Sandisk SD card damaged, need help

[hoss6800]

Hi,

I have a 32GB sandisk hcsd Card that i have been using for about 2 years now (mainly in my Lumix G2 Camera).
I bought it from either amazon or Mymemory site. I have used it to its full capacity once or twice in past, so I know its not one of those fake ones sold on Ebay.

Couple of days ago I took few pictures and some recording, then put the card in Laptop card reader and viewed the photos and clips, everything fine.

Day after I put the card in my card reader to upload some of the photos and initally PC was not recognising the card and after few attempt, need format error appeared.

I have tried lots of different recovery softwares and can't read anything off the SD card.
Then decided to format it and used the recovery apps to get my photos and videos back. When I try to format it shows the sd card is only 31MB and can't format it.
I have tried SDFormatter, HP Low Level format app, Gparted and no luck.
In Gparted I noticed that there is no partition table and I couldn't create one.

Can someone help please, I really want the photos back

 

[Spectre]

It could be anything really. What I did for someone at work was swap the flash chip onto another drive but we were able to find an identical one. That wouldn't work if the flash chip itself was damaged and I'm not too sure if the larger drives use BGAs.

 

[little_pob]

Have you tried formatting it in the camera?

Also, if the card is detected by Windows, have a look at the partition structure in Disk Management.

 

[hoss6800]

Yes, It fails every time I try to format it in camera

Had a look under disk management and no luck there either. I had a go at Format and CHKDSK in CMD and no luck

Thanks

 

[little_pob]

Sounds like either the controller has failed or the NAND flash is damaged.

If it's the controller rather than the NAND recovery should be possible. If you don't fancy doing what Spectre did, you're looking at €289 to recover a 32GB card from the likes of recoverfab.com.

If it's the NAND the data is lost.

Be advised, it doesn't look to be possible to perform hardware recovery without invalidating your warranty. Yet most warranties will protect the manufacturer from data loss (SanDisk is no exception here), so they won't try to recover the images for you.

It essentially boils down to new card but no photos, or recover photos but no card.

 

[hoss6800]

Couple of screen captures of different attempt
In disk management I can see the file system in RAW

 

[hamnida]

If you succeed in formatting the card. you will lose all the data. Formatting will only recover the card

 

[skyf5]

Sd Issue

I had a similar issue with my Sandisk card. Luckily after many attemps at reinserting the card it recognised the card eventually. But it will take awhile for this to happen. Have you tried icorerecovery??

 

[hoss6800]

Re: Sd Issue

Thanks for your help guys,
I have tried lots of different apps under Windows or Linux and had no luck. I guess the SD card has gone as can't format or recover.

 

[little_pob]

Re: Sd Issue

One last thing for you to try; see if you can read the card from the laptop using the camera as the card reader.

 

[hoss6800]

Re: Sd Issue

I will give that a go tonight, thanks for your help

 

[hoss6800]

Re: Sd Issue

Tried the SD card in a two different camera as suggested and no luck.
Well I think this SD card has gone, time to buy a new one and forget about the pictures

Thanks for your help

 

[bitstorm]

Re: Sd Issue

First try a program called convar. It's specially made to recover sd cards and get pictures from them, and it used to be free, don't know if it still is, but it worked great for me.