Leicester Data Recovery – Leicester’s No.1 SD & microSD Card Data Recovery Specialists (25+ Years)

For over 25 years, Leicester Data Recovery has provided professional SD, microSD and memory card data recovery for home users, creatives and businesses across Leicester, Coventry and the wider Midlands. We handle everything from accidental deletion to complex controller/NAND failures across cameras, drones, dashcams, phones, tablets and recorders.

Brands & Card Types We Support (Top 30 in the UK we regularly see)

Below are 30 widely used memory-card brands we handle, with common card types and popular series we see most in the lab:

1. SanDisk – SDHC/SDXC, microSDHC/microSDXC; Extreme, Extreme Pro, Ultra, High/Max Endurance.

2. Samsung – microSDXC; EVO Plus, PRO Plus, PRO Endurance.

3. Kingston – SD/microSD; Canvas Select Plus, Canvas Go!, High Endurance.

4. Lexar – SD/microSD; Professional 1066x/1667x/2000x, Silver/Gold.

5. Transcend – SD/microSD; 300S/500S/700S, High Endurance.

6. PNY – SD/microSD; Elite, Elite-X, Pro Elite, High Endurance.

7. KIOXIA (Toshiba) – SD/microSD; Exceria, Exceria High Endurance.

8. ADATA – SD/microSD; Premier, Premier Pro.

9. Integral (UK) – SD/microSD; UltimaPro, UltimaPro X, High Endurance.

10. Patriot – SD/microSD; EP Series, LX, V30 A1.

11. Verbatim – SD/microSD; Pro+, Premium, High Endurance.

12. Sony – SD UHS-II; TOUGH-G/TOUGH-M, V60/V90.

13. Panasonic – SD/industrial; Gold/Industrial series.

14. Delkin Devices – SD UHS-II; Power, Black.

15. Angelbird – SD/microSD UHS-II; AV PRO SD V60/V90, AV PRO microSD.

16. ProGrade Digital – SD/microSD; V60/V90, microSD V60.

17. Wise Advanced – SD UHS-II; V90 series.

18. Greenliant – SD/microSD (industrial SLC/MLC).

19. Apacer – SD/microSD (consumer/industrial).

20. TeamGroup – SD/microSD; GO Card, Elite/Pro.

21. Silicon Power – SD/microSD; Superior, Elite, High Endurance.

22. Netac – SD/microSD; Pro/U3/A2 ranges.

23. Goodram / IRDM – SD/microSD; IRDM UHS-I U3, Industrial.

24. Kodak – SD/microSD (licensed); Select/Ultra.

25. Polaroid – microSD (licensed).

26. Emtec – SD/microSD; Power Pro/SpeedIN.

27. Hama – SD/microSD branded ranges.

28. Gigastone – microSD; Prime/4K Camera.

29. Duracell – microSD/SD (licensed).

30. Hikvision – microSD; High Endurance/MLC (CCTV/dashcam).

Card types covered: SD, SDHC, SDXC, microSD/microSDHC/microSDXC, miniSD (legacy), UHS-I/UHS-II, Video Speed Class V10–V90, U1/U3, Application Class A1/A2, plus CompactFlash/CFast 2.0, XQD, CFexpress Type A/B/C where applicable.

File Systems & Typical Use-Cases

• File systems: exFAT, FAT32, (legacy) FAT16; camera/vendor partitions; occasional NTFS/HFS+/APFS on removable media.

• Workflows: DSLR/mirrorless (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Fujifilm), GoPro/DJI action/drone, dashcams/CCTV, Android phones/tablets, audio recorders (Zoom/Tascam).

Our Professional Memory-Card Recovery Workflow

1. Stabilise the medium – Write-block, verify voltage/ID, lock bus to conservative timing; no in-camera writes.

2. Image first – Hardware imaging with retries, headless bus negotiation, controlled timeouts and targeted region passes.

3. When controllers fail (monoliths) – Chip-off or direct-to-die read via micro-solder to hidden pads; identify pinout, dump NAND with correct timing & I/O width.

4. Reconstruct translation – ECC decode (BCH/LDPC), remove XOR/scramble, determine interleave/plane order, rebuild FTL/translator, join blocks/pages into logical LBA order.

5. Logical rebuild – exFAT/FAT repair, directory & allocation chain reconstruction, photo/video container repair (MP4/MOV/MXF).

6. Verification – Hash checks, sample-open RAW/MP4, continuity tests on long clips.

50 SD/microSD Data-Loss Faults & How We Recover

Logical / File-System (exFAT/FAT32)

1. Accidental deletion – Dir entries cleared; clusters intact. Fix: image → parse FS, recover from directory/backup entries; carve JPEG/RAW/MP4 by signatures where needed.

2. Quick format – New exFAT over old. Fix: image → scan for prior boot/VBR, infer FAT/alloc tables; rebuild directory tree.

3. Interrupted write (battery pull) – Partial FAT/dir updates. Fix: reconcile primary/backup FAT, salvage orphan chains and lost DIR entries.

4. Corrupt exFAT boot/VBR – Card “needs formatting”. Fix: reconstruct BPB from remnants; recover root directory & allocation bitmap.

5. Cross-linked clusters – Overlapping files. Fix: clone → duplicate branch resolution by timestamps/EXIF; prefer earliest contiguous runs.

6. FAT chain collapse – Large video truncated. Fix: analyse sequential block continuity; heuristic join of long runs; container-level fix.

7. Bad locale/charset entries – Garbled names. Fix: rebuild LFN/8.3 pairs; salvage content regardless of names.

8. Hidden/vendor partitions – Camera utility area corrupt. Fix: map partitions, mount content partition, rebuild vendor meta if needed.

9. MBR/GPT damage on removable – No partition shows. Fix: locate FS signatures, re-create partition map virtually for extraction.

10. Massive fragmentation – High-FPS/4K writes. Fix: walk FAT chains; file-type validators for reassembly; fix containers (below).

Camera/Recorder Container-Level

11. MP4/MOV ‘moov’ atom missing – File won’t play. Fix: rebuild moov from ‘mdat’, infer frame index from GOP headers and timing.

12. Spanned clips split across files – Camera chunking. Fix: find join keys from camera THM/IDX; continuous H.264/H.265 stream rejoin.

13. MXF header/index corruption – Broadcast cams. Fix: rebuild KLV index, stitch essence tracks by PTS/DTS.

14. GoPro LRV/THM present but MP4 broken – Fix: use LRV metadata to reconstruct timing; repair primary MP4.

15. DJI crash during write – Split fragments. Fix: parse H.264/H.265 NAL units; reorder & rebuild container.

Wear & Media Integrity

16. Bad block escalation – UREs increase; slow reads. Fix: low-stress multi-pass imaging; voltage/drive-strength tuning; late fills.

17. Read disturb – Frequently read pages corrupt neighbours. Fix: alternate read orders, dwell limits, ECC-aided re-reads.

18. Program/erase cycle exhaustion (TLC/QLC) – Endurance exceeded. Fix: broaden ECC tolerance; adaptive soft-decoding; salvage best copy.

19. Retention loss (long shelf storage) – Charge leakage. Fix: controlled temp/voltage reads to increase margin; multiple passes.

20. Thermal throttling – Bus timeouts. Fix: cool-down cycles, conservative timing, short queues.

Controller / FTL / Firmware

21. Controller lockup – IDs but stalls. Fix: bypass via direct-to-die read; ignore controller mapping.

22. Translator corruption – L2P lost; gibberish data. Fix: reverse-engineer interleave/planes; rebuild FTL from spare-area markers.

23. XOR/scramble unknown – Data unreadable post-dump. Fix: derive XOR tables from patterns; apply per-page/plane.

24. LDPC/BCH ECC mismatch – Wrong decode profile. Fix: determine ECC scheme from spare; re-decode with correct params.

25. Multi-die/channel mis-order – Blocks out of sequence. Fix: detect interleave via incrementing counters/tags; re-order to logical LBA.

26. Trim/erase-after-delete – Controller zeroed pages. Fix: deep raw carve for remnants; partial recovery only if data not fully trimmed.

27. Wear-levelling table loss – P/E counters gone. Fix: reconstruct from spare fields & continuity heuristics.

28. Counterfeit capacity (fake 512GB) – Wrap-around writes; “good until full”. Fix: detect true capacity; re-map wrapped regions; salvage first-write areas.

29. Vendor password/lock bits – Access denied. Fix: apply known vendor modes (where legal) or chip-off; proceed with raw extraction.

30. ATA/SD security freeze states – Host blocks writes; not reads. Fix: read-only imaging; ignore writes entirely.

Physical / Electrical / Connector

31. Cracked microSD substrate (monolith) – No detect. Fix: epoxy-stabilise; expose pads; micro-solder to breakout; raw dump.

32. UHS-II second-row pin damage – UHS-I fallback/instability. Fix: force UHS-I safe timings; image slowly.

33. Sheared plastic and bent pins (full-size SD) – Intermittent bus. Fix: shell rebuild; replace edge; stabilise contact; image.

34. Corroded contacts (salt/condensation) – High resistance. Fix: controlled clean; contact re-tin; low-stress reads.

35. Over-voltage from reader – Controller/ESD damage. Fix: bypass controller (chip-off) and reconstruct.

36. Reader compatibility quirks – ASMedia/Realtek timing. Fix: change host, lock PIO-like mode; force SDR25 timings.

37. Broken write-protect tab (SD) – Always read-only/always RW. Fix: hardware override at reader; proceed with imaging.

38. Delamination from heat – Warped package. Fix: mechanical stabilisation; staged reads with minimal flex.

Environmental / Usage

39. Water/liquid ingress – Shorted rails. Fix: de-energise; controlled dry; clean; then safe read or chip-off.

40. Impact/shock – Internal bond wire damage. Fix: pad extraction (monolith); raw dump via breakout.

41. Extreme cold/heat (dashcam) – Intermittent I/O. Fix: temperature-controlled imaging; multiple short passes.

42. Long-term cyclic overwrite (CCTV/dashcam) – Metadata churn. Fix: sliding-window recovery from recent allocation; prioritise newest runs.

Host/Workflow-Specific

43. Android adoptable storage – Encrypted volume. Fix: requires device-side keys; with keys, decrypt and rebuild FS.

44. Camera vendor encryption – Body-side encryption. Fix: needs camera/keys; otherwise raw recovery only.

45. In-camera “format” with secure erase – Real erase. Fix: confirm; manage expectations; attempt residual carve if not all pages wiped.

46. File transfer interruption (card pulled) – Directory unsynced. Fix: log replay where present; rebuild dir entries; carve content.

47. Catalog/sidecar loss (RAW+JPEG) – .XMP/.THM missing. Fix: rebuild from EXIF; pair RAW/JPEG by timestamps/sequence.

48. Time-lapse/burst corruption – Partial sequences. Fix: continuity analysis; rebuild sets; fill gaps from alternates.

49. Drone blackbox/FDR partitions – Secondary logs intact. Fix: carve telemetry; can aid video timing reconstruction.

50. Multiple quick formats cross-device – Mixed BPBs. Fix: segregate by signature; mount virtually; export all cohorts.

Packaging & Intake (Post-In or Drop-Off)

Please package your memory card in a padded envelope or small box, include your contact details inside, and either post it or drop it in during business hours. Avoid using or reformatting the card once data loss is noticed.

Why Leicester Data Recovery?

• 25+ years specialising in flash/NAND recoveries

• Advanced monolith/chip-off capability (pad mapping, raw NAND dumps, ECC/XOR/FTL reconstruction)

• Deep expertise with exFAT/FAT32 and camera/video container repair (MP4/MOV/MXF)

• Clear communication and rapid turnaround options

Contact Us – Free Diagnostics

Leicester & Coventry Data Recovery – Send a brief description of the fault and device (brand/model/camera or host), and we’ll advise the safest next step immediately.
For time-sensitive cases, ask about our Critical accelerated service.