Memory Card Data Recovery
- Media that asks to be formatted when connected to a PC
- Damage to file systems
- Accidentally deleted / formatted media
What is a Memory Card?
A memory card is a small thin device that is often found in digital cameras, mobile phones and video recorders.
Similar to SSDs, they use flash memory to store their data rather than physical moving parts.
There are several types of memory card, you may have heard of some of them while others may be more obscure:
SD (Secure Digital) Card These come in different physical sizes:
SD Card (Standard)
Commonly used in digital cameras, handheld devices such as a Nintendo 3DS or sometimes laptops.
The SD card has changed technologies over the years to increase file storage.
SD (Original)
is no longer produced and had a maximum capacity of 2GB
SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity)
with a maximum capacity of 32GB
SDXC (Secure Digital extended Capacity)
which has a maximum capacity of 2TB
SDUC (Secure Digital Ultra Capacity)
which is currently the largest capacity card at 128TB
Mini SD Card
These are rarer to find these days, around half the size of an SD, they were found in older model phones and cameras.
Micro SD Card
These are the most common cards found today. Found in most modern devices with changeable memory. Modern Android phones, Nintendo Switch and any device that takes a standard SD card. Micro SD cards can be placed in an adaptor to turn them into standard size SD cards.
Micro SD card technologies follow the same pattern as Standard SD cards, following the SD, SDHC, SDXC and SDUC formats.
Other memory cards
These are less common and a few examples are:
Compact Flash (CF)
– still used today as an alternative to SD cards. First used as a replacement for floppy disks, these are larger in physical size than SD cards.
Sony Memory Stick –
used in Sony branded devices, such as cameras. recorders, Sony PSP consoles and more.
Multimedia card (MMC)
Smart media
XD-Picture Card (also known as xD)
How long will the recovery process take?
In general, most recoveries we carry out at Elite Data Recovery take between 3 and 5 days to complete. Starting with diagnostics to the end of the process where we send your recovered data back out to you.
The time it takes to recover your data is mainly down to the following variables:
The size of the data being recovered.
10GB of data will recover much more quickly than 10TB.
The current condition of the drive.
A mildly damaged drive will be read easier by our equipment.
The time it takes to diagnose the problem with drive.
Some drives will need to pass through a series of tests before we are confident in the recovery method to use.
The time it takes us to get the go ahead after we have done the initial diagnostics.
We will give the results of our findings to you, and only continue if you are happy.
The age of the damaged media.
Drives near the end of their life will have a harder time of being read by any equipment.
The type of the damaged media, SATA/IDE/NAS.
Each different type of media has a different read speed, so some will complete their recovery faster than others.