SD card problem

[Ed W]

I had an SD card fail just after photographing a bird in the park, one I hadn't seen previously or identified yet. My computer recognizes that the card is present but will not read any data from it. I've tried two popular data recovery utilities without success.

Has anyone recovered images from an apparently dead card, and if so, what program did you use?

[jne]

What brand is the card? SanDisk and Lexmark both provide a license for their own recovery software. It's in the packaging we all throw away without paying attention.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I went through that event a couple weeks ago and tried a few.  The one that got me out of that hole was MiniTool Power Data Recovery 7.0.  There is a free version if card is small enough.

I tried the free version, but was size limited (1G IIRC) so had to pay but got back 90 G of stuff.  Relief.

[heironymouspasparagus]

https://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

[Ed W]

My thanks to both of you. I tried the OEM website and found that their software wouldn't recognize the card either. I tried several others, even some other computers, without any luck. Finally, I put the card back in the camera and tried to reformat it. No dice. It's junk plastic.

But I made a note of the suggestions for the next time, 'cause we all know there WILL be a next time!

Thanks again.

[heironymouspasparagus]

My thanks to both of you. I tried the OEM website and found that their software wouldn't recognize the card either. I tried several others, even some other computers, without any luck. Finally, I put the card back in the camera and tried to reformat it. No dice. It's junk plastic.

But I made a note of the suggestions for the next time, 'cause we all know there WILL be a next time!

Thanks again.

Ouch!  That sucks.

[Ed W]

I purchased an 8G backup card at Best Buy yesterday but haven't read the included documentation yet. Gotta find my binocular magnifiers for that.

Just for fun, I've used a 350 meg card in the Olympus E-PL2 because it's almost like shooting film - about 40 exposures when it stores both jpg and raw files.

[Hoss]

SD cards are weird sometimes.  Wrecked the copter around Christmas last year...nothing serious, but the 64gb Sandisk microSD card in the GoPro was toast.  The camera however was just fine.  Couldn't figure that one out.

[Ed W]

Solid state memoriy chips have a small "leveling" program that seeks to maintain storage by moving the chip internal addresses. So if the microprocessor is writing to address FFFFFFFA, that leveling program will designate multiple physical locations as that address over time. This happens because logical 1s and logical zeroes degrade. The zero voltage increases and the 5 volt logical one decreases. Eventually the memory location becomes unusable and the internal software locks it out. When enough locations do this, the chip fails.

It would be nice to see the number of degraded cells in order to gauge the life expectancy of the chip, but I don't know any way to do that.