The Super Talent PICO-C is a really tiny USB flash drive. Ever since I bought mine about a year ago I always wondered how it might look like inside the neat metal housing.

About a month ago, the drive was not accessible anymore. A short search on Google showed that in many cases a bug in the firmware rendered the flash memory inaccessible. There are tools available to revive faulty firmwares, especially for this kind of stick – if at least the controller is still recognized, which was not given in my case. Nevertheless, I tried the tools. As expected, they did not work. Luckily, nothing important was stored on the drive…

Being not that expensive, I did not exchange it (in spite of still having a warranty). Instead, I dissected it. 🙂 Removing the front cover with a screw driver was not complicated.

I first tried to also remove the metal back with a screw driver, but it was firmly glued together. I only managed to break of a piece of the black epoxy (?) housing. Ouch… The solution was to use a hot air gun to melt the glue. The black interior fell out by itself after 10-15 seconds.

Sadly, the black block containing all the logic is rather unspectacular. It does contain a labelling which was only readable after some photoshopping:

BXB08GMBH54UD or BXBO8GMBH54UD
4010 C024L0WAA or CO24LOWAA
MADE IN KOREA

At this point I gave up. Without any further possibilities to dissect the part and without any clues from the caption I put the remains aside. I thought about dissolving it in acetone or a similar solvent but I suspect it would work.

By the way: I bought the same drive again. I hope the new one lasts longer… 😉

Update: I’ve found a nice blog post about the build process of these USB sticks (bunnie’s blog): Where USB Memory Sticks are Born