I have a customer with a Sandisk MicroSD HD 32-GB flash card.

He used it for some time, then it stopped working.

He claims he purchased it at a Verizon store, not so sure about that.

In looking at how to identify counterfeit cards, this unit doesn't have a raised area like ones I've seen in pictures and on Youtube. It had a serial number on back and says it was made in Taiwan. It looks just like a counterfeit that was shown on youtube, but I don't know for sure.

The thing is, he'd like his pictures back. It doesn't work at all now, I'm not sure if it was real or fake, etc.

Any thoughts on how to proceed? Anyone here want to take a stab at it? If so, PM me some idea of charges, please.

Thanks.

Chip off might be the solution
uploading a pic. can help you ID

can you post a good quality pic of both sides? "Chip-off" (for monoliths) may help, but what exactly does stopped working mean? if you download DMDE, put the card in and run DMDE and see if it shows up there. If so, try and take an image of the whole disk(not partition) and run DR on that. If it doesnt show up, Jermy's solution is it. Also if it is a fake card, generally it will have a 1, 2, 4, 8 NAND chip, and the firmware has been programmed to lie about size and filesystem. Chip off MAY get some back if the programming was also allowing proper file writes, but sometimes the whole thing is a lie and while files might look like they are there, they won't be, or they will be written over themselves or any number of shenanigans.

I am in Australia, happy to diagnose and recover if possible.

Monolith recoveries are surely not the easiest ones. Generally you need to do the same things you do with regular-size cards, adjusted to the fact there is no standalone memory chip you can insert into reader. So perfect micro-soldering skill is a friend here.

If you've never done these before, then practice on unimportant cards first (the more, the better).

If necessary, we'll be happy to help with this microSD even if it's a fake one. We regularly get noname cards and recover most of them.

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