Data analyzers was contacted to assist in recovering baby photos from a client’s Sandisk 64gb Micro SD card. This card has previously been to another lab who deemed the card unrecoverable. SanDisk memory card data recovery is what we specialize in. We often receive devices that have been labeled unsuccessfully recovered at another data recovery service provider
This particular Micro SD card would not initialize when plugged into a card reader or a camera. The previous company could read the data using similar methods but could not fix the errors in the dumps so they could not recover any complete files for our client. Our initial inspection revealed that the top layer of the card had already been sanded down to expose the contacts underneath and solder residue from having wires attached. This is standard procedures for any recovery company to take on a failed card, if one knows how to do it!
The first step in the recovery was to clean the chip and inspect it under the microscope to see if anything was damaged during the previous recovery attempt. This card uses a known physical layout which is common in many of the SanDisk MicroSD cards we receive at Data Analyzers. Using our pinout (or schematics) of the memory card we are able to know what trace controls which signal. We compared a familiar pinout to the client’s MicroSD and found that multiple traces had chunks missing out of them. This typically occurs when the top layer of the MicroSD card is not removed correctly, or if it received too much soldering iron abuse during wiring. The two damaged traces were the D4 and R/B signals, which are critical in data recovery. Fortunately, the end points of the traces were not damaged and provided us enough” meat on the bone” to reattach our wires. After some precision micro soldering, we were able to solder all traces to our chip reader and get it to properly ID.
The ID of the chip, “45 3E AA A2”, is typically associated with incomplete recoveries due to uncorrectable bit errors when dumped through a chip reader. In essence, the chip develops so many bad cells inside the memory chip that the errors can no longer be corrected. This would also explain why the other company could not recover any data. All is not lost though! We researched and explored our options with various reading retry algorithms and various power voltages to the data and power lines. Certain chips need special commands sent while reading to improve the reading quality. After many weeks, we were finally able to reassemble a complete file system containing the pictures that were approximately 95% complete. Data Analyzers recovered the majority of their client’s baby photos when no one else could.
