Micro sd card not being recognized.

thomaseg1 said:

That's an expensive recovery for an sd card. And without much hope success then you'd get from
the free alternatives .
there are alternatives to try check the links below

Best free data recovery software | TechRadar


10 Best Free Data Recovery Software [Undelete Files In 2019]

I tried all of them today (even the ones I had tried before).

None of them could recognize I had a card inserted in the reader.

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jumanji said:

Hi @nuraman00,
While there is no guarantee that you will be able to recover the data, my search reveals that atleast one user had success miraculously.. Check whether that miracle works for you

How do You Recover Data from a microSD Card that Cannot be Read?

Recover Data from Card that cannnot be read - Super User

What the user did - if you do not want to give the above links a complete reading:

" She took your advice and tried squeezing it between her fingers. Unfortunately, it didn't help (but didn't hurt!). Wait... Wait... Wait... she just did it again, and Windows is recognizing the card!!!!!!!! Tears of joy!!! Now we can celebrate two miracles on Channukah!!! Thank you!!! Shalom!!! – "

Thanks for the suggestion. It didn't work either.

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jumanji said:

Hi @nuraman00,
While there is no guarantee that you will be able to recover the data, my search reveals that atleast one user had success miraculously.. Check whether that miracle works for you

How do You Recover Data from a microSD Card that Cannot be Read?

Recover Data from Card that cannnot be read - Super User

What the user did - if you do not want to give the above links a complete reading:

" She took your advice and tried squeezing it between her fingers. Unfortunately, it didn't help (but didn't hurt!). Wait... Wait... Wait... she just did it again, and Windows is recognizing the card!!!!!!!! Tears of joy!!! Now we can celebrate two miracles on Channukah!!! Thank you!!! Shalom!!! – "

nuraman00 said:

Thanks.

I tried Recuva, but it has the same issue as the other apps I tried. It doesn't recognize the card is in the reader.

Data recovery for minitool requires the paid version.

I looked into some data recovery companies.

Grillware Data Recovery:

* Free evaluation
* Estimate is from $250 - $1800, depending on severity (logical failure, hardware failure, etc.)
* Based in Wisconsin
* Return shipping is $25 - 30.

* Mostly good Yelp reviews.

We Recover Data

* Evaluation is $95, but is applied toward recovery if you choose it.
* Estimate is from $250 - $2500.
* Is close enough where I can do a local drop off if I choose.
* Return shipping is free if I choose USPS.
* They'll extract the data to a FTP server where I can download it.

* No Yelp reviews for the location near me. There are reviews for other locations, and they are spotty.

What do you think of these?

I need to contact Grillware again and ask how exactly they will send me the extracted data. Will it be on a FTP server like We Recover Data, or will they put it on another media?

I think after trying almost every data recovery application that I can find, I'll have to try one of these professional data recovery services.

There is a 3rd company, Drivesavers, that I want to get a quote for.

After that, I'll go with the one I feel the most comfortable with.

nuraman00 said:

Thanks.

I tried Recuva, but it has the same issue as the other apps I tried. It doesn't recognize the card is in the reader.

Data recovery for minitool requires the paid version.

I looked into some data recovery companies.

Gillware Data Recovery:

* Free evaluation
* Estimate is from $250 - $1800, depending on severity (logical failure, hardware failure, etc.)
* Based in Wisconsin
* Return shipping is $25 - 30.

* Mostly good Yelp reviews.

We Recover Data

* Evaluation is $95, but is applied toward recovery if you choose it.
* Estimate is from $250 - $2500.
* Is close enough where I can do a local drop off if I choose.
* Return shipping is free if I choose USPS.
* They'll extract the data to a FTP server where I can download it.

* No Yelp reviews for the location near me. There are reviews for other locations, and they are spotty.

What do you think of these?

I need to contact Gillware again and ask how exactly they will send me the extracted data. Will it be on a FTP server like We Recover Data, or will they put it on another media?

So I called a 3rd company, DriveSavers.

Here's how they compared:

* Free evaluation.
* Estimate before evaluation is $700-$2,700.
* Based in Novato, CA.
* Free return shipping.
* Total end to end time is about 1.5 weeks.

The minimum for DriveSavers is a lot higher.

Right now, Gillware has the best reviews, and a lower starting price and lower high end price.

So I'd go with them.

But I'd want to call them one more time, just to make sure I'm comfortable with their process and procedure, and to get a sense of if I trust them. Since I haven't spoken to them since June.

Once I do, I'd be ready to send them my card.

I also want to find out how long the end to end time for Gillware would take.

I sent the microSD card in.

They took about a week for the evaluation.

They then said they couldn't do a recovery.

I spoke with the engineer today.

He said that the memory card has two parts: The data, and a controller that controls access to the data.

For my memory card model, they couldn't figure out how to bypass the access controller and get to the data. They spent the evaluation period trying to figure that out.

If I try another data recovery company, should I tell them another company tried an evaluation and couldn't do it? Because those companies ask me that. I feel that if I tell them another company tried something, then the new company will be more likely to give up more easily if they encounter problems too.

So it looks like I had a lot of stuff backed up, from that card, on Google Photos, from 2010-2016.

I stopped using Google Photo backups in 2016 because it would try to back up any photo that I took right away, even junk ones that I knew I'd delete right away. And it was doing it at a compressed quality. Their standards for "high quality" were lower back in 2016 than they are now. It was also annoying that it would back up a junk photo right away if I was on Wi-Fi, and then send me a notification about it.

Their standards for allowing unlimited photos/videos are better now, so I'll probably use it again (but still keep using my external hard drive too).

I sent the card to FlashFixers this time.

They have 2 levels of service. Evaluation is free.

Standard Recovery:

They create an image of the card, then work off of that. It's $40 for the first 1GB, then $15 for every GB after that. I have 4-5 GB of data.

NAND recovery:

If they can't do the standard recovery, they try to reverse engineer the chip.

There's a $75 deposit which goes towards the final cost. For my card, that would be $350.

Let's hope this company can get it done.

Maybe it's too old.
Firstly, use some software to rescue data from it. Have you used MiniTool? It is a good candidate for data recovery.
Then, you may choose to format the SD card. In this way, it would be normally used again.

Cassie W said:

Maybe it's too old.
Firstly, use some software to rescue data from it. Have you used MiniTool? It is a good candidate for data recovery.
Then, you may choose to format the SD card. In this way, it would be normally used again.

Thanks. I tried 11 or 12 different free recovery tools. None were able to recognize it.

If this company is unable to recover, and they send it back, then I'll try Mini Tool.

I'm trying not to format the card and lose the data.

My apologies in advance, I'm not trying to pour salt in a wound here, but the lesson here is to always have backups! All media - hard disks, flash drives, SSDs, optical media, etc. can fail or be damaged.

Personally, I like to have two separate backups of all important data locally, and another offsite. My sister is my off site storage provider. If my place burns down, she has a copy of my data at her place.

hsehestedt said:

My apologies in advance, I'm not trying to pour salt in a wound here, but the lesson here is to always have backups! All media - hard disks, flash drives, SSDs, optical media, etc. can fail or be damaged.

Personally, I like to have two separate backups of all important data locally, and another offsite. My sister is my off site storage provider. If my place burns down, she has a copy of my data at her place.

Yes, since then, I copied my SD cards to my external hard drive.

I also have some other stuff backed up on a Google cloud drive, but not everything (since I don't have enough space for everything, hence why I have a physical hard drive backup).

I also turned back on the feature to back up my photos to Google Photos. I had turned it off in early 2016 because I didn't like how it was compressing them a little. But at this point, having something is better than nothing. And now, I'll still have the full resolutions on my external hard drive.

When 4TB external SSDs are available, I will probably get one so it can be another backup, just like my mechanical external hard drive.

For backups, i prefer less expensive media. At least in my case, speed is not an important consideration for backups so a good old fashioned, large capacity, cheap HD is great for my backup needs.

But hey, nothing wrong with a 4TB SSD!

hsehestedt said:

For backups, i prefer less expensive media. At least in my case, speed is not an important consideration for backups so a good old fashioned, large capacity, cheap HD is great for my backup needs.

But hey, nothing wrong with a 4TB SSD!

Yeah, speed isn't a consideration for me either. I'm just going for the higher reliability that a SSD would provide.

They don't make 4 TB yet, 2 TB appears to be the max. But a 4 TB will probably come soon.

Until then, my current 2 TB HDD is fine.