SDC / Every card, and where it came from / USB flash drives and pen drives

USB flash drive · pen drive · thumb drive · SanDisk Cruzer · Ultra Fit · Kingston DataTraveler · Phison · SMI · monolith · snapped

USB flash drive and pen drive recovery. The same flash as a memory card, behind a USB bridge and a connector that snaps.

A USB flash drive is a memory card with a different plug. Inside the shell is either a small circuit board carrying a controller chip, from Phison, Silicon Motion, Alcor or the brand's own, and one or more flash chips in TSOP or BGA packages, or, on the smallest sticks, SanDisk's Ultra Fit and Cruzer Fit and their like, a single monolith with everything inside it. The faults are a memory card's with one of its own. A stick the computer says needs formatting, a stick that shows 0 bytes or asks you to insert a disk, a stick formatted or wiped by mistake, a stick that claims a size it never had; and a stick that was knocked while plugged in and has snapped at the connector, or cracked its board where the connector meets it. The board stick is chip-off work when its controller has died; the monolith stick is test-pad work; the snapped stick is often a track repair before an image. A stick a computer still sees is £149 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing; a stick none sees, or one snapped, is £299 + VAT. A stick encrypted with BitLocker To Go or the maker's own vault is recoverable only with its password, and you are asked for it on the form.

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.

Flash drive symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →

Please insert a disk, or 0 bytesThe controller cannot find its table. Chip-off or monolith.Everyday job

Needs formattingFile tables damaged. Everything is still there. Say no.Do not delay

Snapped at the connectorThe board cracked or the plug sheared. Track repair, then image.Everyday job

Not detected at allController dead, or a short. Chip-off or monolith.Everyday job

Files vanished past a certain amountA fake. Everything past the real size was never stored.Everyday job

Hot to the touch, then deadA short on the board. Do not plug it in again.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.

Board or monolithA stick with a board inside can be opened, its flash chips removed and read on a programmer, and the controller's scrambling, error correction and page layout solved to rebuild the drive. The small sticks are monoliths and are read through their test pads like a microSD. The free look says which, and both are the same band.

SnappedA stick knocked sideways in a port snaps where the connector meets the board, and the board's tracks crack with it. Under magnification the tracks are repaired or the connector replaced, and the stick is imaged. A stick that has been bent back and forth to see has usually done more damage than the first knock.

Please insert a diskA stick that mounts but reports no media, or 0 bytes, has a controller that is alive and cannot find its translation table in the flash. The forum fix is the maker's low-level format tool, which rebuilds the table and erases everything. The bench reads the flash directly instead.

Fakes and encryptionA counterfeit stick, sold as 256GB with a fraction of that inside, loses everything written past the real size, and nothing can bring that back. An encrypted stick, BitLocker To Go or a vault from SanDisk or Kingston, is recoverable only with its password or recovery key, and no laboratory has a way round that.

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
Please insert a disk; 0 bytes	Translation table lost	Chip-off or test pads; the table rebuilt in software
Needs formatting	File tables damaged	Image; rebuild or carve
Snapped connector	Cracked tracks	Repaired under magnification; then imaged
Not detected	Controller dead or a short	Chip-off or test pads
Files lost past a size	Counterfeit	The real flash read; the rest was never stored
Asks for a password	BitLocker or a vault	Recovered with the key; not without it

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

Do not run the maker's format or repair tool. It rebuilds the table by erasing the flash.
Do not bend a snapped stick to test it. Send it as it is, every piece.
Say if it was encrypted, and put the recovery key on the form or send it once the case is open.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · SDC-2026-0711JOB LOGGED ✓

A SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB, a monolith the size of a fingernail, snapped off in a laptop port in a library with a dissertation and three years of its research on it and no other copy

The stick's connector had sheared and taken two pads with it. The monolith was read through its remaining test pads with a needle adapter, the raw flash descrambled and the drive rebuilt in software, and the exFAT volume mounted from the virtual image. The dissertation opened, with its history of drafts.

100% of the files recovered7 days here, and back by post

Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

Unplug it and leave it unplugged
Say no to formats and to the maker's repair tool
Send every piece of a snapped stick
Put the recovery key on the form if it was encrypted

What sets us back

Running a low-level format tool to make it work
Bending a snapped stick to see if it reads
Plugging in a stick that got hot
Trying it in every port in the building

Questions answered before you commit.

The computer says please insert a disk. Is the data gone?

No. The controller cannot find its table; the data is in the flash. The bench reads the flash directly and rebuilds the drive.

The stick snapped at the plug. Can it be recovered?

Usually. The tracks are repaired under magnification and the stick imaged; a monolith stick is read through its pads. Send every piece and do not bend it.

Is a USB stick the same price as a memory card?

Yes. £149 + VAT if a computer still sees it; £299 + VAT if none does or if it is snapped.

It was BitLocker encrypted. Can you get in?

Only with the password or the recovery key. Put it on the form. Without it, nobody can.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Card not recognised, or not showing up →RAW, 0 bytes, or the wrong capacity →Snapped, cracked, bent or wet →SanDisk →Kingston →Portable 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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