Hi,

I'm ending there because someone told me there may be people able to help.
My SD Card, short story version: "I love taking pictures with my camera. I bought a PNY SD card ~3 years ago, I formatted it 5 to 6 times only. 2 weeks ago, I was using it in my camera and suddenly I was unable to see the picture just recorded on the card."
Since then, I've tried many thing to recover my precious pictures, I thought I was on the right track but everything collapsed this evening
My card can't be read by my 2 different UHS-II card readers but I succeeded to read it with an older UHS-I reader. I was happy to make an image by using ddrescue, even if the process took 6 days to read it at a very low bandwidth of 0,5Mb/sec. Then, I tried different tools including testdisk, dmde, photorec, ... nothing worked. No sign of any file. I finally wrote a small python code to read the image byte after byte and it confirmed my greatest fear, the image is full of one value: 0x55. So I suspect the card is currently failing at a hardware controller level (returning a uniform 0x55 pattern on all read attempts), which indicates I guess a physical failure, not a logical file system corruption.
I am very sad and disappointed as you can imagine.
I would be grateful to anyone having some useful experience to help me bringing it back to life. It doesn't have to last long, there may be 30 to 60 Gb of pictures on the card, I'm only requesting the opportunity to copy my pictures. Thus, if someone have skills on this kind of PNY SD card, please please please, help me

Use a USB cable to the camera to access images instead of removing the card. My P15 has a build in D card slot and for other models I use a USB reader. I use mostly Sandisk but other vendors are built from the same standards.

I have many tools for various memory cards. Still there are some limits to what can be done. If the NAND is damaged the risk for loss is higher. I use a Sandisk Extreme SD card for file history in Windows 11. Still works fine.

The NAND on SD cards etc is built for mobile devices while USB sticks are about the same.

Last time I was asked to recover a card, took my machine several hours.

_________________
USB 3.5" enclosures are $19 USD postage paid from China, I own several

Thank you for the suggestion but my camera displays an error message "can't read the card". Actually I would like to understand what exactly is damaged, NAND, controller ? If the card doesn't respond with the majority of the readers, can we conclude its controller is down ?
What drives me mad is this old card reader giving somehow access to the card (but not the file structure). But this "access" returned "0x55" for every byte and I bet this isn't reflecting the SD real content. I need to understand better.
This SD card is supposed to be Magnet Proof, Shock Proof, Temperature Proof, Waterproof, X-Ray Proof, with limited lifetime warranty. It's hard for me to believe it's definitely dead.
I have read somewhere that a few hours at a temperature below 0 can sometimes restore the access to the NAND for a couple of minutes. Did someone have already experienced such a thing ?
If anyone have any other suggestion, I would be glad to test it, thanks

'Hardcore Games' is likely a bot, most of the posts seem to be some kind of generic 'advice' coupled with some useless facts. Amazingly, the suggestion to use the camera was not terrible, but likely so obvious to be essentially just as useless as the rest of it's posts.

As for your issue, you likely will not ever find out exactly what is the root cause of the issue, and it really isn't important. Flash devices are simple, IMHO: discover an error, try and get data, bin the device. exceptions are possibly SSD's with circuit issues, but I NEVER trust a flash device after it has gone wonky in any way.

Possible issues which should imply why you may never discover the root cause:

Faulty resistor, capacitor, controller or broken trace inside it
degraded NAMND
firmware fault
controller panic or fault
corruption of filesystem or FTL
malware
some bug or fault with camera software that damages the card
crappy card that didn't last the distance

you can try a chip off solution, involves reading the NAND flash itself, then using software to rebuild the data based on what operations (XOR, ECC, Block operations, Page operations etc) the controller has applied to it. To do this you would need a Nand reader such as Rusolut, Nand Reader from Soft Center, PC3K etc

The old reader likely has some simple functions and can't really show you the true reading of the card, I wouldn't take it as somehow the card is almost readable

Hi HaQue,

thank you for your reply. My readiness demands to study any suggestion, even if it's coming from a bot .
One remark and one question:
- remark: you're right concerning my old card reader, I'm not concluding my card is almost readable but, through it I can still see from lsblk command, a volume that correspond to it:
NAME SIZE TYPE MOUNTPOINT MODEL
sdb 235.1G disk STORAGE DEVICE
- question: I just read about chip off solution and I'm wondering: do you think I can do it by myself ? I think you're over-estimating me. Anyway, I have a offer from a data recovery company, it's very, very expensive and I can't afford. Would you have company suggestions, a contact ?
Thanks

Ok. I had the opportunity to test another UHS-I card reader this night.
I used the following command to read the first 500Mb:

then, I tried to see the saved content:

As for my previous complete image built with ddrescue, it looks the SD card controller is corrupted and is "lying" by returning always the same value (but not the data). It looks the only remaining option is crying now...

The only way to know if it is possible for a chip-off solution is to split the card PCB out of the plastic shell. Inside there will either be a Monolith or a PCB with chips on it. If you want to split it open carefully, and take pictures of both sides of what's inside, this will possibly give insight into how 'easy' the recovery may be doing chip-off.

I would say chip-off for you would be a low probability, given you likely don't have any reader or software for the job. Flash recoveries range from easy, devices from many years ago, to actually impossible and everything in between. The factors for this is not just perseverance, skill or the ability to learn well, as so many people think, so don't take it personally at all!

Once we have that info, more advice could be given

SD cards and microSD today are basically a one chip assembly. Slim pickings when it goes wrong.

I have tried helping some at the local camera club and I have ended up being an archivist as I have staggering amounts of hard disk storage.

When a camera card dies, this is why I harp on backups of the backup.

_________________
USB 3.5" enclosures are $19 USD postage paid from China, I own several

What did you help at the local camera club with?

does playing the harp on backups help with resonate vibration?

Hi all,

I apologize because I've been very very busy with other priorities.
I'm also not sure on what's going on between you guys and I let you handle it.
So, I'm ready to pass the point of no return and destroy my SD card.
But, as I'm scared to do something wrong does anyone have a piece of advice ?
I'm joining a picture of the card, everything looks stuck and solid, how am I supposed to proceed, with a scalpel and clamps ?

Only one of us is a 'Guy', and really I am just prodding the bot to see response patterns, apologies for doing it in your thread.



That would be the next step, but only if you are intending to somehow use other methods to recover. It is not technically destroying the card.
I doubt that you will be able to do anything yourself, because reading the NAND itself requires specialised hardware. It does not appear to be an electrical problem, which may be easier to diagnose if it was, and possibly fixable by yourself.

The photos of the inside would be critical to deciding if the card has a chance of 'chip off' recovery. You would very carefully use a sharp scalpel and cut around the plastic weld of the shell. DO not let the blade go inside the shell, take your time!

Hi all,

I finally found the time to open the SD card with a good light, a magnifying glass and a scalpel.
Inside (see attached pictures), I'm finally surprised to find a small monolith (actually half of the SD card surface area). My first thought was: "can it be a counterfeit SD ?", but maybe it is expected.
I also received details for the technology of this black chip from the brand support. It is very likely that:
- SANDISK manufactured this
- using Bics5 and 112 Layer TLC 512Gbx4
- with a Phison PS8601 controler
So, now we have all the details here are my last questions:
- Can I still expect data recovery from this ?
- If relevant, what would be the rate to such a recovery ?
Thanks in advance for your time

you can see on the back of that monolith, if you hold it in the light just right, that it has round pads underneath the coating. I can make them out in the first picture. It isnt a bad picture actually, but a little better one may help

What the Lab would do is rub of the coating to expose the circuit board and the pads. Solder thin wires to these pads based on a 'Pinout' - the corresponding pads to the NAND flash signal pins. If the lab has the reference pinout to know what pin is what that is.

if you can get a good picture of the back of the monolith, better showing the pads in a good light, someone might know if they have the pinout, or if they have worked on one similar to yours before.

examples:
https://www.flash-killer.com/monolith-database
https://www.greydcode.com/monolith.php?lang=en

I tried something, I hope the quality is enough but don't hesitate to tell me, I can try again.
After a quick glance on the two Websites you shared, I don't see something similar, and I see UHS II monoliths appear to be rare

Hello all,
Is the picture not good enough or is this monolith too rare ?
I watched some videos on my side, either by using spider boards or wires soldering and I'm convinced that such a recovery needs known-how, skills and pricey material. I also tried to contact some companies based on everything you learned me here (thank you so much HaQue), asking monolith pinout. The companies quotes are high, even for making only an extended diagnostic sometimes (X-ray, power tests, ...). I believe they are legitimate quotes and I'm still very sad about my pictures (and a few videos), but I need to be reasonable and this is too much money for me. I also believe it is also not realistic someone very skilled will try something for free, so, if someone reading this has a proposal, feel free to contact me by PM.
I'm very grateful for the time and consideration you gave to my issue (HaQue and HaGa). I'm realizing I was somehow expecting a miracle..

yes, unfortunately the work involved can be very time consuming, and each step of the way is an unknown. It may lead to the next step, it may lead to no solution. The people with the skills are few and far between, the people with the tools even fewer, and the people with the time to spend on it is almost as rare as hens' teeth.