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SD Card data recovery

Started 2 months ago | Discussions
Zero Miles New Member • Posts: 7
SD Card data recovery

Hi all,

My SanDisk Extreme Plus SD card stopped working in my M6mk1 recently. It was about 2 years old. The camera says 'memory card error', and no computer I use is able to recognize the card (it says the card 'does not contain a recognizable file system'). I have not reformatted it yet for fear of losing data--there's about a month's worth of photos I didn't backup that were on there.

I know there's a plethora of software options out there, I'm not sure which ones to trust. A past thread on the forum recommended some software, but it costs about $70 to get any amount of data recovered. I'm willing to do that if needed, but I thought you all again first of any other options you have used.

Thank you!

 Zero Miles's gear list:Zero Miles's gear list
Canon EOS M6 Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM Sigma 30mm F1.4 (E/EF-M mounts) Canon EF-M 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM
scrup Contributing Member • Posts: 595
Re: SD Card data recovery

I have used EASUS in the past it was able to recover some files. This is when i accidentally deleted some files.

A corrupt card will be more effort to recover if at all possible.

Have a look on the vendors website, they recommend rescue pro.

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/37605

Good luck.

 scrup's gear list:scrup's gear list
Canon EOS M Canon EOS M3 Canon EOS M6 Canon EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM +2 more
Advi
Advi Regular Member • Posts: 456
Re: SD Card data recovery

When this happened to me, I used PhotoRec

This free software does not write in the card, so it is safe to use it.

It is a very simple yet effective software.

You run the app, inform the card you want to recover your files from, and the recovery folder.

It reads the card and writes in the recovery folder all the pics it finds in the damaged card.

And have some patience, because it will find a lot of pictures, and the recovery time may last an hour or so, depending on the size of the card.

Best luck

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

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Bye

 Advi's gear list:Advi's gear list
Canon EOS M50 Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM Canon EF-M 15-45mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM Canon EF-M 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM
Kameratrollet Senior Member • Posts: 1,099
Re: SD Card data recovery

If you have video you will need some different settings in Photorec. Worked for me and R6.

Joep van Steen
Joep van Steen Contributing Member • Posts: 575
Re: SD Card data recovery

Zero Miles wrote:

Hi all,

My SanDisk Extreme Plus SD card stopped working in my M6mk1 recently. It was about 2 years old. The camera says 'memory card error', and no computer I use is able to recognize the card (it says the card 'does not contain a recognizable file system'). I have not reformatted it yet for fear of losing data--there's about a month's worth of photos I didn't backup that were on there.

I know there's a plethora of software options out there, I'm not sure which ones to trust. A past thread on the forum recommended some software, but it costs about $70 to get any amount of data recovered. I'm willing to do that if needed, but I thought you all again first of any other options you have used.

Thank you!

In general, DIY recovery is possible as long as the card is ID'ed with correct capacity, and data was not overwritten or trimmed.

Best approach:

1. Create disk image (example, many tools can do this):

2 Recover data from disk image.

You can use DMDE (dmde.com), it recovers upto 4000 files per session/folder with free version, you can repeat this as often as you like.

R-Photo from r-tt.com is free for personal use and pretty good. It can also recover from the disk image made with DMDE.

-- hide signature --

Joep

Maxmolly7
Maxmolly7 Senior Member • Posts: 1,481
Re: SD Card data recovery

Not sure what recovery tool helps when the card is no longer recognized?

Please let us know if you found a solution.

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May THE LIGHT be with you!

 Maxmolly7's gear list:Maxmolly7's gear list
Sony RX10 IV Sony RX100 VII Canon EOS M6 II Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM +16 more
Joep van Steen
Joep van Steen Contributing Member • Posts: 575
Re: SD Card data recovery

Maxmolly7 wrote:

Not sure what recovery tool helps when the card is no longer recognized?

Please let us know if you found a solution.

Try different reader, clean contacts with eraser and some IPA. other than that it will require specialist tools and equipment to dump the contents of the card using NAND protocol.

On rare occasion card may ID using special equipment without accessing NAND directly (on left in picture), this would be least amount of work. iI that does not work we need drastic measures.

If card is model with NAND chips soldered on, chips are removed and dumped. Once NAND is dumped, dump needs to be processed: We need to determine layout, scrambler and ECC correct (in the right side of picture). This medium amount of work and many labs have standard rate for this.

If SD card is a monolith (below), dumping NAND may be somewhat more involved, specially when pinout to which we solder wires to attach to reader is unknown. Many labs have variable rate for this as a lot of work may be needed to even determine if the data can be recovered.

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Joep

OP Zero Miles New Member • Posts: 7
Re: SD Card data recovery
2

Thank you all for the suggestions. With your help I was able to recover the photos that I wanted.

I first downloaded the free trial of EaseUS per Scrup's suggestion and was immediately able to see that all of my photos were still on the card. It is very quick and easy-to-use software, however the $70 price (for a month's use) made me want to try a free option first. (Something I didn't know until later--I had kept the application open for probably two days before closing it finally, and when doing so was offered a discount to purchase for $40. By this time I had already recovered what I wanted, but if this was the price I was offered to begin with I would have done it and saved myself a lot of time! Maybe a trick for the future.)

For a free option, I used Photorec per Advi's suggestion. The software is super bear bones and doesn't have a user interface (runs in command prompt), but it was free. I would suggest running it on your fastest computer, as I had better luck when I did so. The software was able to extract the photos I wanted, but only in JPEG. It did get some MP4 and RAW, but they were unusable. It also tends to duplicate photos during extraction. I should note it took 2 DAYS of running the program to eventually get all the photos I wanted. This was on a 2 year old 64GB card that wasn't completely full. It also does not recover the file names, but the EXIF data is intact.

So all-in-all, thank you all again for the help. For anyone in a similar situation I would try to get the discounted EaseUS product if possible. Otherwise, although slow, Photorec works as well.

Zero

 Zero Miles's gear list:Zero Miles's gear list
Canon EOS M6 Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM Sigma 30mm F1.4 (E/EF-M mounts) Canon EF-M 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM
Kameratrollet Senior Member • Posts: 1,099
Re: SD Card data recovery

Two days seem like something went wrong.

Advi
Advi Regular Member • Posts: 456
Re: SD Card data recovery

And have some patience, because it will find a lot of pictures, and the recovery time may last an hour or so, depending on the size of the card.

Zero Miles wrote:

I should note it took 2 DAYS of running the program to eventually get all the photos I wanted. This was on a 2 year old 64GB card that wasn't completely full. It also does not recover the file names, but the EXIF data is intact.

Zero

And I said it would last an hour. Oh, boy.

Anyway, you got your pictures.

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Bye

 Advi's gear list:Advi's gear list
Canon EOS M50 Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM Canon EF-M 15-45mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM Canon EF-M 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM
Joep van Steen
Joep van Steen Contributing Member • Posts: 575
Re: SD Card data recovery

Zero Miles wrote:

Thank you all for the suggestions. With your help I was able to recover the photos that I wanted.

I first downloaded the free trial of EaseUS per Scrup's suggestion and was immediately able to see that all of my photos were still on the card. It is very quick and easy-to-use software, however the $70 price (for a month's use) made me want to try a free option first. (Something I didn't know until later--I had kept the application open for probably two days before closing it finally, and when doing so was offered a discount to purchase for $40. By this time I had already recovered what I wanted, but if this was the price I was offered to begin with I would have done it and saved myself a lot of time! Maybe a trick for the future.)

For a free option, I used Photorec per Advi's suggestion. The software is super bear bones and doesn't have a user interface (runs in command prompt), but it was free. I would suggest running it on your fastest computer, as I had better luck when I did so. The software was able to extract the photos I wanted, but only in JPEG. It did get some MP4 and RAW, but they were unusable. It also tends to duplicate photos during extraction. I should note it took 2 DAYS of running the program to eventually get all the photos I wanted. This was on a 2 year old 64GB card that wasn't completely full. It also does not recover the file names, but the EXIF data is intact.

So all-in-all, thank you all again for the help. For anyone in a similar situation I would try to get the discounted EaseUS product if possible. Otherwise, although slow, Photorec works as well.

Zero

Ah so then the card was detected!

Try R-Photo (free) from r-tt.com and see if it recovers the RAW file and MP4's. Best first use the create image feature and scan that rather than the card directly.

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Joep

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