With this method, I succeed in 92% of all cases in rescuing the data, even when other data rescue companies have said they can’t do it. For the 8% of cases in which I am unsuccessful in rescuing the data, the memory chips themselves are damaged or due to a controller malfunction the file allocation tables are overwritten with memory data. In the pictures below showing damaged memory chips, data rescue is impossible. Even the FBI is not able to do the job!
Memory cards with broken memory chips - data rescue no longer possible
from the Internet
| I just want share my experience with anyone out there who has ever experienced the lost of precious photos from a memory device as I am OVER THE MOON RIGHT NOW. I recently went to Fiji for a wedding, it was the most amazing place.. I went snap-crazy and took a baziillion (or 1000+ photos to be more exact) photos of everything we saw like I always do. Then on the wedding day...all of a sudden my camera said "memory full" when I tried to take a photo, camera froze, then I couldn't even view all the other photos I previously took... I went into panic mode. I had not backed up my photos at all being on holiday - traveling lite and not bringing any form of backup device with me.. For the rest of my holiday I was totally in a state of despair. There were professional wedding photographers there and they all had a look at my SD card for me, even trying the SD card in their cameras and their laptops, but all they could tell me was "Get a better SD card next time!" as none of the devices even recognized the SD card as a readable source... There were no physical damage to the card and I had not damaged it in any way. I have used the card for a few years but its never had any problems.. After getting back from the holiday I went to all sorts of places to try and save my photos. Camera stores, photographers, hard ware store people..I tried all the photo recovery softwares there is and read every piece of advice I can find on the internet. But none worked.. the softwares would only work if the card was actually recognized as a drive. Not mine... and pretty much everyone told me if its not readable, there's no way of recovering it...full stop. Then I found a guy who raved about this German company called Recoverfab - who supposedly can retrieve photos from memory devices even if the card is damaged or unreadable by normal means. I emailed the guy telling him my story - he emailed me back and told me yes they can save my photos even tho its not recognized by the computer - because they have a special technique involving extracting the microchip from the printed circuit board and directly accessing the raw data with a programmable chip reader. I posted my SD card away to Germany...finally Last night he emailed me to say they have received my SD card. Then one day later, I got another email - he rescued 1040 photos and 8 videos out of my SD card which everyone deemed was as good as dead. I am speechless. He sent me a preview of my photos - I started screaming in joy. He really did it!!!!!!!! All my lost memories are saved. They are AMAZING!!! I cannot recommend them more. This is the best money I've ever spent. Here's the site if anyone has the same problem and everyone else shuts you down, don't throw away your memory card & your memories, send it to these guys they will help you!!!!! |
| I had a very similar issue with on of my memory cards. While my wife and I were in Italy for our anniversary we had a memory card completely quit working. This was after 3 days of exploring Rome and the card was nearly full. When we got home I tried taking the card to both a camera shop and a computer shop and was told they couldn't recover the pictures. I then tried many of the file recovery software programs out there with no luck at all. I have spent nearly two years waiting and hoping to find some way to get these pictures off of the card. I found a company in Germany called Recoverfab. Their website had perfectly described the problem that I was having, so I figured I would give it a try since at this point I really had nothing to lose. I described the problem I had and sent the card in. They sent an e-mail when the card was received saying they had it and would process it in a few days. The next day I got an e-mail from them saying that they had recovered all of my pictures and videos from the card, along with a preview of them! I seriously had tears in my eyes actually seeing those pictures! If the free software out there won't work for you, definitely check this place out. Their website is http://recoverfab.com. It is definitely not free, but it is totally worth every penny spent. |
| Hi all - Just wanted to post regarding a great recovery service called Recoverfab in Germany. I worked with Jim C. in the following post in an attempt to recover the photos: Unfortunately, it ended up the damaged card was beyond what we could fix, as we determined it must've been a dead controller (thus making the data irretrievable). Jim C. was generous enough to look at the card himself and then helped point me in the direction of Recoverfab when attempts to resurrect the card were unsuccessful. I sent my card off to Recoverfab and they were able to retrieve all of my lost photos! I was starting to give up hope, so I was elated to learn that they were able to get them back. Thankfully I now have all my photos back from my family vacation in Mexico and they did an awesome job. So if all of your attempts seem to be in vain with all the methods in this forum, give them a try. They won't charge you if they can't retrieve anything, which is nice. It's worth a shot! |
| A friend has baby pictures on an SD card, which said baby later found and used as an inappropriate teething aid. Yeah, yeah, I know … He asked me to try to get the pictures back. I couldn’t read the card. It even fried one of my card readers. I tried RescuePRO, PhotoRec and PhotoRescue: no dice. Downtown Camera returned it as unreadable (and declined to charge me anything). So I asked metafilter, and someone suggested Recoverfab in Germany. I sent the card off last week, and waited … Got an e-mail at 06:30 this morning that they’d received the card, with a latest completion date of a week. Before 09:00, received a second e-mail with a link to picture samples and payment options. Have paid (not cheap – €89, but they got results) and am awaiting the FTP link. Many thanks to Leopold Hiersche for his excellent results. |
| In case anyone has a problem recovering their files from a corrupted memory card, i would like to share what i found. my 16gb sdcard from my camera got spoilt. i tried different types of software to recover the data which included over 1000 photos i had taken. none worked..really desperate cuz i had fotos from a trip to brazil on it. i discovered a company in germany called recoverfab. they got back my data for me . apparently they physically access the memory chip in the device. so they do what software recovery wont do!.. it did cost a bit.. but the price is negotiable.. i got back my photos and videos and i am happy.. here is the site of the company incase anyone runs into "unrecoverable by software" problems and think that they have to throw away their memory card! |
| Hi, I think this may help you a lot. About 4 years ago I had a similar situation where my memory stick was physically damaged when I brought it in for a shop to transfer some photos onto a disc. The shop person must of accidentally dropped it and stepped on it. Anyway, all our photos on it from our recent trip in Asia were lost and we were very sad about it. We looked around for many ways to get our photos back but almost all the solutions were just software data recovery if you accidentally wiped or reformatted your card etc... which was all no use to us. About 4 years passed we sort of forgot about it until recently cleaning the drawers we saw the memory card and i returned searching just for interest and I found a company called Recoverfab based in Germany. At the same time I found a few others but they were all so expensive (in Australia). Recoverfab has very good prices in comparison. So eventually I posted it to Recoverfab and about a week later, they replied saying they recieved our memory stick. Then about 2 days after that they said it was fixed and even had a photo preview of all the recovered photos! I actually couldn't believe it that I thought something like this would be lost forever but it was recovered. I'm so happy that I discovered them. So yea, give Recoverfab a try! I hope this helps, I know how you feel! |
| I too was in a similar situation with a physically damaged SD card which contained a month's worth of family photos. After a day of taking photos at Dover Castle on the first day of our family vacation, something went terribly wrong with my 2GB Traveler SD card which rarely gets removed from my Nikon D40. The camera simply would not recognize the card but rather gave an error message that the memory was probably damaged. How that happened-I have no idea! But there was no way that the camera or multiple card readers could access data on the card. After trying to get multiple card readers to access the card, I just gave up and assumed that the 1000+ photos from the first day of vacation (and the previous month) were just going to be lost. After vacation I began researching the issue once again. I tried a couple of recovery programs that were recommended in this forum http://www.z-a-recovery.com/ and http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec but neither worked. I thought PhotoRec may work since it claims to be able to recover photos from a card even if the drive does not recognize the removable media. Once again I was close to giving up! However, I read further in this forum and discovered a post about a customer who was very satisfied with service received from Recoverfab. After checking out the services that Recoverfab claimed to be able to offer, I opened up my SD card to verify that there was no physical damage to the memory chip inside the SD card. Observing no physical damage to the memory chip, I decided to send the card off to see if there was any chance that some of the pictures on my card might be able to be recovered. To my great delight, in just a few days, I received an e-mail back from Recoverfab saying that my card had arrived and the all my photos had been recovered! Wow! What a relief! So, I am writing this as a satisfied customer and a happy father who has been able to have 1000+ photos recovered from an SD card that quit working in my Nikon D40. I don't know why the card quit working since this has never happened to me before. Yet, I do know that Recoverfab did a great job recovering the family photos that would otherwise have been lost. As a satisfied customer, I highly recommend Recoverfab as a good option for recovering data on an SD card that your computer or camera will no longer recognize or read. All is not lost if the memory chip is still intact and you are willing to part with some money to let a qualified expert recover your data!!! |
| I recently took my wife and baby daughter to Hawaii for the first time. Needless to say, I took many great pictures. But then I went outrigger canoeing on the last day and the camera got ruined by salt water (no big deal, I wanted a new camera anyways). WORSE YET, when I got home I discovered that my card was no longer readable. How TRAGIC!!! What to do? Here are some things I tried which did NOT work: (1) Try the card in other cameras, card readers and any other device I could possible get my hands on. I even bough a new universal card reader, but the card remained unrecognizable. (2) Recovery software -- what's the point? The card's unrecognizable? (3) Let the card dry for two weeks, no change. (4) Clean the contact point with alcohol and cotton swabs, and other methods... NONE OF THAT WORKED AT ALL Then I came across a lab in germany which some other forum users in my situation had used with siccess. It seemed weird to have to send it all the way to Germany, but every other 'recovery' lab I investigated seemed to just be using software to try recovering data with no higher success rate than I would have on my own. Recoverfab, on the other hand, looked like a real LAB with hardware to break card open and rebuilt the data from the bits that remained on there. So I packaged up my card and mailed it off to Germany, hoping for the best. Sure enough, a week later, I got ALL my pictures and videos back via ftp download from RECOVERFAB! So happy!!! |
| Had a similar problem after my sister's family came over for a 1-week visit to Vancouver Canada. When I took out the Patriot 8GB Class 6 SD card from my EOS 60D SLR and inserted it to a PC, the PC won't display the card contents. (Note: The PC did not report that the card had to be formatted; rather, it did not detect that I inserted a card in the first place.) Tried the same on another PC & a Mac & Linux, and also on a dedicated SD card reader, but they still won't detect the card. I tried to re-insert the SD card on my SLR and 2 other digicams, it didn't detect the card at all. I tried downloading software such as TestDisk, PhotoRec, Recuva, Zero Assumption (ZAR), Low-level disk checker from Patriot, nothing worked because these software rely on the PC to first detect the SD card so that they could access it. I also visited a reputable data recovery service in the city, the technician said he couldn't do it because the controller inside the SD card was damaged, and there was very slim chance of recovering the pics. When I learned this I felt devastated.* Still, I kept googling for a solution and based on what I've read at some forums my last resort was to find people who could open the SD card and directly access the memory chips inside (of course, I kinda figured out early on this wasn't going to be free). I noticed this website*http://recoverfab.com/*in a few forums and people had said good things about it. So I sent the card via regular mail (postage is about $5 from Canada to Germany), and after a week I received an email saying that they received the card. The next day I got another email saying they were able to recover 365 pics!*What surprised me wasn't the price (the website shows the pricing up front), but the fact that I now had the chance to retrieve all my holiday memories back and in such a short time. I learned my lesson now; #1: backup your pics everyday (don't wait until the last day of vacation to backup all the photos!) and #2: try to exhaust all the free solutions you could find (info from forums, free data recovery software, etc.), and #3: don't lose hope because as my experience has shown it is still possible to recover the data. I*just want to share my experience for the benefit of other people having the same problem. |
| We recently experienced a small nightmare of sorts during our vacation. After a furious day of taking photos at Jungfrau in Switzerland, the Transcend SDHC card in our Canon T1i suddenly and without warning decided to quit - The read "card access" light would not go off for several minutes. Eventually it did but I immediately knew there was a problem. I back up every day on a vacation, and the card failed on me literally on the last picture I took that morning. As soon as we reached our hotel, I spent the whole afternoon trying to search google for how to recover photos from damaged sdhc cards, and downloaded at least 3 different software programs that claimed to help in such situations. After a while I realized that I was in deeper trouble because the card would not MOUNT in the camera or the computer or any other device (I tried my son's 3DS), and thats when I realized that this is a hardware problem. I continued searching, and realized that there are possible hardware solutions to this and all hope need not be lost yet. I finally sent my card by FedEx to Recoverfab in Germany and they recovered my photos! This was a great learning experience for me in many ways. The key thing is as long as the card is not physically damaged to crack the memory chips inside, the data can be recovered. Most google searches only return software recovery solutions, which were pretty useless in my case and I suppose in many other cases. If the card cannot be mounted as a drive on a computer, it means the controller of the card is likely bad but the memory chips may be safe! This was exactly the situation in my case. Hope this post is useful to some others like me. Thanks! |
| I had a very similar experience recently regarding my SD card. My wife and I went on our Europe vacation and into day two of the trip, the SD card gave a "memory card lock" error in the camera. I ended up purchasing another SD card to use and kept the old one thinking that I could recover it. Once I got back home, I tried everything possible using various shareware program like ZAR to recover the pictures. The problem I had was that the SD card was not recognized by the computer. I read a lot of information from this forum and tried to use Jim C method. The linux utilities didn't work as well. I even tried two types of linux software but the operating system didn't recognize the SD card. Feeling frustrated about not being able to recover the pictures from our trip, I saw another posting about the company recoverfab in Germany. I was a bit hesitant at first about sending my SD card all the way to Germany. I ended up calling companies in US but they were planning to charge $300-$800 for the services. On top of it, they'll charge for diagnosis as well. I bit the bullet and sent the SD card to recoverfab. It took about 2 weeks using US mail to get there. I received a confirmation email once the company received the SD card. The company was able to recover 341 pictures within a day. Best thing about the company was that you don't need to pay if they can't retrieve anything. The cost is also based on the size of SD card as well. I'm glad that I found this forum as well as recoverfab. My wife is also pleased as well. |
| I'd like to chime in and give a positive reference to Recoverfab as well. I had a 32GB SD card I had been using for photographs on vacation when it began to give me an error message. Trying to load the SD card through multiple PC's also yielded no results. Subsequently, I used nearly every data recovery software out there (ZAR, Stellar Phoenix, GetDataBack) with no avail and it became apparent to me that this wasn't a software issue but more likely something that happened physically to the SD card. I won't name names but I contacted several major data recovery firms in the US and was very much put off by the seedy pricing procedures and service. Quite frankly, I feel some of these firms clearly take financial advantage of a situation in which you need or must have back your sensitive or important data. Found Recoverfab through this thread and needless to say, they were able to recover all data and felt confident with the level of service there. The same exact situation happened to a friend, (32GB SD card, same model camera) and I was more then happy to refer them to Recoverfab. Thanks to the threadstarter for the recommendation and Recoverfab! |
| Hey guys, So I have been lurking here for a while and came back recently to see if I could find a solution when the SD card in my camera stopped registering as existing on my computer. Someone here (sorry don't remember the name), pointed me to some recovery software, which was great, but could only be used if the computer saw the card (even if it saw it as corrupt). Unfortunately the card I had didn't even register at all. I thought I was out of luck... then I was chatting to a friend and they suggested this service called Recoverfab. I checked it out and it is in Germany, so I was a little hesitant (I am in the US), but figured that the card was useless so it wouldn't hurt (I did ask around locally for recovery services too, but most places that do this in the US are aimed at corporate customers and their prices started at $500). I had to mail the SD card to recoverfab before making any payment.... But then, a couple of days ago, I get an e-mail saying they have revoered all 1788 photos and 98 videos from the card! They give you an account on the website and they post about 20 sample images from your memory card to your account so you can see that they actually did recover them (bearing in mind I had paid them nothing up to that point). Once I replied that the images were good, I paid the fee (depends on card size but for my 8gb was 165 Euros), they uploaded the whole thing to an FTP site and sent me the link to download, it was a easy as that! So, anyway, after the help I got from others' answers on this board, I just wanted to share what I went through and let you know that this service is out there. |
Error descriptions on successfully recovered memory devices
| Memory card Transcend SDHC class 10 16Go Camera COOLPIX S4300 Fact: I was taking pictures. At a point I turned off the camera and when restarting it, I got the error message "This card cannot be used". Impossible to access the camera menu when the card is inserted. Impossible to mount the card in any computer or other cameras. |
| I have transcend 16GB SDHC Card Class 6 with pictures and videos about 2 GB taken by Canon Powershot SD960 IS. This card suddenly stopped working and is not detectable, i tried couple of recovery software but no use, all these softwares are saying sectors in the card are un-accessible. |
| My Sandisk 16GB CF card cannot be read by my reader and camera says that it cannot access card either. The card has video clips on it from my Canon 5D Mark III. |
| My 4GB SD-card from my camera has stopped working. All I get is error messages when I try to access the photos either on my camera or on my computer. I would be so greatfull if you could restore the pictures on the SD-card. |
| I have a Micro SD Card 1GB which was used in my old mobile phone. The phone does not recognize the card any more. I have tried to plug it into my PC using a card slot and a card reader and the PC will not recognize it either. I would like to recover everything on the card please. |
| I removed the MicroSD card from my Samsung phone whilst doing something else, not concentrating, so I put it back in the slot. It got stuck (slot didn't click), I think there was dirt in my phone - anyway, it had stopped working and doesn't work in my phone, desktop pc, or laptop via a USB/SD adapter anymore. Maybe static from my hands might've damaged it. |
| My device will not reconized my sd card. The gold prongs appear to be badly scratched. I would like to recover my pictures from the card. |
| Memory card has been corrupted. While taking picture with Canon T2i, camera failed and said memory card is unreadable. PNY Pro-Elite 16 GB card. |
| SD card controller broken, when I put the card in the computer card reader is asking me to format the card, when I put the card in video camera which was used to recorder I have the message "unknown media type". |
| i have a micro sd card 2 gb that I used in my Blackberry Bold 9780. I tried to use it in my new phone and now it says it has fatal errors and I can't read it anymore. |
| When I enter the 16 GB SDHC card into my computer, it will not even recognize that anything was connected. If I put it in the camera, it says card cannot be accessed. I have not reformatted the card or deleted anything. I was on vacation and the card was submerged in water. It stopped working immediately, then worked off and on for one day. Now it will not work at all. |
| whilst i was trying to take a picture, a message appeared saying 'reinsert card', which i then tried to do. but the message continued to appear everytime i put the card back into the camera. my computer does now not recognise the card and will not allow me to format. |
| SDHC card can not be accessed. computer or camera requests to format card. recoverable software was unsucessful in finding files after scanning. |
| 4GB SDHC card, used in Samsung EX1. Suddenly stopped functioning,cannot view photos on card. Cannot detect SDcard at all when mounted onto computer/other cameras. |
| After taking pictures for a couple of days, we got an error message. Thinking it was only a problem with the battery being almost dead, we recharged the camera, but the problem persisted and after 3 pictures, the camera no longer recognized the card. When we tried loading the card on the computer, it wouldn't mount, and we received a message that the card is not readable. |
| Hi, CF card is not readable by my camera and card reader (card reader is detected on my computer, however). When in my Canon Digital Rebel EOS, an Error 02 appears. |
| This card was being used in a Nokia N82 during a trip to India. I dropped the phone, it then got very hot to the touch and crashed. Shortly after that I could not access the photos or videos. I can read the card (I dont think I could initially), but there is nothing on the card apart from a few files and folders I dont recognise. There has been a previous attempt at data recovery before that did not work. |
| After using the card for most of the day a "Card Error" messgae appeared on the camera. The card is not recognised by any of my computers and camera. |
| Camera appeared to be saving images corrrectly, viewed correctly on camera, then after taking a picture camera said unable to view image. On reading date folder, it now appears to be empty. |
| Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo 512MB, no longer in the Sony photo camera after trying to insert into a plain memory stick reader. I had to remove them using tweezers (small surface scratches as a result). I guess the contacts were bent during the insertion/removal process. |
| 2 GB SD card used in Nikon D40 stopped working suddenly while in camera. Camera reports "Memory card can't be used. May be damaged." Multiple computers and multiple card readers won't recognize the card. Data recovery programs won't access the drive or card data (mostly jpeg images)either. I removed plastic case and see no physical damage to memory chip. |
| Transcend SDHC card abruptly stopped working after a busy morning of taking photos with Canon T1i DSLR camera. Card has about 300-400 photographs in JPG format and few short video clips in MOV format. I am currently unable to mount the card on any computer and it is not recognized in any camera either. |
| my microsd card is not recognized by my pc.whenever i plug in the card it says to format. but clicking the format option it says windows is unable to format |
| The card was being used in a Nokia N82 to store photos during a trip to India several years ago. I dropped the phone, it crashed, and soon after that I could no access the photos. I have tried professional help before, but they said they could not find anything at all on the card, and that is the same experience I have. The card does not seem damaged so I am hoping they can be recovered! |
| I cannot read from the card - i tried different recovery tools: photorescue, rescuepro etc. Nothing works. My mac won't mount the card. |
| After taking pictures for 4 days in Paris using a new SanDisk 8GB SD card, my digital camera refused to take a picture, saying the card could not be read. I can not get any device to recognize the card. |
| Hi there, my camera contains some 900 pics, when I was using it on holiday it bought up a 'memorycard error' and said that the card needed formatting. I was unable to then access any of the pictures on either the camera or by using a reader attached to a computer. I took it to a photo shop here on my return and they ran some software over it but although it bought up thumbnails of some of the images when I went into them in another size they are distorted. |
| My new Nikon P510 started saying "please wait for camera to finish recording before shutting off". I thought that might be a battery issue: changed battery. The last picture took over 30 minutes to save - so I figured it was "stuck". I pulled out the card- it now says the card needs to be formatted. I tried several recovery programs: they can read the card but see no data. There is no apparent physical damage. |
| Inserted memory card into wrong slot now receive memory card error when in camera and no data can be found when inserted into pc. Camera shop slightly damaged outer casing while trying to retrieve photographs and video. |
| Card does not register as existing when placed in a computer. When placed in a camera it asks if you want to format the card, but when you try to say yes for software recovery, it says, "No card found". |
| We bought a no-name MicroSD card in a Serbian shop. It worked good during the trip, but now it is not discovered by computer even with external reader. After several tries with different computers and mobile phones it is even not readable by the camera. |
| My camera with SD card fell into the ocean. It still did work afterwards. But, i probably also manhandled the SD card by sitting on it. In the end, no computer or camera is able to read the card. |
| My new Nikon P510 started saying "please wait for camera to finish recording before shutting off". I thought that might be a battery issue: changed battery. The last picture took over 30 minutes to save - so I figured it was "stuck". I pulled out the card- it now says the card needs to be formatted. I tried several recovery programs: they can read the card but see no data. There is no apparent physical damage. |
| Micro SD card that can longer be read on my blackberry phones or Mac computer. No cracks or obvious signs of wear. The metal tabs are even intact. |
| A little crack in the memory card, the button on the side fell off. Now neither my pc or camera can read the card. The camera says "No memory card". |
| I have a verbatim sd hc 16 gb card. I bought the card in april and recorded last with the card in august. When the card was full i changed the card with another. Now i Want to see the recording but it is not possible to have contact with the card. The card does not have visible damages. |
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