Package, interface, device
Every card, and what it takes to get the pictures off each one. The package decides the job. The device decides what is left.
Every memory card is a few chips of flash memory and a controller that pretends, to the camera or the phone, to be a simple disk. What differs between them is how those parts are packaged and plugged in: a full-size SD card may have separate chips on a small circuit board or be one sealed block; every microSD is one sealed block; a CompactFlash card has a controller of its own behind fifty pins; CFexpress, XQD, CFast and SD Express cards are small solid-state drives wearing a card's shape. The package decides what the bench does when the controller stops answering, and the device it came from decides what is on it and what has been written over. Find yours below: the cards on the left, where they came from on the right. A card a reader still sees is £149 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing; a card no reader sees, or one that is snapped, locked or lying about its size, is £299 + VAT; CFexpress, XQD, CFast and SD Express from £449 + VAT.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668
The cards, or where they came from.
Rather begin with what it says →The cards
SD, SDHC and SDXCThe full-size camera card. FAT32 or exFAT, a lock switch the host reads rather than the card, and two kinds of inside: chips on a board, or one sealed block→microSDAlways a monolith. Phones, dashcams, drones, consoles and cameras; the snapped card, the fake card, and the read-only lock→CompactFlashFifty pins, an ATA controller of its own and separate flash chips. Still in older DSLRs, and the bent pin is the classic fault→CFexpress Type A and Type BA PCIe NVMe drive in a card. Firmware, thermal limits and SSD-class recovery; from £449 + VAT→XQD and CFast 2.0Nikon's and Sony's PCIe card, and Canon's and Arri's SATA card. Both are small SSDs; from £449 + VAT→SD Express and microSD ExpressThe Switch 2 card and the newest camera cards. NVMe behind the SD shape, UHS-I in an ordinary reader; from £449 + VAT→Where it came from
Dashcam and security camera cardsLoop recording wears cards out. Samsung's warranty excludes it; the footage you need is the clip that was being written when it stopped→Drone, GoPro and action camera cardsSD ERR, NO SD, dead batteries mid-clip, and cards that went down with the aircraft. Video rebuilt from a reference file→Nintendo Switch, Switch 2 and Steam DeckError 2016-0247, what on the card can be downloaded again and what cannot, microSD Express, and the ext4 card Windows will not show→Android phone cardsPortable storage reads anywhere. Adopted storage is encrypted to the phone, and Android says so. Phones not taken; cards from them are→USB flash drives and pen drivesThe same flash and the same controllers behind a USB bridge. Snapped connectors, monolith sticks, fake capacity→Memory Stick, xD, SmartMedia and MMCSony, Olympus and Fujifilm cards from the 2000s, the PSP's card, and the raw-flash cards whose host did the housekeeping→Why the card matters less than what was done to it.
Nearly every card on this page is recoverable, provided two things are true: enough of the flash still reads, and nobody has written the wrong thing over it since the fault. The first is decided by the card. Flash wears out, controllers stop, monoliths crack, and the bench reads what is left through the card's own test pads if it must. The second is decided in the first hour after the fault, by whoever is holding the card. A format, a chkdsk, a First Aid, a recovery tool with a repair button, a camera asked to try again, each writes to a card that was about to give its files up intact, and each turns a one-band job into a two-band one or into nothing.
The devices are the other half of it. A camera writes large files one after another and rarely deletes, so a formatted camera card usually gives back nearly everything. A dashcam writes in a loop and has overwritten everything older than the loop. An Android phone with the card adopted as internal storage encrypts it to the phone, and no bench on earth reads that card without that phone. A Switch holds your screenshots on the card in the clear and your games in a form only that console can open. The pages on the right say, device by device, what is on the card, what can be had back, and what is already gone.
The brand on the label settles the warranty and the free software and almost nothing else. SanDisk's warranty says in writing that data recovery is not covered and that the original card is not returned; Samsung's says the same and adds that dashcam and CCTV use is not covered at all. Both will send a new card. Neither will send the pictures. The brand pages quote them, and How a memory card is recovered, from the reader to the monolith says what the bench does instead.
The questions that come up first.
Which card is easiest to recover?
A CompactFlash or a full-size SD card with separate chips inside, because a dead controller can be bypassed by reading the flash chip directly. A microSD is one sealed block, and its flash is read through the test pads instead, which takes longer and costs more. CFexpress and the other PCIe cards are small SSDs and are priced as such.
Does the brand change the price?
No. What the card presents to a reader does. A card a reader still sees is £149 + VAT; a card no reader sees, or one that is snapped, locked or lying about its size, is £299 + VAT; CFexpress, XQD, CFast and SD Express from £449 + VAT. Fixed in writing after the free look.
The card still reads but the camera says it needs formatting. Which page?
Start with the format message, and say no to the format. If the card is readable, it is the lower band and usually a few days.
Do you take phones, cameras or dashcams?
No. Take the card out and send the card. A camera that has swallowed a card, or a card that has never worked without its adapter, is the exception; say so on the form.
Not sure which it is?
Photograph both sides of the card and the device it came from, and send that with the form. The first look is free, and the bench will know in a minute.