Cards almost never fail sitting in a drawer. They fail during an operation — mid-burst, on an in-camera format, halfway through a copy, or in a cheap reader that browned out. Which of those it was tells us a great deal about the state of the data, and in most of those cases every file is still physically present on the card whatever the device now claims. Bring or post the card itself rather than the camera.
$ cdr diagnose /dev/sdb → Device: SanDisk Extreme · 128 GB SDXC → Status: CORRUPT — card asks to be formatted → Client: confidential · Cambridge, Cambridgeshire $ cdr engineer-working → Read-only image: taken · card untouched → File system: rebuilt from image → Photos + video: carved · CR3 + MP4 $ cdr verify → ✓ RAW photos — 2,140 files → ✓ video clips — 318 files → ✓ card recovered — memories back
Which operation it was during tells us a great deal about what state the data is in.
Power lost or the card removed while the camera was still writing. The file being written is usually damaged; everything before it is generally intact and recoverable.
A quick format writes a new file allocation structure and leaves the image data physically in place. This is among the most recoverable things that can happen to a card.
An unpowered or failing reader dropping voltage mid-transfer. Corrupts the file system rather than the flash. Worth trying a different reader before assuming the card has failed.
Dashcams, trail cameras and CCTV write continuously and wear cards out properly. These fail gradually rather than suddenly, and early symptoms are worth acting on.
The construction question again, and on cards the answer is usually the harder one.
Nearly every microSD card made in the last decade is a single moulded die — controller and flash in one package with nothing to separate. There is no chip to lift off and read on a programmer. Recovery means locating the test points on the die itself, making connections by hand, and reading the raw NAND through them.
Full-size SD and CompactFlash are more varied. CF in particular is genuinely discrete on most professional cards, which makes it among the more tractable formats we handle. That is worth knowing if you are choosing what to shoot on.
One practical consequence: a card that has physically snapped across the die is not recoverable, whereas a snapped USB stick often is. The die is the whole device.
Stop putting it back in the camera. Each time a camera mounts a damaged card it may write to it — rebuilding a directory, marking sectors, writing a new DCIM structure. Take it out, put it somewhere safe, and use a different card in the meantime.
Two very different sources, one failure mode.
Cards arrive here from field research more often than from holidays — ecological survey work in the fens and the Brecks, archaeological recording, drone and camera-trap footage, and the imaging output of instruments that write to SD rather than to a disk. This material is frequently unrepeatable in a way holiday photographs are not: the survey window has closed, the excavation is backfilled, the season has ended.
The second stream is industrial. Yard and packhouse CCTV, vehicle and plant recorders, and the cards inside agricultural machinery. These have been written to continuously for years in conditions no card is rated for, and they fail through wear rather than any single event.
Memory card recovery starts at £250 +VAT. Logical faults and discrete CompactFlash sit at the lower end. Monolithic microSD requiring test-point work sits higher, and the figure is fixed after the free diagnostic.
No fix, no fee applies to card work. Send the card itself rather than the camera — the body is not needed and it only adds risk in transit.
Very likely not. An in-camera format writes a new allocation structure and leaves the image data where it sits. Providing nothing has been written since, recovery rates on this are high. Stop using the card immediately.
Usually a file system problem rather than a flash failure, and usually recoverable. Do not let the camera repair or reformat it — that is the one action likely to make the situation permanent.
No, just the card. The body tells us nothing useful and only risks damage in transit. If the card is stuck in the slot, send the camera rather than forcing it.
On microSD that is usually terminal, because the controller and flash are one die and a break across it destroys both. On full-size SD it depends where it broke. Send it and we will look free of charge.
That is wear, and it is expected — continuous-write duty exhausts a card in a way normal use does not. Data written before the failure is often still readable. Cards rated for endurance last considerably longer in that role.
Two to five working days for logical faults and discrete media. Monolithic microSD is slower because the connections are made by hand under magnification.
£250 +VAT per card, fixed at the diagnostic. Take it out of the camera now rather than at the end of the shoot: on flash the window closes on its own, whether or not anyone is using the device.