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)
[1] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/seiko-instruments...
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.
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.
Depends on what the capacitor is being used for in the circuit. In many cases, having a cap fail open results in a higher current draw which kills the unit if left in operation for too long. This is the case on some of the off-road lighting I manufacture. If one cap is present and fails open at ground, the circuit overloads. If the cap is connected to ground but not the rest of the circuit, the circuit doesn't operate.
Regardless, one component being off can cause a whole chain of maladies.
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.
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.
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).