SD card file recovery

cab.in.boston

A friend had a mishap with an older Sandisk SD card. He was on vacation and after a day of shooting, the card somehow became unreadable. He's tried in different machines, PC and Linux, and has run the gamut of recovery software, and the camera won't even recognize the card to format it. It really looks like it is a hardware failure. He asked me for advice, but I've not ever had an issue like this, so I wanted to put it to the Grin for some pointers.

If anyone has any experience with places specializing in data recovery, please let me know and I'll pass on the info. He doesn't care if the card survives the investigation as it's several years old and he has replaced it already anyway, but he'd love to get the photos from it if possible. He said there are something on the order of a couple hundred photos, and it was from a Nikon D80. He's aware that some places charge based on the amount of data recovered, so it may matter how many photos there are. It was not an "important" day of shooting, as he had been downloading the family photos daily, but it was his only "just for fun" shooting, and he'd like the photos back if possible. Any advice or good/bad experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Dan7312

A number of people have commented positively on Tallyns.com for recovery. Has he tried contacting the card manufacturer... sometimes they provide free recovery.

cab.in.boston wrote: »

Any advice or good/bad experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

cab.in.boston

Thanks, Dan, much appreciated. I have forwarded him the info. I don't know if he contacted Sandisk.

Art Scott

Might want to Look into STELLAR PHOENIX PHOTO RECOVERY SOFTWARE
Anyone using a digital camera or a computer, needs to have a file Recovery Software on hand....I got Image Rescue when I purchased my 1st Lexar CF card...it was free with the card and works great even being 5 yrs old....but since I wanted to be able to recover from CD and DVD when necessary...i purchased Stellar Phoenix Photo recovery software (around $60) and it recovers off all media including hdd's, cards that have been formatted over and also deleted images....I did a test on a card and this software went back over a yr and pulled images up that had been formatted over many times in that yr period, back to the 1st image place on the card....will it work for your friend I hope so.....will it work for every situation, I do not know but it has never let me down....Good Luck.

cab.in.boston

Thanks, Art. I'll pass along the suggestion, however this really seems to be a hardware failure. He has tried some recovery software already, and nothing has worked, in fact the computer(s) he used and even the camera don't even recognize that there is a card there, so it appears something internal got hosed...