Ok i REALLY would appreciate some help on this:
Here is what happened.
I have been using my Sandisk Cruzer Micro for almost a year now to store my coursework on. Im not the most organized person in the world, and didnt back up the information on it - which i bloody hate myself for not doing. I didnt do it purely because it took so damn long. This weekend ive had a selection of computer jobs to do in which ive heavily used the drive.
Today at college i plugged my USB drive into a workstation, to find the computer i was working on had not recognised it. The pulsating orange light wasnt on either. I thought that maybe the port was duff, i then went to remove the drive only to feel it was extremely hot. I took it out and let it cool down, and once it got back to room temperature tried it in my friends workstation only to find once again no recognition.
I brought it home, in a panic as ALL my coursework is on there. I removed its casing, till all that was left was a chip. I then plugged it in to my computer hoping for the best. Nope nothing again, not recognised (btw im running Windows 7 and the college runs a modified version of Win XP Pro) at all. Again it was terribly hot even after 20 seconds of being plugged in. I googled many searches with the words Overheat, my usb manufacutrer, flash drives etc. Didnt find much, surprisingly. I tried using PC Inspector File Recovery which goes through the BIOS ports to find drives, and to no avail.
PLEASE tell me this isnt the end for my data and there is a way of getting it back.
I thought maybe resoldering the contacts to the plug itself - not sure if that will do anything though.
I can only put a reason that the bloody cheap crap the college uses overpowered the drive thus lost my data.
I know there are firms that will recover your data for you, do you think they'll be able to get back my coursework - its all im interested in.
Its about 2GB of Doc's, Spreadsheets and HTML pages.