Be Excellent To Each Other

Lady T managed to break her USB flash drive (or whatever the cool kids call them nowadays). Well, she didn't but she was using a laptop at work with the drive sticking out the side, with children on her lap - one of which kicked the USB stick, leaving the plug part in the socket and the other part on the floor (see pic).

We'd like to get at the files that were, and hopefully still are on there. Is it likely to work if I solder the bits back together? It looks like most of the thin metal strips have been lost, so can I use a little length of wire for each of the four contacts (plus another for the outer part of the USB plug?

This would be a one off, final use before the device gets binned. I'd probably try it on the netbook as that is our cheapest computer, the one we'd miss least if the ports or something did blow up.

And no, she hadn't kept copies of the files on a hard drive or anything like that despite me telling her over and over

Yeah, solder it back together you'll be good to go. It won't knacker the computer, don't worry about that.

Chop up another USB cable and solder the wires to the PCB is probably easier.

Well, unless you try to solder it to the computer, that is.

Don't do that.

Cool, ta. I'll give that a try later. Thanks Kalmar.