Who do you recommend for SD card recovery?

[TechGuy71]

Hi all.

I had an SD card come in yesterday that has pictures on it. They dropped the camera and the camera started saying that the SD card needed to be formatted. Well it wont format. I can get it to show a drive letter in Windows but it does nothing... and doesn't show any information, no drive size etc. I've tried about everything I can think of. And short of splitting this thing open and looking for a broken trace or something I'm out of ideas (it doesn't pop apart it's a solid piece). Anyway, if anyone has something I might try I sure will. I've tried several programs designed to recover data but most cant see the drive and the ones that do can not read it. Also tried to clone it but same results.

Other than that, I guess I am looking for suggestions on a 3rd party company to use that some of you maybe have had good experiences with that aren't crazy expensive. I talked to someone from eProvided.com but they weren't willing to give me a quote. All they would say is a basic recovery is like $29 (pretty cheap) but if it needed more they would let me know. They weren't willing to tell me what it would cost if it needed more.. hmm. I'm sure a 'basic' recovery is everything i've already tried.

So anyway, can anyone recommend a good place to work with?

[NYJimbo]

Most of these SD cards have a few chips in them, most are very lightly surface mounted with almost vapors of solder. One good bang and either the whole chip pops off or leads work loose with just microns of space between them and the board.

If you have skills with soldering and have a microscope or good loupe/mag glass, you could open that baby up and check it out. The card is already dead so it's all a matter of convincing the client..... (yes, I know it sounds unethical, but how else do you get started in level 4 data recovery ?).

[NYJimbo]

See, not much going on in there :

[TechGuy71]

Yah.. I probably should take a look. I actually have quite a bit of experience with soldering and have a nice setup but surface mount chips are terrible to work with. I've repaired several motherboards and flas drives and such... guess I just wasn't looking forward to cracking the thing open. But you're right, I probably should. There's just not even a seam in the side of it, it seems like a solid piece of plastic

[NYJimbo]

Originally Posted by TechGuy71

Yah.. I probably should take a look. I actually have quite a bit of experience with soldering and have a nice setup but surface mount chips are terrible to work with. I've repaired several motherboards and flas drives and such... guess I just wasn't looking forward to cracking the thing open. But you're right, I probably should. There's just not even a seam in the side of it, it seems like a solid piece of plastic

Just cover your ass with the client. Whatever it takes to get them to understand it is totally dead and opening it up is the only option, or whatever.

[ell]

I got my first call for SD card picture recovery, I usually use recuva or getdataback for hard drives, are these good programs for this type of recovery or do you recommend another? She just formatted the card.

[bagellad]

I am sure you could send it to some data recovery place, I would assume they are after the pictures/data not the SD card specifically..

[JosephLeo]

PhotoRec is a data recovery software MADE for SD cards and removable storage mediums.

[gambit]

Try Drivesavers. They recover data from any media, but it can be pricey.

[ell]

Originally Posted by gambit

Try Drivesavers. They recover data from any media, but it can be pricey.

I already am a partner with Ontrack, however most of my customers don't want to pay upwards of $600, and its not usually THAT critical, I guess I should have phrased the question, looking for best software based recovery program.