3 ms·

By whom? Your granny who just lost all the pictures of their grandchildren?

wkat4242 3y ago
No but by me or anyone else who can hold a soldering iron :) It's much much easier than a BGA cracking issue, or something internal in the flash which is basically unfixable. This is just some components tombstoning. It shouldn't cost a lot to get it fixed (of course Sandisk should take care of that)
- croes 3y ago
  Guess who gets blamed if your soldered SSD fails.
  - lambdasquirrel 3y ago
    Yeah, this stuff is harder than it looks. If you need too much time with the soldering iron, the temperature can conduct through the wire and fry other components, those sensitive ICs that are the flash chips in particular.
- mike256 3y ago
  Are you sure the BGA is soldered correctly? Regarding the soldering, almost every 2nd component looks pretty bad.
- kmbfjr 3y ago
  By anyone who can operate a stereo microscope and a surface mount solder station. A Fisher-Price “My First 40 Watt Weller Soldering Pencil” won’t cut it for this type of repair as you’re not just flicking diodes off a board to “unlock” something.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    It does for me.. I've soldered 0805 (and 1206 which was most of them fortunately) components with a screwdriver-tipped aldi iron as I didn't have anything else available. It was not a great experience but being very careful with the corner of it it worked. But this is a super capacitor so it'll be a lot biger than that. But a hot air rework station or a really fine temperature-controlled tip is way better of course, which is what I usually use.
- dboreham 3y ago
  The article unfortunately was written by someone with no clue so we don't know why tombstoned components (shown in the picture) were not caught in inspection/test. They imply the failures happened in the field, but that's not where tombstoning happens. Presumably what happened was that the supercap (looking like [1]) tombstoned in reflow. Then circuit test failed to test that it was installed so the unit was shipped. Subsequently in the field the unit suffered a sudden power loss with pending writes. Normally the supercap provides power for long enough to flush pending writes to NAND. But since it was open circuit, the power fail flush never finished, resulting in corrupted storage. Fixing the open circuit solder joint as you suggest does not remedy the problem for the user because their data is still gone. [1] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/seiko-instruments/CPH3225A-2K/4747400 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/seiko-instruments...
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    > but that's not where tombstoning happens yeah I know, unless the board gets so hot it unsolders itself, which is very very doubtful (and definitely a fault of its own). I thought it was more of a stability problem though. Nothing a good backup should cover, and the device should be fine after soldering the component.
  - nurple 3y ago
    One capacitor on a tank array would definitely reduce its total capacitance, but they are nearly always in parallel and would not cause a failure of the whole tank, and the device would be inoperative if the output of the array was shorted. I'm skeptical that losing one capacitor in the array would cause the failure mode you're describing. Especially if the age of the devices is considered, the array would have been designed with margin to withstand capacitance loss as the device ages.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Perhaps tombstoning causes it to short the whole array? I could see that happening if it's positioned just wrong.
    - 3y ago
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  If a fix requires soldering, then to >95% of people it doesn't exist. I would be surprised if even most computer repair ships were up to it.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yes but this is more the problem with the mentality around today's disposable electronics than a real human problem. A lot of these skills have been lost. In the 80s it was totally normal to get an electrical schematic with a TV for instance, and there were repair shops all over (or people doing it from home for a small fee as a side business). These days it's not as impossible as people think. In fact very often when a TV fails it's a through-hole capacitor that is trivial to replace for a couple bucks. I have repaired several at work and for friends and they still work fine (I always replace it with good quality high-temperature rated ones, manufacturers often use too low a temperature rating so the equipment will fail far too soon and the customers buy a new one).

No but by me or anyone else who can hold a soldering iron :) It's much much easier than a BGA cracking issue, or something internal in the flash which is basically unfixable. This is just some components tombstoning. It shouldn't cost a lot to get it fixed (of course Sandisk should take care of that)

croes 3y ago
Guess who gets blamed if your soldered SSD fails.
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  Yeah, this stuff is harder than it looks. If you need too much time with the soldering iron, the temperature can conduct through the wire and fry other components, those sensitive ICs that are the flash chips in particular.
mike256 3y ago
Are you sure the BGA is soldered correctly? Regarding the soldering, almost every 2nd component looks pretty bad.
kmbfjr 3y ago
By anyone who can operate a stereo microscope and a surface mount solder station. A Fisher-Price “My First 40 Watt Weller Soldering Pencil” won’t cut it for this type of repair as you’re not just flicking diodes off a board to “unlock” something.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  It does for me.. I've soldered 0805 (and 1206 which was most of them fortunately) components with a screwdriver-tipped aldi iron as I didn't have anything else available. It was not a great experience but being very careful with the corner of it it worked. But this is a super capacitor so it'll be a lot biger than that. But a hot air rework station or a really fine temperature-controlled tip is way better of course, which is what I usually use.
dboreham 3y ago
The article unfortunately was written by someone with no clue so we don't know why tombstoned components (shown in the picture) were not caught in inspection/test. They imply the failures happened in the field, but that's not where tombstoning happens. Presumably what happened was that the supercap (looking like [1]) tombstoned in reflow. Then circuit test failed to test that it was installed so the unit was shipped. Subsequently in the field the unit suffered a sudden power loss with pending writes. Normally the supercap provides power for long enough to flush pending writes to NAND. But since it was open circuit, the power fail flush never finished, resulting in corrupted storage. Fixing the open circuit solder joint as you suggest does not remedy the problem for the user because their data is still gone. [1] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/seiko-instruments/CPH3225A-2K/4747400 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/seiko-instruments...
- wkat4242 3y ago
  > but that's not where tombstoning happens yeah I know, unless the board gets so hot it unsolders itself, which is very very doubtful (and definitely a fault of its own). I thought it was more of a stability problem though. Nothing a good backup should cover, and the device should be fine after soldering the component.
- nurple 3y ago
  One capacitor on a tank array would definitely reduce its total capacitance, but they are nearly always in parallel and would not cause a failure of the whole tank, and the device would be inoperative if the output of the array was shorted. I'm skeptical that losing one capacitor in the array would cause the failure mode you're describing. Especially if the age of the devices is considered, the array would have been designed with margin to withstand capacitance loss as the device ages.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Perhaps tombstoning causes it to short the whole array? I could see that happening if it's positioned just wrong.
  - 3y ago
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
If a fix requires soldering, then to >95% of people it doesn't exist. I would be surprised if even most computer repair ships were up to it.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yes but this is more the problem with the mentality around today's disposable electronics than a real human problem. A lot of these skills have been lost. In the 80s it was totally normal to get an electrical schematic with a TV for instance, and there were repair shops all over (or people doing it from home for a small fee as a side business). These days it's not as impossible as people think. In fact very often when a TV fails it's a through-hole capacitor that is trivial to replace for a couple bucks. I have repaired several at work and for friends and they still work fine (I always replace it with good quality high-temperature rated ones, manufacturers often use too low a temperature rating so the equipment will fail far too soon and the customers buy a new one).