Devices · Camera and SD cards
Cards fail at the worst moment — mid-holiday, or partway through the copy that was going to be the backup. They are among the most common things posted to us from Cardiff and across South Wales, and a card that reads blank, locked or unreadable will nearly always hand its pictures over. The one condition is that nobody formatted it first.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
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| What shows up | What has gone wrong | Do this now |
|---|---|---|
| Memory card error (Canon), or Cannot access the memory card | The file system is no longer readable by the body | Take it out and stop |
| Card cannot be accessed (Canon DSLR). Reinsert/change the card | Contacts needing a clean, or a controller failing | Decline the format |
| Nikon: Card may be damaged. Insert another card | Damage, or no recognition at all | Never format it in the camera |
| Card locked / Card is write-protected | The tiny slider on the card's edge — or a controller failing shut | Slider set correctly? Then the fault is the card |
| You need to format the disk in drive X: | Windows shows RAW instead of a file system; the pictures are still there | Refuse it outright |
| No memory card — though one is sitting right there | The controller has gone, or the contact pads with it | Chip level from here on |
The diagnosis costs you nothing. Every item that arrives is logged under a case number of its own, and an engineer works out what has actually failed — then tells you plainly which files can come back and which cannot. The price follows that: one fixed figure, in writing, and no work begins until you have read it and said go ahead.
Nothing starts until a bit-for-bit clone is made. The card goes back into its sleeve after that, and every tool we run works on the copy instead.
That clone is where every repair happens. If the file tables can be rebuilt, your folder names travel back with them. If not, each frame comes out on its header signature alone, RAW no harder than JPEG.
A file count proves nothing. The recovered shoot gets opened frame by frame, and each picture has to render in full, at the size it was shot.
Nothing is billed while you are still deciding. A complete listing of what came off the drive reaches you first, and the invoice only follows your yes. Files travel back on media bought new for the job, return postage ours, and we do not close it here until every one of them opens on the machine you will use.
The figure nobody really has: no proper count exists of how many counterfeit cards are on sale. Labs and makers agree the problem is wide, fakes reach this bench often enough, and every firm percentage in print was somebody's guess. Whatever the true number, one thing holds — anything written beyond a fake card's real capacity has gone where no laboratory can follow.
A wedding shot the previous evening, and by morning the 512GB SanDisk read as empty. Cloning the card came before anything else was tried. From that clone the file system was rebuilt, and a deep carve afterwards gathered up whatever had lost its place. Not one frame was missing, and the photographer did not lose the client.
No. Formatting puts a clean set of file tables straight on top of the records that tell us what each folder and file was called. Leave the card as it is and more comes back, in better shape.
RAW as well. NEF, CR3, DNG, ARW and RAF each start with a signature the carve looks for, and video containers are no different. Many of the cards on this bench belong to working photographers.
Frequently not. A monolith card holds the lot on one die, and if the break missed it, chip-level reading is still on. The card itself is finished either way.
Cards are the fastest work on this bench. Most are finished inside two or three working days, and sooner again when a deadline says so. Give us the day you must have them by and we work back.
A failing drive has only so many starts left in it. Spend none of them. Keep the power off, and the free diagnosis will tell you what is still readable.