Cannot read USB stick - tricky fix

My wife keeps most of her data on a USB stick so that she can easily move it around her 3 laptops (in 3 different locations). This morning, the stick was dead. It did not say a piep, no power, nothing. Despite my constant preaching about the importance of backups, she had, of course, not backed it up for a long time. So she was really in a tizzy.

Well, I tried an old trick that may possibly help others. I put it into the fridge for a couple of hours. And low and behold, after that I was able to read the thing and copy all her files. Now she is a happy camper again.

So if you have the same problem one day, try the fridge. No guarantee that it will work for you, but it did in this case. I have used the same trick with dead disks with some success.