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How do people usually fix an SDHC card that has gone bad.

I

ingeborgdot

Golden Member
I was curious about how to fix an SDHC card that has started telling the camera the memory card has an error and that it is locked. Then when you went to put it in the computer the computer won't recognize it at all either. I did a Google on this problem and the only thing I could find was about the little slide on the side that would lock the card.

That was not the case with this as it happened in the camera. We were at a Luau in Maui and the card went to 0 and said Memory card error. Not a nice thing to see when you have a couple days worth of pictures from Kauai and another couple from Maui. I then placed the card in the computer when we got back from the Luau hoping I could recover them from the card. No program was going to be able to recover them because now the computer will not even recognize the card when I put it in. I cleaned the contacts on the card with a Q tip to make sure they were not dirty but that still did not help.

I was curious to find out what people have done to get the card to work. I did come up with a solution but am just wondering what others have done.
 
I don't care what google has as I have done hundreds of searches for this problem. I was curious to see what people on here have done, if anyone has had this problem. None of these searches could tell me what to do that fit my problem. At least I could not find one that did.
 
We'll have to determine whether the card itself is physically inaccessible or if the file system is corrupted. If it's corrupted but the card is readable chances are very good for retrieving pictures.

I'd plug the card in the SD slot for your computer. Go to 'Disk Management' on Windows and see if it displays the SD card. If it displays check to see if it recognizes the file system. If it does you can assign it a drive letter. More likely it'll show up as 'RAW'. If it's RAW you can use testdisk, photorec, or download the free trail version of Kroll Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional to see if it can find any files.

It seems like you're fairly new to data recovery so Knoll On-track will be your easiest route. It will allow you to recover one file at a time. You can do these things 1st and we'll figure out where to go from there.
 
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I went into the computer management and it was not in there. The computer would not recognize the disc at all. Whenever I put in the disc it always makes a beep and it shows up in computer management and also devices. It did not do this anymore. No recovery program would work because there was nothing to look for because it was not in my computer devices to check.
 
🙁 It's not looking good. I would also try another computer, but it looks like it's electrically dead. Only the pros can do much else.
 
Okay, if you read my last sentence I told you I got it to work after I tried one last thing. I worked with it for almost an hour of cleaning, moving the lock button etc. I left if for and hour and then tried again and it did not work. I tried one last thing and it worked after that. It still works now.
 
Glad you got it working. What was the one last thing you tried that made it work?
 
Good lord... Good luck. This will be one big confusion. Find a local buddy to help you recover the data.
 
Okay, I will tell you. I stuck it in the freezer for an hour. I tried it, and presto. All the pictures and video that were on there are now transferred to my computer. It still works today. Don't know how for how long but it works. I probably won't use it for anything I can't lose but may use it for some things.
 
Ok.

There's 2 types of damaged SD cards.

1) Corruption. Usually the partition tables or something gets messed up. Just format it and use some prog like getdataback to recover data.

2) Physical damage. You're going to have to transplant the chips. This is like when your HD heads die or something but the data is still intact. This is $$$ and very tough to do yourself since its a small part.

I had #1 and #2 happen to me. #2 I just gave up. I lost a weekend worth of shots on a 16gb card and just bought a new one.
 
You got your data back - trash it; your time is worth more than you've spent on it already. Things that heal themselves seldom stay that way. They also have a sensor that can tell when you store something important on it again and will choose that moment to fail. It all has to do with the Jenning's corollary to Murphy's Law which simply states that Mr. Murphy was an optimist..
 
This has happened a couple times to me before, once just putting it into a different camera and having it format it fixed the issue. But if you got your pictures off and still have doubts about its reliability I'd try to rma it.
 
nardz84 said:
I'd try to rma it.
Click to expand...

This. Well, as long as it is worth enough. A cheap 4GB SDHC Class 2 or Class 4 can be had for under $10 shipped (not even counting hot deals) so probably not even worth your while to RMA it. Now if it is super fast stuff or really big capacity, then RMA that stuff STAT!
 
Hmm. Freezer trick for SD cards? Really? I thought the only purpose of that was for HDs with mechanical problems. Since SD cards don't have moving parts...? Color me confused, but if it worked, it worked. Saving for future reference.
 
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