Can I get a recommendation for a professional recovery software to repair my SD card?

[AC Question]

Need recommendation for professional recovery software to repair SD card.

Hello, I have a corrupted SD card with two years worth of precious photos. When it was in my phone, it said the card was blank. I even tried to format it in the phone and received a message that the task could not be performed. I plugged the card into my PC using my card reader. The card did not show in "My Computer". I downloaded and ran EaseUS data recovery wizard; it found the lost drive but after the scan, showed that there was no data on it. I then performed the following steps...

1. Ran chkdsk with the drive letter and /f. The result showed there was an error.

2. Went into Computer Management, saw the drive listed as "unallocated." Was unable to format from there.

3. Ran "diskpart" in the command prompt and received a message that there was an I/O device error.

4. Downloaded a program called "Testdisk" and received a "read error" message. When I looked at the log, it said it was an I/O device error.

In summary, the card can not be formatted on the phone or computer, it shows there is no data, it can't be read, and it shows I/O errors. At a last attempt, I even tried to clean the contacts but received the same results.

A friend said there is expensive software out there that can do much more than EaseUS and other freeware. Hoping there is something available. Otherwise, the last step will be taking it in somewhere to get recovered.

Any advice on a good quality program would be appreciated.

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Need recommendation for professional recovery software to repair SD card.

Try PhotoRec (directions at PhotoRec Step By Step). If PhotoRec can't read the card, it can't be read, and the memory chip might be shot. (Testdisk [by the same developer] should at least give you the partition layout - that it can't would indicate a hardware failure in the card.)

If it's a SanDisk card, contact them (live chat in the upper right part of SanDisk microSD Tech Support). They'll replace the card (the shortest warranty for their cards is 5 years), but see if they would try a recovery from the memory chip for you.

If it's another manufacturer, see if it's in warranty, and if they'll replace it. I wouldn't expect any other company to try to recover your files. I doubt that SanDisk will but from my dealings with them I'd say it's at least a possibility.

BTW, PhotoRec isn't just "professional" level, it's "forensic" level. It's what a black hat hacker would use rather than writing his own program. (I had clients who would have paid me a few thousand dollars just to run it once to recover accounts receivable files - and it's not only free, it's open source.) The only way to get down to a lower level than that would be to run http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ under Linux (although it probably wouldn't do any better on that particular card) or a scanning electron microscope on the deconstructed card, the price of which starts at about where the price of custom made cars ends.

 

[ilovemybirds]

Re: Need recommendation for professional recovery software to repair SD card.

Thank you so much for your reply Rukbat. My card is a PNY from Best Buy. I already have Photorec so I will try it (even though Testdisk had a read error). I will also try DDRescue if that doesn't work. What do I have to loose right? If these don't work, I will just have to chalk it up as a loss. Haven't gone out to get a new card yet but will do that soon. The sad thing is I thought I had all my photos backed up on the cloud but apparently, I never checked the box in settings on that app. Lesson learned.

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Need recommendation for professional recovery software to repair SD card.

You can't really lose anything. Neither PhotoRec nor DDRescue writes to the card, so it's just the setup time you're wasting (although DDRescue can take week or more to run really bad media - I once had it recover a few hundred megs on a 15GB laptop drive, but it took more than a week).

 

[Pillplo]

Re: Need recommendation for professional recovery software to repair SD card.

For this problem, you can find answer on their forum. http://forum.easeus.com/
Personally, it is a good software