SD memory chip crash / recovery options

[Rusty Heap]

I have a Sandisk class 10 32 gig SD card chip that PC doesn't want to read or even find.


I tried a couple of years old Media recovery software that could see it, but not read it.




what's the best recent SD chip recovery programs?


not life crushing, but would really like my files back before I reformat the whole chip.





thx


Seattle Dave

[Bill Douglas]

Have you tried to read it in a different computer.

[stomachmonkey]

Try it in a Mac.

Seriously, they read every disc format out there.

I use them all the time to recover data from crashed Windows drives that wont mount in Windows

Try a Linux box next.

[red-beard]

Usually when flash media dies, it's dead. At least this is my experience

[bleucamaro]

Try Recuva? I've had some toasted SD cards semi readable by it.

Does the device it went in read it? Maybe use a USB cord to the device to download?

If its gone, I wouldn't use it after re-formatting.

[spuggy]

Try different machines/devices/adapters by all means, you might get lucky. But most likely, it's toast. SD cards are not hard drives, with wear-leveling algorithms and ECC to recover from bit errors, or even USB thumb drives. They're raw, flash memory devices accessed directly via an MMC.

i'd be inclined to suck the entire device in to a disk image; then fix the image and re-write it out to another one. Or, better still, something you can rely on.

I love SD cards, they're so handy - and small. And cheap, these days. I have piles of them. But all they are is a dumb, direct interface to very cheap storage that is inherently unreliable, has zero error recovery and wears out fast.

I treat them as "write as few times as possible" and never, ever, use them as primary storage for longer than it takes to transfer the data to something else.

Oh, and re-formatting an SD card with errors on it is sort of a bad idea. There's no sector remapping going on there. In particular, a 'Doze "quick format" does almost nothing for you (it only re-writes the directory structure). Often, a dodgy flash sector will look fine after you write it again. Until it doesn't.

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by Rusty Heap

what's the best recent SD chip recovery programs?

Sorry, missed this

I'd likely use ddrescue to read the media, as it'll try/re-try using various tricks to attempt to get any bad/missing sectors. Almost none of those tricks usually make any difference to flash-based media, they're intended for spinning rust.

Once you've read as much data as you're ever likely to get into an image, use PhotoRec to extract documents, photos, music etc.,

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec