Devices · Camera and memory cards
Cards give out at the worst possible moment: halfway through a holiday, or during the copy that was meant to make the second copy. Camera cards are among the items posted in most often from around Birmingham, and one reading blank, locked or unreadable nearly always gives its pictures up — as long as nobody formats it first.
Tell an engineer what it is doing
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| What you see | What is behind it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Memory card error, or Cannot access the memory card (Canon) | The body cannot read the file system any more | Eject it and stop there |
| Card cannot be accessed. Reinsert/change the card (Canon DSLR) | Contacts want cleaning, or the controller is failing | Say no to the format |
| Card may be damaged. Insert another card (Nikon) | Damaged, or not recognised at all | Do not format it in the body |
| Card locked / Card is write-protected | The little slider on the edge, or a controller that locks up as it fails | Slider in the right place? Then it is the card |
| You need to format the disk in drive X: | Windows reports RAW where a file system should be; the images survive | Turn it down flat |
| No memory card, when one is clearly in the slot | The controller has died, or the contact pads have | Chip-level work from here |
Every item gets a case number of its own the day it lands. An engineer then works out what has actually failed and tells you plainly which files have a real chance of coming back and which do not. Only then does a price follow: one figure, fixed, in writing, and it costs you nothing to see it. Nothing is charged until you say yes.
Nothing happens until a bit-for-bit clone exists. The card then goes back in its sleeve, and every tool we run afterwards works on the copy.
All the repair work happens on that clone. If the file tables can be brought back, your folder names come with them; if not, every frame is lifted by its header signature — RAW as readily as JPEG.
Counting files settles nothing. The recovered shoot is opened one frame at a time, and every picture must draw fully, at its proper size.
No invoice is raised until the full list of recovered files has sat in front of you and you have said go ahead. Your data comes back on media we buy new, posted at our expense, and the job is not closed here until every file has opened on your own machine.
The number nobody actually has: no one has properly measured how many cards on sale are counterfeit. Labs and manufacturers agree the problem is widespread, fakes turn up on this bench often enough, and any firm percentage you find in print came out of somebody's head. What stays true whatever the number: anything written past a fake card's real capacity has gone somewhere no laboratory can follow.
The wedding had been shot the night before, and by breakfast the 512GB SanDisk was showing nothing on it at all. The card was cloned first. Its file system was rebuilt on that clone, and a deep carve then swept up the files left with nowhere to sit. Not a frame was missing, and the photographer kept the client.
No. Formatting lays fresh file tables straight over the records that let us put your folder names and filenames back where they were. Leave the card alone and more comes home, in better order.
RAW too. NEF, CR3, DNG, ARW and RAF all open with a signature a carve can lock onto, and video containers behave the same way. Plenty of the cards booked in belong to working photographers.
Often they are not. A monolith card keeps everything on one die, so if the crack missed that die, chip-level reading still applies. Either way, the card is scrap.
Cards move faster than anything else on this bench. Most are done inside two or three working days, quicker still where a deadline demands it. Give us the date you are up against and we work to it.
Every extra power-up takes something off a drive that is already going. Leave it switched off and let the free diagnosis say what still reads.