SD Card Recovery

A

alkit

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I have a 4gb SD card that I took a bunch of photos on. I took it out my camera and put it into my PC. It then said to me "Would you like to format this card". I selected NO, but can not read the card at all on the PC, and when I re-insert it into the camera, it says "memory card error".

I tried a few different software recovery programs without much luck. Does anyone know of a software recovery that has been successful?

Could it be beyond a software recovery?
If so, does anyone know of a reliable and well-priced data recovery place?

Thanks!
 
Although it gives an error in the camera, can you hook up the camera (with the card in it) via USB to a PC and see if it picks it up as a device and drive?
 
You can try to run something like TestDisk or Get Data Back to recover your data on the PC.

Get Data Back isn't free, but it's the best that you can get - or at least from all the utilities that I've seen.
 
If you do not have one yet, get a Hiren BootCD, but opt for version 10 - IIRC the 13 and newer versions do not have GetDataBack streamlined into them
 
alkit said:
I have a 4gb SD card that I took a bunch of photos on. I took it out my camera and put it into my PC. It then said to me "Would you like to format this card". I selected NO, but can not read the card at all on the PC, and when I re-insert it into the camera, it says "memory card error".

I tried a few different software recovery programs without much luck. Does anyone know of a software recovery that has been successful?

Could it be beyond a software recovery?
If so, does anyone know of a reliable and well-priced data recovery place?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

That's beyond recovery for most companies. Even if you hand it over to a data recovery specialist, there's still no guarantee of data recovery because it's flash memory - hard drives are much easier to work with. Its not worth the cost and headache to get it back.
 
NAG - Wesley said:
That's beyond recovery for most companies. Even if you hand it over to a data recovery specialist, there's still no guarantee of data recovery because it's flash memory - hard drives are much easier to work with. Its not worth the cost and headache to get it back.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this card had pictures from a once in a lifetime cruise and holiday that the family went on :(
 
From the info you've given it doesn't sound like a logical problem so no software is going to help you. NAND flash is pretty hardy stuff, it's very commonly the controller that fails. A data recovery company that deals with flash memory would remove the NAND chip and read it off there directly and then use the correct algorithm to recreate the file system.
 
If the partition table got damaged, then the recovery process is the same as that of HDD's.

If the hardware got damaged, then you're pretty much screwd.
 
Shoving the card into a windows based pc is not ideal.

You would be better off trying to access the card from a linux pc and then imaging it with dd or dd_rescue. Once you have a image removed the card and then mount the image file in linux and recover that way.
 
Congrats. Luckily it was just a logical problem and not a physical one :) Glad you got your pictures back.
 
Thanks alkit for recovery your lost pictures using a above recovery program.

I had used Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery to recover my lost photos when my mmc card got corrupt.
 
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