[akakillerk]

Hey guys... new to the forums and relatively new to owning a Blackberry, so forgive me if I ask anything moronic.

I have a Curve 8330 that recently decided to up and die. Here's the problem: as a new Blackberry user, I apparently wasn't aware of the best way to use it... when I bought the phone, no one told me about the Desktop Manager and so I have never backed anything up.

As I'm sure you all can understand, I'm pretty upset about the prospect of losing all of my contacts, text messages, pictures, etc. Is there any chance of data recovery from a completely dead Curve? I finally downloaded Desktop Manager (a little late!) and it won't recognize the old Curve because it won't turn on... just goes to that white screen with the hourglass.

If anybody has any recommendations, I would love to hear them. Thank you, and I'm sorry I'm a terrible Blackberry user!

[xliderider]

What happened to the BB to cause it to be in the state it's in?

It might be recoverable, but your contacts, messages, and pictures may not. If you had your pictures saving to a memory card, then those are safe.

[xliderider]

While on the subject of memory cards, take the battery out of the BB with the power on. Remove the memory card, then reinsert the battery. Does the BB boot up?

[akakillerk]

Oh, the actual device is fried. I took it into Verizon and they pretty much told me nothing can be done. Nothing actually happened to the BB... no water damage, didn't drop it. So I really have no idea why it died, aside from the fact that I've read a ton of negative feedback about the Curve 8330 and apparently this is what it does - dies. It had been doing the whole "stop working and go to a white screen with an hourglass" thing for maybe a week, but I was in finals... it was not the first priority. Verizon said it might be the battery, but they sent me a new one and the battery works fine in it, so who knows. But I did a bunch of battery pulls on the old one and all the tricks I could find online and nothing.

You said, "It might be recoverable, but your contacts, messages, and pictures may not." Should I take this to essentially mean that if the phone is fried, everything is fried?

I'm coming around to the idea of losing everything on my BB. I'm still upset over it, but it's my fault for not backing it up. I just had no idea the software even existed.

[akakillerk]

Sorry to bump my own topic... getting slightly desperate. I have to ship the phone back to Verizon soon so as not to get charged, so I'm anxious.

Went back to the store today and spoke with someone who actually seemed to know what he was doing. He informed me that the reason that my computer won't recognize my old BB is because the pins in the USB/charger slot (micro? mini? no idea, but if you know the Curve, you know what I'm talking about) are all sorts of broken. Not sure how that happened since I'm always really careful about the charger, but eh... it happened. So he said there is no chance of connecting to Desktop Manager.

Are there any other options of data recovery on this thing without using the USB and Desktop Manager? I just find it hard to believe that such a supposedly advanced piece of technology is only accessible via one single port.

[xliderider]

If it wasn't "fried", you would have more options, like Google Sync which can back up your contacts and calendar wirelessly.

Looks like you are SOL on this one. Chalk it up to a learning experience, as I'm sure you will be better at making regular backups and treating your USB port delicately. FYI, you might want to be careful plugging in stuff that have gone into the old port, as they could have caused the port damage to the old phone and can damage the new port as well.