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SDC / Every card, and where it came from / Android phone cards

Android · Samsung Galaxy · One UI · portable storage · adopted storage · Format as internal · DCIM · WhatsApp · encrypted

Android phone card recovery. Portable storage reads anywhere. Adopted storage reads only on the phone, and Android says so.

An Android phone offers two ways to use a card, and the choice made in the first minute decides everything that can happen later. As portable storage, the card carries an ordinary FAT32 or exFAT file system with your photographs in DCIM, your WhatsApp media in its folders, your music and downloads, and it reads in any computer; a card the phone says is corrupted, or unsupported, or offers to format, is a file-system fault on a card the bench images and rebuilds for £149 + VAT. Adopted as internal storage, the card is formatted with a Linux file system and encrypted with a key held on the phone, and the Android Open Source Project's own documentation says the keys should not be extractable from the parent device and that the storage device cannot be mounted elsewhere. That card reads only on that phone, with that phone alive and not reset; if the phone has died, been factory reset or been replaced, nobody can read the card, and you are told so at the free look, with nothing to pay. Samsung's One UI and most phones default to portable, which is why most cards that arrive here are recoverable. We do not take phones; take the card out and send the card. A card no reader sees is monolith work at £299 + VAT.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668

Take the card out and leave it out. Do not format it, however politely the computer or the camera asks. Do not run chkdsk, First Aid, a repair tool or a recovery program that offers to fix the card. Do not keep trying it in reader after reader, and do not put it back in the camera to see. A card that reads a little tonight may not read at all tomorrow; whatever is on it is recovered from an image, and the image comes first.

Android card symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
SD card is corrupted; try reformatting itThe file system, on a portable card. Say no.Do not delay
Unsupported SD cardA file system the phone does not read, or a card it does not like. Try a computer.Everyday job
Phone is dead; the card was portableReadable anywhere. Take it out.Everyday job
Phone is dead or reset; the card was internalEncrypted to that phone. Nobody can read it.Everyday job
Photographs vanished from the galleryDeleted, or the card dropped out. Stop using the phone on it.Do not delay
Not detected in the phone or a readerThe controller. Monolith work.Everyday job
Packing it and posting it: take the card out of the device and leave it out; do not format, do not run a repair, and do not keep trying readers. Put the card in a small anti-static bag or a card case, tape that to a piece of card so it cannot shake loose, and post it in a padded envelope or a small box; a snapped microSD travels with every piece. Send the adapter or the reader only if the card has never worked without it. Use a tracked service and insure it for what the pictures are worth, and know that the posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the envelope is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the envelope in at one of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

What is inside, what fails, and what the bench has to do.

Portable or internalAndroid asked, when the card went in, whether to use it as portable storage or as internal storage. Portable keeps an ordinary file system any computer reads. Internal, called adoptable storage by Android, formats the card with a Linux file system and encrypts it with a key the phone keeps, so that apps and their data can live on it as if it were the phone's own memory. The documentation is explicit that the card cannot be mounted elsewhere. Settings on the phone, or the card's behaviour in a computer, say which was chosen.
Corrupted, and unsupportedA portable card the phone calls corrupted has a damaged file system, usually from being pulled out or from a phone that died mid-write; its photographs are where they were, and the phone's offer to reformat is the thing to refuse. A card the phone calls unsupported may be a file system the phone does not read, exFAT on an older phone, ext4 from somewhere else, or a card formatted as internal by another phone, which is unreadable here and everywhere.
What is on a portable cardPhotographs and video in DCIM, in the Camera folder and the folders each app keeps; WhatsApp's images, video and voice notes in its own tree; screenshots, downloads, music. Each is ordinary files on an ordinary file system, rebuilt or carved from the image, and each photograph is opened before it is listed.
Phones are not acceptedA phone is a different trade, with its own tools and its own risks, and it is not handled here. Take the card out; a SIM tool opens the tray on most. If the card was adopted as internal and the phone is alive, the phone itself can move the data off; if the phone is dead, no laboratory can.

What you see, and what is usually behind it.

Describe yours to us →
What you see What is usually behind it What the bench does
SD card is corruptedFile system damaged on a portable cardImage; rebuild exFAT or FAT32 on the image
Unsupported SD cardA file system the phone does not read, or an adopted card from elsewhereRead on a computer; if adopted, nothing can be done
Dead phone, portable cardNothing wrong with the cardCopy it; rebuild if damaged
Dead phone, internal cardEncrypted to the phoneNothing; said plainly, nothing to pay
Not detectedController failedMonolith read through the test pads

From the envelope arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on the envelope and a number on the card the day it is opened, with both sides photographed. The card goes into a reader on a hardware imager that controls how long each read may take, never a laptop slot, and what it presents is read first: its capacity, its identity registers, its file system. That decides whether it is a card a reader can see with a fault in the data, or a card whose controller has stopped, and which band it falls in. The first look is free, and you can stop there owing nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo formats, no repairs, nothing written
02

Imaged, sector by sector, before anything else

A card that answers at all is imaged in full on hardware that limits every read and retries on its own terms, weak areas last, with a map kept of what could not be read. A card that is slow, that drops out, or that has locked itself read-only is imaged the same way, in short passes with the power cycled between them. Nothing is written to the card at any stage, and every later step happens on the image.

Sector by sector, weak areas lastNothing written to the card
03

The flash read through the test pads when the controller has stopped

A card no reader sees is a monolith job. The coating is removed to expose the internal test pads, the pinout is matched against a database or mapped by hand, a needle adapter is fitted, and the raw flash is read out around the dead controller. The scrambling, the error-correction layout and the page and block order are then solved in software, and a virtual image of the card assembled from the raw dump.

Pinout, needles, raw dumpDescrambled and reassembled in software
04

The file system rebuilt, or the files carved, on the image

On the image, the FAT or exFAT tables are rebuilt where they are damaged and read where they are not, deleted entries are brought back, and where the tables are gone the photographs and video are carved out by their own signatures. Video files cut short by a dead battery are rebuilt from a reference clip from the same camera. Every photograph is opened before it goes on the list; a file that will not open is not counted.

Tables rebuilt, or files carvedEvery file opened before it is listed
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not, and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. The files go home on fresh media with the card, tracked, with the postage paid here, and your case stays open until you have opened them yourself.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job3–5 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • Say whether the card was set up as portable or internal. It is the first and the last question.
  • Say the phone's make and model and whether it still works. If it is alive and the card was internal, the phone can move the data; send nothing yet.
  • Do not send the phone. It will be returned unopened.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · SDC-2026-0710JOB LOGGED ✓

A Samsung Galaxy A52's 256GB SanDisk Ultra card that the phone declared corrupted after a drop, set up as portable storage, with three years of photographs and every WhatsApp picture the family had

The card read on the bench's imager with its exFAT allocation bitmap and root directory damaged. The volume was rebuilt on the image, the DCIM and WhatsApp trees copied out whole, and the handful of files with lost directory entries carved by signature and dated from their own metadata. Every photograph opened.

12,000 photographs and videos recovered3 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Say no to the phone's offer to reformat
  • Take the card out with a SIM tool and send the card
  • Say whether it was portable or internal
  • Say whether the phone still works

What sets us back

  • Formatting to make the phone accept it
  • Factory resetting a phone whose card was internal
  • Sending the phone
  • Running a recovery app on the phone that writes to the card

Questions answered before you commit.

My phone says the SD card is corrupted. Are the photographs gone?

If the card was portable storage, almost never; the file system is damaged and the photographs are on the flash. Say no to the reformat, take the card out and send it.

The card was my phone's internal storage and the phone is dead. Can you read it?

No, and neither can anyone else. Android encrypts an adopted card with a key held on the phone, and its documentation says the card cannot be mounted elsewhere. You are told this at the free look, with nothing to pay.

Do you take phones?

No. Take the card out and send the card. A SIM tool opens the tray on most phones.

What does it cost?

£149 + VAT if a reader still sees the card after the free look; £299 + VAT if none does. Fixed in writing, and on most jobs no data means no bill.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Android: SD card is corrupted →microSD →Formatted, or deleted by mistake →Samsung →SanDisk →

Nothing gets worse while the card is out of the device.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the card in its bag and format nothing.

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Price my jobPacking and posting