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SD card cracked on the side

SD card cracked on the side

I stepped on my SD card (64 GB SanDisk Ultra) and it cracked on the side. I was wondering if I could recover it somehow. I spent three days with random recovery software programs. The SD card can be seen by the computer and the programs, but when you “recover” the files, all of them are empty with no photos nor any videos.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 154
Total answers/comments: 1
Guest [Entry]

"An SD card is really just a small circuit board with a memory IC and a controller IC and the board is inside the plastic housing.

Now, if you stepped on it, then chances are something broke physically inside. It could be the circuit board (damaged traces or layers), it could be the IC’s soldered connections or the actual IC’s themselves. If your computer can “see” the card but not the data, I would suspect the issue is with the memory IC’s.

Someone who does micro-soldering may be able to recover the data by repairing the board or the soldered connections (or even transplanting the IC’s to an IDENTICAL board). Finally, the data may be recoverable directly from the memory IC’s via a process called Chip-Off data recovery if the controller is bad but the memory IC is still good.

At the end of the day, it’ll probably come down to how much you are willing to pay to get this data although there are circumstances which may make the data totally unrecoverable (damaged memory IC, encrypted data, no “solutions” for the controller etc.).

A good data recovery/micro-soldering shop should be able to do a proper diagnostic and many of them work on a No Data/No Fee basis."