high speed short-term rental space.

Good luck

 

[slopokdave]

I just plugged in a USB flash drive into the keyboard dock for the first time. It read the drive fine, and I started working. After a bit, the icon disappeared from the system tray and wouldn't read. I assumed it might be poor usb support from adroid/asus, but when I got to the office, my office computer wouldn't read it. I've tried 3-4 different machines and none will read it. Any chance that data is recoverable? If not, I've lost countless hours worth of work thanks to this thing. Can't say I'm real happy at the moment.

I had a memory card bite the dust in my Evo. I plugged it in, then as it was preparing, I immediately ejected it on accident.

The card didn't work again....

 

[doubldragon]

In the worst case, it might have electrically shorted. If nothing else works, you might carefully (research helps) disassemble it and see if there is any obvious physical damage. Some flash drives can be easily disassembled to inspect.

E.g. if a diode obviously burned you could try to wire across to recover your files. The research bit is trying to identify if the burned component is a diode.

Normal flash drives all fail at some point. Typical flash drive is MLC rated at 10,000 writes per memory location. Leveling algorithms balance writes across flash memory, and there are reserved sectors to replace detected faults. Normally this design is sufficient for years of life.

If the device is full, some leveling algorithms are faulty.The reserved sector for defects is per chip and once the sector is full the entire chip fails. With really bad luck on a heavily used and full flash drive you can have poor lifetimes. This sounds bad, which is why I think of SSD and flash memory as high speed short-term rental space.

Good luck

Well, there's nothing really to disassemble, so I guess it's just toast. I assume the same logic would apply to SD cards as well? I do hope that is the problem because I was worried the dock might have done it. I've got some spare cards around to check in case I can recreate the issue.

Thanks again.