There may be times when wedding photos disappear in the middle of a shoot, the camera suddenly says a card needs to be formatted, or a microSD card snaps in two. We recover photos and videos from memory cards for photographers and families around Sheffield.
Free diagnostic on every memory card job. One fixed quote in writing before any work commences.
On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. For electronic, mechanical and chip-level work, we'll take half up front and the rest only if we're able to recover your data. Jobs involving BitLocker, ransomware, forensic or CCTV/DVR work are paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote. Complete pricing can be found on the data recovery cost page.
Every memory card recovery begins by matching the symptoms to the fault, and these ten cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
Card reader, camera and PC all shrug: this points to controller failure or corrupted firmware inside the card.
The file system index has broken, but the photos underneath are normally okay. Never press format.
Recoverable until new shots overwrite the space, so stop using the card immediately.
Formats done in the camera are usually quick formats, which means most of the previous contents survive underneath.
MicroSD cards snap in adapters and slots; monolith reconstruction reads the surviving internals directly.
A 64GB card showing 30MB means the controller has failed into a default mode, making it a chip-level job.
A failing controller locks itself read-only; the lock slider on an SD card causes the same symptom.
Washing machine survivors and cracked cards: cleaned, repaired and read at chip level.
Marked 512GB but really 16GB inside, so files 'vanish' when writes wrap. We recover what was actually written.
Pulling the card out mid-copy tears the file table; we re-carve the files from a sector image.
Memory cards put NAND flash into a small space with minimal protection, so corruption and physical damage are frequent, especially on cards that have lived in cameras, dashcams and drones for years. We recover SD, SDHC, SDXC, microSD, CompactFlash, XQD and CFexpress cards, working from a forensic copy of the card so nothing we do can make things worse.
A snapped microSD or a card that is electrically dead needs chip-level work: the memory is read directly and the raw data is assembled back into your files. Monolith cards (where everything is one sealed chip) are the hardest jobs in flash recovery, and success depends on the damage. The free diagnostic will tell you exactly where you stand before you spend a penny.
Card recovery is flash-memory surgery, done with the same kit used for sticks and monoliths:
Reads NAND memory directly and rebuilds the controller's logic in software, giving us a route in when a stick or card is dead.
Hot-air and infrared rework tools for lifting NAND chips from dead boards without cooking the data inside them.
Fine-pitch probe adapters and a pinout library for one-piece (monolith) cards and sticks where there's no chip to remove.
XOR, ECC and wear-levelling analysis that turns raw NAND dumps back into your actual files and folders.
Repairing connectors and traces on snapped sticks and cracked boards, which is often the whole fix for physical damage.
Card and USB imaging goes through write-blocked readers, so the original media is never altered.
SD, SDHC, SDXC, microSD, CompactFlash, XQD and CFexpress, from dashcams and drones to professional camera bodies.
Customers get a quote before sending their media to us, either by telephone on 0800 689 0668 or by completing our free online diagnostic. Once a customer has their quote, they post their media to us, tracked and insured.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the hard drive or SSD from your machine and send us just the drive; we do not offer an internal drive-removal service. If you have a server or RAID system, please send us every disk, each clearly labelled with its bay. We cannot recover data from storage that is soldered directly onto the motherboard (for example Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops), so we need removable drives to be sent to us. If you are unsure which kind you have, ring us first.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark your package for the attention of Leeds Data Recovery and we will contact you as soon as we have diagnosed your media.
Unsure about what to send? Call us first on 0800 689 0668 or complete our free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote and, in most cases, you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.