This card shows as only 30.61MB (FAT16 partition). I opened the drive in WinHex and the 30MB show all '0'. Any way to get any further with it without a pin-out?

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Do you have SC tool? if so, try SD/XD adapter. you don't need the actual adapter, you can wire it up the same using the Wire Adapter. It is worth a shot.

You *might* be able to do something with the MP tools, but honestly would not risk it.

I also have a MicroSD that shows something like 256MB f the labelled 16GB capacity. I spent a good deal of time trying all software based approaches and got nowhere, so I think NAND reading is the only way.. and even then I am not sure just where the issue is, controller or faulty NAND itself.

Don't have SC, I leave that to the experts like you. The MicroS you are talking about could be one of mine

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

not this one, I bought it from ebay(or gumtree in AU) and was listed as having the issue.. I was curious to see if it was just partitioning or deeper. Turns out it as deeper!

Wouldn't the fact that the OP can see a FAT16 partition suggest that the problem is a logical one rather than a physical or firmware related issue?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thats what bugs me. So close yet so far, but I guess I need SC. Or perhaps Resolut??

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

A 16GB drive is much too big for FAT16. The drive would have to have been initially formatted as FAT32 (or NTFS, etc). In any case, it must have been reformatted by the user. That would explain the zeros. I don't have any experience with failed flash drives, so I'm wondering whether these drives can fail in such a way as to present a reduced capacity while still remaining functional as storage devices. I would have expected these devices to simply become read-only, or completely inaccessible.

Is 30.61MB the size of the partition, or the full size of the physical drive?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I have seen a few drives where the size shows as around 30MB. I cant recall if they are all exactly the same size showing or not, but I do know that these drives would not respond to any partitioning tools, and disk editors or utils, and one in particular I spent a great deal of time on. even using bare SD commands, I could pull 30MB of "data"(it was all 00's as well) and then get an I/O error.

I think the last one was a Kingston, but not sure. I still have it in research cat.

Shame it isn't a phison 2303 based, would be interesting to pull the RAM from the CPU.

Popular failure. IMHO only way to read data is directly from nand chip via pinout.
HaQue, you can't use software like MP tools for it. MicroSD card must be connect via SD adapter. Computer see controller from adapter, not from MicroSD card. And of course MP tools is dangerous to data.

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Flash Killer - everyday new resources (pinout, XOR, ECC,config) for flash devices

What sort of failure causes a FAT32 volume to become a FAT16 volume?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

No. I mean that card do not have full capacity, but 8MB, 30 MB etc.

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Flash Killer - everyday new resources (pinout, XOR, ECC,config) for flash devices

Yes, I used SD adapter on the one I mentioned. as soon as it would get to the point it would stop writing image. I don't have all details on hand but here is a log of a 64GB MicroSD


Reading this card via pinout produced dumps that could not be figured out, and there were things about them that looked wrong, dodgy to me.

There are some MP Tools that can work with some MicroSD cards, but I haven't looked into it much, and doubt would be that useful without knowing a lot more.

I believe controller has damaged firmware.

As Arvika/HaQue said, it's typical fault of controller/something else, if you cannot get LBA access further than 30Mb. It's case for physical recovery.

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VISUAL NAND RECONSTRUCTOR. Since 2014.

Have seen this 30MB issue on a couple of occasions.
Once getting in, the XOR is likely going to be a major headache. OK, more like giant migraine..

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Thanks for all the feedback. Taking the above comments into consideration is anyone willing to take a look at this for me? Could you give me an approx cost if data is recovered (PM me if you want to).

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Customer brought the same model.. same wrong space 30.61 MB... Is there a Software possibility to get the data?

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Fachwerkstatt für Data Recovery / Datenrettung in Stuttgart - Riedel IT - Ameisenbergstraße 30 - 70188 Stuttgart

Most likely Software will not help you in this case
A multimeter with a soldering iron or chip off will