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SD cards are indestructible, right?

Sandwich

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
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May 23, 2002
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Nope. My card bit the dust and I failed to back up the pictures on it in about 6 months. Lesson learned. The card is now undetectable via any computer (I've tried 4) and my phone, so no software can work on it. It's probably a hardware issue.

Are there any services that can pull my data off the card? I've heard of recoverfab but they spam forums really hard so it's tough to figure out if they're legit. I just want the pictures of my daughter back.
 
Sandwich

Sandwich

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jonKranked said:
http://bit.ly/1wG7NDM
Click to expand...
pink link pink link pink link I appreciate the lack of help, again.

The computer (desktop, vista, two lappys, win7, one mac, maccy software) cannot recognize the disk. I believe it's a flash controller issue that is causing my problem, not any data corruption, so data corruption software will not help. At this point I believe I need somebody to disassemble the disk and take out the flash bits and power them separately, at a pretty high cost. I'm wondering if anybody has used any of these services.

I don't think there's any backup service. I usually just download the important stuff to my PC but haven't in a while.
 
jonKranked

jonKranked

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sorry, had meant to type data recovery service.

and yes they are super expensive. my dad had it done for his work laptop after a trip to china once. somewhere around 5g's IIRC. spinning plate drives.

have you looked in your device manager? sometimes it will show up in there if explorer won't recognize it; it might show up as an unrecognizable format which would indicate the boot partition (or whatever its called on SD cards) is toast.
 
Sandwich

Sandwich

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sandisk class 4 32gb

tried searching for sd card recovery and etc., but came up with not much besides recoverfab. I guess 350 is considerably less than that, so it's not bad.

if i go into start/cmd I run diskpart, list disks, I get a list of my three hards drives plus one (the sd card loaded into a usb converter) that shows zero bytes. Trying to access it says there is no data. Device manager shows the usb drive but not the actual card that's in it. if it's loaded into an microSD to SD converter, and then into an SD slot, nothing happens. Doing the same with a new card loads up immediately. Running recuva by piriform can't even find the disk.

I'm hunting for alternatives, but have literally found recoverfab and Kroll Ontrack, but that's it.
 
jonKranked

jonKranked

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Sandwich

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
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May 23, 2002
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thanks jk, i reached out to a few of those guys and we'll see what they say. The toughest part is that the photos aren't really worth $400 or more...my wife has a bunch of pics of the kiddo from the same timepoint and I couldn't care less about the music that's on it. I'd just like my pics if possible.
 
canadmos

canadmos

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Are you using the same adapter to plug the card in, on all of those computers?

Flash memory, as far a I know, has a finite lifespan. Write to it too much and one day it will go poof.
 
jonKranked

jonKranked

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that's why the first thing i do when i get back from a trip is copy my sd cards to my computer, and then to an external.
i typically don't back up my phone, but the one time i used it on vacation i backed it up immediately upon returning.
 
jdcamb

jdcamb

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Feb 17, 2002
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I adaptered out a old USB Kodak SD card reader from a powered hub to my dads old windows XP laptop. It saw the card and the file folders on the card. I copied it to the the machine and dumped them on to a new card. I then formatted the card and it was ok on any machine I plugged it into. I do not know why that worked but it did....
 
Sandwich

Sandwich

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May 23, 2002
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yeah, I usually back up my photos regularly, but the last time I tried, it took so long to do it that I quit before it was complete. I couldn't find the original cable (which allows for a higher amperage for charge, which I thought would help) so I decided I would get a converter for the computer instead of going through the phone. I also needed more storage space, so I got a new hard drive too. But it's a flash drive so I had to reformat and install the OS again. So it's finally ready for me to dump 9 gigs of photos onto it...but...

I've tried a cheap USB to microSD/SD converter, and a microSD-SD converter in an SD slot. I've tried the SD slot on four different computers, and the USB on two. I'll try the USB on a few others, but I think it's pretty clear that it's a mechanical problem, and unless I fart on it in the correct manner (anybody remember blowing on nintendo cartridges) it's not going to wake up. I've tried cleaning the contacts with IPA, as well as yelling at it. Neither seemed to encourage it.
 
Sandwich

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
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May 23, 2002
21,076
5,989
borcester rhymes
Also, I don't think the memory itself has a finite lifespan, just that it needs specific things to clean it up. At least with my SSD, it degrades over time, but a complete format, or regular maintenance, will keep it flashy.
 
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