Teezer: My Kindle Fire tablet had a high temp event and potentially could have blown up if my wife held it the wrong way when it failed. Against all odds, at home data recovery of the family pics was 100% successful.
My Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 64GB decided to self destruct last June while my wife was using it in bed, just a few hours before I was to back it up to my laptop. Screen just dimmed out slowly to black and under a bright light shone on it the tablet was showing parallel white/black lines. Called Amazon support and went through the motions, and got offered a replacement at 25% discount - must send broken tablet back to them (and they don't do data recovery AT ALL).
As it was out of warranty, I didn't give two fucks about the 25% discount versus getting my data, I opened it up. In the pic, after removing the EMI shielding, I found its DRAM chip fried with a melted pool of plastic under it, approx 5 mm from its battery. Very grateful that the EMI shielding contained this melt down enough from the battery which is only approx 5 mm away and fully charged. For a BGA chip like that to melt out, it has to undergo some very high temperatures (>400 C).
After removing the eMMC chip from its mainboard, I put it in my eMMC reader, and with HDDGuru's Raw Copy Tool I made a raw dump of the chip.
Easily recovered 100% of the family pics/videos taken by my wife with the device (25GB worth).
Note the pool of plastic under the chip, and to the right side of it, the battery resides just off the pic's frame.
P.S. Amazon is currently hiding my 2-star review containing the attached pic which was posted yesterday (held off until data recovery was complete, as I expect they will be asking for the wreckage).
Edit: Tweaked the link for a small res photo - I don't post photos online to forums often.
My Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 64GB decided to self destruct last June while my wife was using it in bed, just a few hours before I was to back it up to my laptop. Screen just dimmed out slowly to black and under a bright light shone on it the tablet was showing parallel white/black lines. Called Amazon support and went through the motions, and got offered a replacement at 25% discount - must send broken tablet back to them (and they don't do data recovery AT ALL).
As it was out of warranty, I didn't give two fucks about the 25% discount versus getting my data, I opened it up. In the pic, after removing the EMI shielding, I found its DRAM chip fried with a melted pool of plastic under it, approx 5 mm from its battery. Very grateful that the EMI shielding contained this melt down enough from the battery which is only approx 5 mm away and fully charged. For a BGA chip like that to melt out, it has to undergo some very high temperatures (>400 C).
After removing the eMMC chip from its mainboard, I put it in my eMMC reader, and with HDDGuru's Raw Copy Tool I made a raw dump of the chip.
Easily recovered 100% of the family pics/videos taken by my wife with the device (25GB worth).
Note the pool of plastic under the chip, and to the right side of it, the battery resides just off the pic's frame.
P.S. Amazon is currently hiding my 2-star review containing the attached pic which was posted yesterday (held off until data recovery was complete, as I expect they will be asking for the wreckage).
Edit: Tweaked the link for a small res photo - I don't post photos online to forums often.
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