Devices · cards out of cameras
A memory card chooses its moment: halfway through a fortnight's holiday, or halfway through a backup meant to protect your work. Memory cards come to us from all over, including Plymouth, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Most cards reading empty, locked or blank will still give up their photos. The one condition is that nobody has formatted the card first.
You will be talking to an engineer
0800 6890668
| What turns up | What that points to | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| Canon: Cannot access the memory card, or Memory card error | The camera body cannot read the file system | Take it out and go no further |
| Canon DSLR: Card cannot be accessed, and then Reinsert/change the card | Contacts that want cleaning, or a controller going | Refuse the format offer |
| Nikon body says Card may be damaged. Insert another card | Damage to the card, or nothing recognised at all | Never format it in the camera |
| Card locked / Card is write-protected | That little tab on the edge of the card, or a controller that has locked | Is the tab in the correct position? Then it is the card |
| A prompt to format the disk before use | Windows shows the volume as RAW, but the frames have not been touched | Decline whatever it offers |
| A no memory card message, with a memory card visibly inserted | Either the controller is finished or the pads are | Work at chip level, then |
Whatever is delivered is booked in using a unique reference (case number) on the date it arrives at the bench. The engineer will identify the actual fault at no charge. This gives a straightforward answer on what can be recovered from the drive and what cannot, plus one written quotation. There will be no further activity until you have read and accepted the quotation.
An exact clone is made first. The original card then goes back in its case, and all the work from there on is done on the clone.
The clone is where things get repaired. If the file tables can be rebuilt, the folder names come back attached to them. If not, pictures are recovered from their header bytes alone, and RAW files are no more trouble than JPEGs.
Counting the pictures found says nothing. Each recovered image is opened one at a time and must open completely, at the full dimensions the camera wrote it.
Give yourself time to consider it. It costs you nothing. We list all of the files we recover for you before sending out an invoice, and we only ask for payment once you have authorised it. We also buy media specifically for your recovery and send it back to you, with the return postage paid by us. The case stays here on our bench until we have your confirmation that the files open properly on your own machine.
The number nobody knows: there is no reliable count of how many counterfeit cards are in circulation. Labs and manufacturers agree it is a wide problem, fakes appear here often enough, and every percentage in published reports began as an estimate. The actual number wouldn't change the rule anyway: the moment data is written beyond a fake card's real capacity, it is beyond the reach of any lab.
Nothing was done to the card itself. The card was cloned first, and every step after that happened on the clone: the file system was restored, and a deep carve went after the images that no longer had a place in it. A 512GB SanDisk, filled the previous evening and empty by morning, gave up every image. The photographer kept the client.
No. Formatting writes new file tables over the exact records holding your file and folder names. Leave it as it is and a lot more of it can be recovered, names included.
RAW files too. Carving works on signatures found at the start of a file, and RAF, DNG, ARW, NEF and CR3 all carry one. Video containers behave the same way. Much of what we receive comes from people who make a living taking photos.
Often not. On a monolith card everything sits on a single die, so if the break went past that die, a chip-level read can still be done. Either way, the card itself is finished.
Memory cards move through here faster than anything else. Most cards are back within two or three working days, sooner if time is pressing. Give us the date you need them and we will build the schedule backwards from it.
Diagnosis costs nothing. We give you a report listing which files can be read, which cannot, and what is needed to get them off. Do not connect the drive until then.