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SDC / Every card, and where it came from / Memory Stick, xD, SmartMedia and MMC

Memory Stick · PRO Duo · PRO-HG · M2 · xD-Picture Card · SmartMedia · MMC · RS-MMC · miniSD · PSP · Cyber-shot · Handycam

Memory Stick, xD, SmartMedia and MMC card recovery. The cards of the 2000s, and the readers that have gone from the shops.

Before SD won, every maker had a card. Sony had the Memory Stick, in its original long form, then PRO, Duo and PRO Duo, PRO-HG Duo, and the tiny M2, in Cyber-shot cameras, Handycam camcorders, Vaio laptops and the PSP. Olympus and Fujifilm had the xD-Picture Card, in Type M and Type H. Before that there was SmartMedia, a bare flash chip in a card with no controller at all, where the camera did the housekeeping. Phones had MMC, RS-MMC and MMCmobile, and briefly miniSD. The cards are still in drawers and the photographs on them are often the only copy of a decade, and they arrive here when a drawer is cleared: a card no modern reader fits, a card the old camera says is corrupt, a card with a format error, a card with the family's only pictures of someone. The bench keeps the readers, reads the raw-flash cards directly, and rebuilds FAT12 and FAT16 as readily as exFAT. 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.

Legacy card symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
No reader will take itThe format is gone from the shops. The bench has them.Everyday job
Camera says card error, or formatFAT12 or FAT16 tables damaged. Say no.Do not delay
Reads, but the folder is emptyDeleted, or the directory damaged. Stop using it.Do not delay
Not detected in the right readerThe controller, or on SmartMedia and xD, the flash itself.Everyday job
PSP says the Memory Stick is corruptTables, usually. The saves and photographs are there.Do not delay
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.

Memory StickA Memory Stick has a controller and flash like an SD card, in Sony's shape, and the PRO Duo in its adapter is the one most people have, from a Cyber-shot or a PSP. The bench reads them in native readers, rebuilds the FAT tables Sony's cameras used, and recovers PSP saves and photographs from the same card.
xD and SmartMediaAn xD-Picture Card and a SmartMedia card are closer to a bare flash chip than to a modern card; SmartMedia has no controller at all, and the camera kept the map of where each block lived. Reading them means reading the flash as flash and rebuilding the map, which is work the bench does on every monolith anyway, and the result is the photographs, usually complete.
Readers and adaptersThe readers that took these cards left the shops years ago, and the adapters that put a PRO Duo or an M2 in an SD slot are unreliable and sometimes the fault. The bench keeps native readers for each, and reads the card on its own terms before deciding anything.
The only copyMost of these cards hold photographs that exist nowhere else: a 2004 holiday, a camcorder tape never transferred, the last pictures of a grandparent. They are treated accordingly, imaged before anything else, and every photograph is opened before it goes on the list.

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
No reader fitsThe format is obsoleteNative readers on the bench
Card error, formatFAT12 or FAT16 tables damagedImage; rebuild on the image
Folder emptyDeleted or directory lostCarve the photographs by signature
Not detectedController, or the flash on xD and SmartMediaChip-off, or the flash read directly and the map rebuilt
Adapter in an SD slot does nothingThe adapterThe card read in its own reader

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 the camera or device it came from. It decides the file system and, on SmartMedia, how the map was kept.
  • Send the card, not the adapter. The adapters are the usual fault.
  • Say what you hope is on it. A date, a place, a name helps the bench know when it has found it.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · SDC-2026-0712JOB LOGGED ✓

A Memory Stick PRO Duo from a 2006 Sony Handycam, found in a drawer after a death, that the camcorder reported as a format error and that no reader in the house would take

The card read in a native reader on the bench with its FAT16 tables damaged where the camcorder had last written. The tables were rebuilt on the image, the MPEG-2 clips and the stills copied out, and a last clip with no index rebuilt from the clip before it. Every file played.

100% of the clips and stills 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 camera's format
  • Send the card on its own
  • Say the camera it came from
  • Send it tracked; the first look is free

What sets us back

  • Formatting to see if the camera will take it
  • Buying adapters to try
  • Forcing a card into a slot it does not fit
  • Running a repair tool on it

Questions answered before you commit.

No reader I can buy takes this card. Can you read it?

Yes. The bench keeps native readers for Memory Stick, xD, SmartMedia, MMC and miniSD, and reads each on its own terms.

The old camera says the card is corrupt. Are the photographs gone?

Almost never. The FAT tables are damaged; the photographs are on the flash. Say no to the format and send the card.

Can you recover PSP saves and photographs from a Memory Stick?

Yes. They are ordinary files on a FAT volume and are recovered with the rest.

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.

SD, SDHC and SDXC →CompactFlash →Formatted, or deleted by mistake →Sony →Kioxia and Toshiba →

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 jobPacking and posting