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Dead SD Card - Data recovery ?
mcerd1 - 9/6/22 at 08:00 AM

My mum has had the micro SD card on her phone die taking all her photo's with it

Putting the thing in the PC just shows as an unformatted card and trying in a different phone says its corrupted - don't care about the card itself, just need to get the photo's off if at all possible

I've tried the trial version of the Sandisk data recovery program - it does recognise the card but it can't find any files on it at all


There are hundreds of apps out there claiming to do this, but I've no idea which ones are even worth trying - anyone got any suggestions ?

obfripper - 9/6/22 at 09:20 AM

What size does windows report the drive as if you look at the properties?

If it matches the actual capacity it will be recoverable with software (something like R-photo), but if it is a random small amount ie 8MB, it is because the circuit board/connection to flash chip has failed.

A circuit failure does not prevent recovery, but is a specialist job involving a specialised control board and attaching microfine probes to the flash chip directly, and so is expensive, i would guess current prices to be in the £200-500 range.


https://blog.acelab.eu.com/pc-3000-flash-spider-board-adapter-how-to-use-it.html


Dave

Mr Whippy - 9/6/22 at 11:21 AM

can't really offer help to recover

But going forward I can totally recommend using google photos and doing auto back up to their cloud storage. I've used this for years for tens of thousands of photos shared with my wife and kids phones. Plus it's free.

mcerd1 - 9/6/22 at 12:08 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
But going forward I can totally recommend using google photos and doing auto back up to their cloud storage.

she was using that - but it ran out of storage last year.....

snapper - 9/6/22 at 03:51 PM

Sandisc and others do recovery programs, you may even find some on memory cards or with the instructions with the cards

David Jenkins - 9/6/22 at 04:43 PM

I found this a little while ago:

TestDisk

There's also PhotoRec on the same website - just follow the links.

Please note that I haven't tried this myself.



[Edited on 9/6/22 by David Jenkins]

Mr Whippy - 9/6/22 at 08:32 PM

quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
But going forward I can totally recommend using google photos and doing auto back up to their cloud storage.

she was using that - but it ran out of storage last year.....


you can set up any number of google accounts for free, I have quite a few. Although I do pay a tiny amount each year for the main one for full hi res images, still works out way cheaper than buying my own hard drive and all that hassle of uploading photos to it.