Bench work · camera cards and photo drives
Delete a folder and only the index entry disappears. Format in the camera and a fresh, empty index is laid over the old one. A card that won't read in your camera body is very often fine on a bench. In all of these cases your frames stay where they are until new data overwrites them. What follows explains what a free download actually completes, why a 50MB RAW comes back at a tenth of the size, and how each frame is put together whole again. We take memory cards, external drives and the disks out of computers from Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall. Phones, no.
You will be talking to an engineer
0800 6890668
| What turns up | What that points to | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| The wrong folder got deleted | Only the index entry is deleted. The picture stays where it was, and stays readable, until something new is written over it | Eject it and put it away |
| Formatted by the camera itself | A blank index goes over the top of the old one. Whatever lies beneath is usually still intact | Good odds, so long as you stopped shooting |
| ‘Memory card error’, and an offer to format | A corrupted index. The data underneath is generally intact | Decline the offer, every single time it comes up |
| Files came back and not one opens | These are screen previews, or just the opening portion of each frame | The full frames are almost certainly still on the memory card |
| Colour banding across a RAW image, or grey at the bottom | Either the frame was written in separate runs, or part of it has been overwritten | Put back to the maker’s own layout |
| Video that will not play | A 4K clip fragments much more than a still image | Rejoined on the correct frame boundaries |
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.
The card is copied sector by sector before anything else, and all the work that follows is done on that copy. The original is returned in the same condition as it was received.
Where the table can be mended, the folder tree and file names come back as they were, along with the dates the camera stamped. Where it cannot, we carve. Every format is read against its maker's published specification, and each complete RAW frame is rebuilt from the runs it had been scattered across. A preview is not a recovered image.
Nothing goes back until each recovered frame has been checked on a monitor at 100%. A count in a report proves nothing; seeing the picture at full size does.
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.
What usually decides a photo job: what happens to the card afterwards. Stop taking pictures as soon as you notice and the odds are with you. Carry on shooting and every new shot has to be written somewhere, very often over the very frames you hope to recover. Stopping costs nothing.
The free recovery tool had only produced thumbnails: six hundred of them, none large enough to print. Nothing more had been recorded on the card after the wedding, so imaging it went without incident. Rebuilding each CR3 from its scattered pieces brought all 640 images back at full size.
Sometimes. A small JPEG from a card that was put away straight after the loss is well within reach of the free tools. RAW and video are not. Those programs count everything they find, including the preview embedded in a frame, so the total looks healthy while the folder fills with offcuts. Image the card first. Work out how much a genuine file should weigh, then check the numbers.
Two explanations cover nearly every case. Either the program removed the small preview embedded in the RAW and left the rest behind, or it only retrieved the opening portion of a frame that had been written in several places. Either way, the sensor data generally remains intact. Read the file as its maker documented it and the frame reassembles, unless something has since been written over the area it occupied.
Usually not. Formatting puts a new, empty directory over the top and goes no further; the pictures beneath it are exactly where they were. Put the card away now and your chances are good. Every photo you take from this point on reduces them.
No. Phones and tablets are beyond the scope of this lab, and there are no exceptions. If the pictures were backed up at some point to a memory card, an external drive or a computer, get a quote and then post the card, the drive or the computer's disk instead, and we can begin. Do not send in the phone itself; better you know now than once the parcel has gone.
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.