SDC / Every card, and where it came from / CompactFlash

CompactFlash · CF Type I · Type II · UDMA 7 · 50 pins · ATA · Extreme PRO · 1066x · Microdrive

CompactFlash card recovery. The professional card of the DSLR years, and the one with chips the bench can reach.

CompactFlash is the oldest card still in daily use. It is thicker than an SD card, has fifty pin holes along one edge rather than contacts, and presents itself to the camera as an ATA disk, which means it carries a proper controller of its own, running its own firmware, in front of one or more separate flash chips on a circuit board. That is good news on the bench: when the controller dies, the flash chips can be removed and read directly on a programmer, which is simpler and cheaper than the monolith work a microSD needs. It still lives in a great many cameras in working use, the Canon 5D and 1D bodies, Nikon's D800 and D810 and D4 series, medium-format backs and older camcorders, and it arrives here with the faults those cameras produce: a card the camera says cannot be accessed after a battery died, a card no reader sees after years of service, a card formatted by mistake with the morning's shoot on it, and the fault that belongs to CompactFlash alone, the pin in the camera's slot or the reader that has bent and shorted or sheared. A card a reader still sees is £149 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing; a card none sees is £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.

CompactFlash symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →

Camera says card cannot be accessed, or Err 02File tables torn mid-write. The pictures are there. Do not format.Do not delay

Formatted in camera by mistakeThe tables rewritten; the photographs left where they were. Stop shooting on it.Do not delay

Not detected after a pin bent in the slotA shorted or missing pin. The card is usually fine; the camera needs a repair.Everyday job

Not detected anywhereThe controller has stopped. Chip-off from the board.Everyday job

Reads slowly, then drops outFlash wearing out, or the controller struggling. Image it now.Do not delay

Shows as the wrong size, or 0 bytesThe controller's translation table lost. Chip-off.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.

Fifty pins, and the one that bendsThe camera's slot and the reader carry fifty fine pins that enter the holes on the card's edge. A card pushed in at an angle bends one, and the bent pin shorts its neighbours, or breaks off inside the card's hole. The camera stops seeing cards, or sees them and errors; the card itself is usually unharmed, and a sheared pin left in it is removed on the bench before it is imaged. Photographers' forums associate the fault most with certain Canon bodies, but any slot can do it.

A controller of its ownA CompactFlash card is a small ATA drive. Its controller runs firmware, keeps a table translating addresses to flash locations, manages wear, and can corrupt its own table or hang on a bad block like any drive. When it does, the card presents as the wrong size, as 0 bytes, or not at all, and the data is still in the flash chips behind it.

Chip-offBecause the flash is in separate chips on a board, a dead CompactFlash is a chip-off job: the flash chips are desoldered, read on a programmer, and the controller's scrambling, error correction and page layout solved in software to rebuild the card as it was. It is quicker than monolith work and priced in the same band.

Formats and deletesA camera's format on CompactFlash rewrites the file tables and leaves the photographs where they were, as on any card; a few bodies offer a deeper option that does not. Deleting in camera does the same. Both are recoverable from an image provided the card has not been shot on since, which is why the first instruction is always to take it out.

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 cannot be accessed, Err 02	File tables torn	Image; rebuild FAT32 or exFAT on the image
Formatted by mistake	Tables rewritten; data intact	Image; carve and rebuild from the image
Not detected; a pin is bent	The slot, not the card	Remove any sheared pin; image on the bench
Not detected in a good reader	Controller dead or hung	Chip-off; flash read on a programmer
Wrong size, or 0 bytes	Translation table lost	Chip-off; the table rebuilt in software
Slow, and dropping out	Flash wearing, controller retrying	Imaged now, in short passes

From the envelope arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →

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

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

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

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

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 what camera and what it said, and whether the camera still reads other cards. A bent pin stops every card, not one.
Do not straighten a pin yourself. They shear, and the piece ends up inside the card.
Say whether a format was run and in which camera. Most leave the photographs where they were; a few do not.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · SDC-2026-0703JOB LOGGED ✓

A Nikon D810's Lexar Professional 1066x 64GB CompactFlash that stopped reading when the camera's slot bent a pin, with a sheared pin tip left in the card and a week's commissioned work on it

The card was undetected in every reader because the broken pin tip was shorting two contacts inside the socket. It was extracted on the bench under magnification, the card imaged whole with the controller healthy, and the exFAT volume read straight from the image. Every file opened. The camera went to Nikon for a slot repair with the card already home.

100% of the files recovered3 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 leave it out
Say no to formats in camera or on a computer
Send a card with a bent or sheared pin as it is
Send the whole card; it is small enough

What sets us back

Pushing the card in harder to seat it
Straightening pins in the slot with tweezers
Formatting to make the camera accept it
Running a recovery tool that offers to repair it

Questions answered before you commit.

The camera says the card cannot be accessed. Are the photographs gone?

Almost never. The file tables were torn when the write was interrupted; the photographs are on the flash. Do not format, take the card out, and send it.

A pin in my camera bent. Did it damage the card?

Usually not, though a sheared pin tip can lodge in the card and short it, which makes every reader ignore it. The bench removes it. The camera will need its slot repaired.

Is CompactFlash easier to recover than microSD?

When the controller has died, yes. The flash is in separate chips that can be removed and read directly, where a microSD's flash must be read through test pads. Both are routine; the CompactFlash is quicker.

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.

Canon Err 02: card cannot be accessed →Formatted, or deleted by mistake →Card not recognised, or not showing up →XQD and CFast 2.0 →Lexar →

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.

0800 6890668

Price my job Packing and posting

Every card, and where it came from

Manufacturers

Whatever it is saying now

What it costs, and what follows