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SDC / Every card, and where it came from / CFexpress Type A and Type B

CFexpress · Type A · Type B · PCIe · NVMe · Sony Tough CEA-G · Extreme PRO · Cobalt · AV PRO · Z9 · R5

CFexpress Type A and Type B card recovery. A solid-state drive wearing a card's shape, and priced as the drive it is.

CFexpress is the card the professional bodies moved to when the SD bus ran out of speed. Inside the plastic is a PCIe NVMe solid-state drive: a controller running NVMe firmware, flash memory, and nothing that an SD or CompactFlash reader would recognise. Type B, the common one, is the XQD shape with two PCIe lanes and reads well above a gigabyte a second; Type A, which Sony adopted for its Alpha bodies, is smaller than an SD card, carries one lane, and sits alongside SD in the same slot. They live in the Nikon Z8 and Z9, the Canon R5 and R3 and 1D X Mark III, the Sony a7S III and a1 and FX3, the Fujifilm GFX and X-H2 bodies, and the Panasonic S1H, and they arrive here with the faults of a drive rather than a card: a card the body no longer recognises after a firmware update on either side, a card that overheated in a long 8K take and stopped, a card formatted in the body with the job on it, a card whose last clip was cut short, and a card that has simply failed. Recovery is SSD work, with SSD tools and SSD firmware knowledge, and it is priced in the top band: from £449 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing.

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
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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.

CFexpress symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
Body no longer recognises the cardFirmware on one side changed. The data is intact; the handshake is not.Everyday job
Card stopped during a long takeThermal shutdown. Usually readable once cool; the last clip may be cut short.Do not delay
Formatted in the body by mistakeThe tables rewritten; the data left where it was, unless the body also trimmed it.Do not delay
Reads in one reader, not anotherA reader on a USB bridge that does not like the card's firmware.Everyday job
Not recognised anywhere, no capacityThe controller or its firmware has failed. NVMe recovery.Everyday job
Last clip will not openMissing index after an interrupted write. Rebuilt from a reference clip.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.

What is insideA CFexpress card is an NVMe SSD on a card-shaped board: a controller running NVMe firmware, a translation table it keeps in the flash, and a thermal sensor that slows or stops the card when it gets hot. There is no SD-style controller to bypass and no single flash chip to pull. Recovery means the tools the SSD bench uses, talking to the controller in its own firmware modes, or reading the flash and rebuilding the translation when the controller is beyond talking to.
Firmware on both sidesCamera makers publish lists of approved cards and card makers publish firmware updates for the cards, and a card that stops being recognised after an update on either side is a common arrival. The data has not changed; the two firmwares no longer agree. The bench reads the card on its own terms and the job is usually a straightforward one, priced where it sits because of the tools it takes.
HeatA long high-bitrate take warms the card until its controller throttles and then halts recording, and the body reports an error. The card is usually fine once cool, with the last clip cut short at the halt. It is the clip, not the card, that needs rebuilding.
Type A and Type B are different cardsType B is the XQD shape and goes in the slots that once took XQD; Type A is smaller and shares a slot with SD on Sony bodies. They share the NVMe inside and the same approach on the bench, and they share a price band.

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
Card not recognised after an updateFirmware handshakeRead on the bench in the controller's own modes
Error during a long takeThermal haltImage when cool; rebuild the cut clip
Formatted in cameraTables rewrittenImage; carve and rebuild, if the body did not trim
Not recognised in any readerController or firmware failedNVMe firmware work, or flash read and rebuilt
Last clip will not playIndex never writtenRebuilt from a reference clip from the same body

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 job5–10 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • Say the body and both firmware versions, the camera's and the card's if you updated it. It is the first question on an unrecognised card.
  • Send the card only. The reader stays unless the card has never worked without it.
  • Say which clips matter. Extraction and the rebuilding of cut clips begin there.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · SDC-2026-0704JOB LOGGED ✓

A Sony Tough CEA-G160T Type A card from an FX3 that the body stopped recognising after a camera firmware update, with a short film's final day on it and no reader that would show it either

The card's controller answered the bench in its own firmware mode but refused the normal NVMe identify. It was imaged in that mode in full, the exFAT volume read from the image, and every clip opened. The last clip of the day, which the crew thought lost, had been cut short by the halt and was rebuilt from a reference clip shot on the same body at the same settings.

100% of the clips recovered6 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Take the card out and let it cool
  • Note the body, the card and the firmware versions
  • Say no to formats offered by the body
  • Send the card tracked; the first look is free

What sets us back

  • Updating the card's firmware again to see
  • Formatting in the body to get it recognised
  • Trying it in a dozen readers and bodies
  • Running a recovery tool that offers to repair it

Questions answered before you commit.

My camera stopped recognising the card after a firmware update. Is the footage gone?

No. The two firmwares no longer agree; the data is unchanged. The bench reads the card in the controller's own modes. It is priced in the top band because of the tools it takes, and fixed in writing after the free look.

Why is CFexpress more expensive than SD?

Because it is a solid-state drive, with an NVMe controller and firmware, and recovering it is SSD work rather than card work. From £449 + VAT after the free look.

The last clip of a take will not open. Can it be fixed?

Usually. The body never finished writing its index. It is rebuilt from a reference clip from the same body at the same settings, on the image.

Does Type A or Type B make a difference?

Not to the bench. They share the NVMe inside and the price band. Say which, so the right reader is ready.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

XQD and CFast 2.0 →SD Express and microSD Express →Card not recognised, or not showing up →Sony →ProGrade Digital →NVMe SSDs, on the SSD site →

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