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The Data Doctor ....
... can recover lost or deleted camera photos/videos from:
Compact Flash Memory Stick Duo Memory StickPro miniSD Multi Media Card MMC SD Card xD Picture Card Mobile Phones CDR / CD-RW DVD / DVD RW Zip Disk Hard Disk Floppy Disk Micro Drive SD HC Cards Memory Stick Pro Duo Smart Media Video HDD PDA PCMCIA PC USB Thumb Drive DVD CD SxS Hard Disk Drive, Scratched CDs and DVDs.
.... can recover photos/videos from most manufacturers:
Canon Kodak Nikon FujiFilm Sony Casio NEC Imation Sanyo LG Sharp Pentax Ricoh Toshiba Hitachi Agfa Panasonic Chinon Fuji Konica HP Olympus Sony Samsung Epson Polaroid Minolta Mitsubishi Kyocera JVC Yashica Vivitar Agfa Leica and others
.... can recover pictures and videos in most formats including RAW formats :
JPG JPEG TIF BMP MPEG MOV Kodak DCR Konica MRW Fuji RAF GIF QuickTime TIFF WAV Olympus ORF MP3 Sigma XF3 Sony SRF Samsung DNG AVI Nikon NEF Pentax PEF and other formats
We offer a no data no charge promise as well as a strict privacy policy designed to protect our customers.
For a number of different reasons memory cards may become corrupted due to a power shortage, removal of the memory card whilst viewing, shooting or transferring images, viruses or for various other and often unknown reasons.
Symptoms Of A Damaged Memory Card
The Data Doctor is the leading photo recovery service for memory cards and Hard Disk drives used by digital camera and digital video cameras. We can recover lost, deleted, corrupted or formatted photos and video files from various memory cards and Video Hard Disk drives.
The Data Doctor Recovery Service uses a number of innovative media recovery algorithms and is the best recovery solution for image recovery, picture recovery, photo rescue, data recovery, photo restore or digital media recovery whether files were deleted, the media was corrupted or formatted.
Our unique technology completes those impossible recovery tasks quickly locating and restoring files.
The Data Doctor recovery service is safe and risk-free. We perform READ-ONLY operations on your digital media and do not move, delete, and modify the data to avoid causing further damage or overwriting. We recover the photos and movie clips and save them on a CD or DVD.
If you suspect your memory card is damaged we highly recommend that you stop further operations on the memory card (including taking new pictures, deleting images or formatting the memory card).
Additionally, we strongly suggest that you bring your damaged card directly to us and not to less experienced stores/services or operators - unfortunately, we have received cards that have been permanently destroyed by less experienced operators doing "their best" to recover images.
Tips To Avoid Memory Card Error & Damage
Causes Of Memory Card Failure
Common Symptoms Of Corrupt and Damaged Memory Cards
The Data Doctor is able to recover the lost pictures and videos in most cases.
We offer a no data no charge promise as well as a strict privacy policy designed to protect our customers.
Our Data Doctor Recovery service makes your recovery process quick and painless. Simply bring your card in to us, courier it in or mail it.
By Mail : If you would like to send us your memory card for image recovery, please address it to:
michaels Camera Video Digital
Attn: Photo Laboratory
GPO Box 2047
Melbourne 3001
Package your memory card securely and ideally send it using a postage service that can track your package.
Please remember to include all contact information including name, street address, phone number, and e-mail address. We will call you to confirm receipt.
Include your credit card information (account #, expiration date, name and security code that appears on the back of the card) unless you have previously arranged an alternative method of payment. Alternatively, you may call to provide credit card information prior to shipment of your card and the recovered images on CD/DVD.
Your recovered images can be returned by post or by courier (which is tracked) or be downloaded from our FTP server. Shipping costs are dependent on the size and type of your order.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to call our Photo Laboratory on 03 9672 2222.
Can I re-use my memory card after my images/videos are recovered?
The Data Doctor does not change the data on the memory card and does not repair or fix it.
If you need the card after The Data Doctor has recovered your lost images, you may try to format the memory card before re-use. It is suggested that you perform a large number of read/write tests (shooting/reviewing/downloading/reviewing) before using it again to take new pictures.
Once a memory card is unstable future data loss may occur, we strongly suggest that you purchase and use a new memory card.
Your valuable and irreplaceable photos/videos are more important risking using an unstable memory card. Memory card are now relatively inexpensive.
Types Of Card Damage
In general, the causes of the above symptoms that stop us from accessing the data fall into two categories - Logical Damage and Physical Damage:
Logical Damage includes file system corruption, accidentally deleted, etc.; in such cases, the devices are physically in good condition, and files can be recovered by using our specialised software techniques.
Physical Damage is data loss caused by damage of device components (PCB, controller chip) and service area information (both in controller chip and flash memory chip); recovery from such kind of devices requires the ability to work on the NAND chip directly for reading the data and rebuilding the data to an original status without the service area information (controller content).
The Data Doctor Recovery Service Features:
- Recover deleted photos from memory cards
- Recover lost photos from memory cards
- Recover photos from formatted memory cards
- Recover photos from damaged, unreadable or defective memory cards
- Recover pictures from removable storage including floppy disks, Zip disks etc.
- Recover images, audio/video, MP3/MP4 files from MP3 players, PDAs.
Supported Situations:
- Photos deleted accidentally or intentionally from memory cards.
- Photo loss due to formatting or "Delete All" operation.
- Memory card error or damage, or inaccessible memory card.
- Corruption due to the card being pulled out while your camera is on.
- Damage due to turning your camera off during a write/read process.
- Data corruption due to critical areas damage e.g. FAT, ROOT, BOOT area damage.
- Data loss due to using between different cameras, computers and devices.
- Other events that have caused damage to data.
About Flash Memory And Data Recovery
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer memory that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It is a technology that is primarily used in memory cards and USB flash drives for general storage and transfer of data between computers and other digital products.
It is a specific type of EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) that is erased and programmed in large blocks; in early flash the entire chip had to be erased at once. Flash memory costs far less than byte-programmable EEPROM and therefore has become the dominant technology wherever a significant amount of non-volatile, solid state storage is needed.
Example applications include:
- Digital cameras
- PDAs
- Laptop computers
- Digital audio players and
- Mobile phones
It has also gained popularity in the game console market, where it is often used instead of EEPROMs or battery-powered SRAM to save game data.
Since flash memory is non-volatile, no power is needed to maintain the information stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times (although not as fast as volatile DRAM memory used for main memory in PCs) and better kinetic shock resistance than hard disks.
Another feature of flash memory is that when packaged in a "memory card," it is reasonably durable, being able to withstand intense pressure, and extremes of temperature. These characteristics explain the popularity of flash memory in portable devices such as mobile phones, digital cameras, USB-stick drives and many others.
Flash Memory History
Flash memory can be divided mainly into NOR and NAND types through its development.
NOR-based flash has long erase and write times, but provides full address and data buses, allowing random access to any memory location. This makes it a suitable replacement for older ROM chips, which are used to store program code that rarely needs to be updated, such as a computer's BIOS or the firmware of set-top boxes. Its endurance is 10,000 to 1,000,000 erase cycles. NOR-based flash was the basis of early flash-based removable media; Compact Flash was originally based on NOR-based flash, later cards moved to less expensive NAND flash.
Almost all modern flash memory devices use NAND flash memory, named for the internal logic arrangement of its memory chips. NAND flash chips have low cost and are extremely compact and capable of fast read/write operations. A typical NAND flash memory device will contain one or more memory chips, very similar in appearance to those seen on memory modules or video cards, and a controller which handles the mediation between the memory and the interface connecting it to other devices.
NAND Flash Memories Basics
NAND Flash memories are accessed much like block devices such as hard disks or memory cards. Each block consists of a number of pages. The pages are typically 512 or 2,048 or 4,096 bytes in size. Associated with each page are a few bytes (typically 12-16 bytes) that should be used for storage of an error detection and correction checksum.
Typical block sizes include:
- 32 pages of 512 bytes each for a block size of 16 KB
- 64 pages of 2,048 bytes each for a block size of 128 KB
- 64 pages of 4,096 bytes each for a block size of 256 KB
- 128 pages of 4,096 bytes each for a block size of 512 KB
While reading and programming is performed on a page basis, erasure can only be performed on a block basis. Another limitation of NAND flash is data in a block can only be written sequentially. Number of Operations (NOPs) is the number of times the sectors can be programmed. So far this number for MLC flash is always one whereas for SLC flash it is four.
NAND devices also require bad block management by the device driver software, or by a separate controller chip. SD cards, for example, include controller circuitry to perform bad block management and wear levelling. When a logical block is accessed by high-level software, it is mapped to a physical block by the device driver or controller. A number of blocks on the flash chip may be set aside for storing mapping tables to deal with bad blocks, or the system may simply check each block at power-up to create a bad block map in RAM. The overall memory capacity gradually shrinks as more blocks are marked as bad.
NAND relies on ECC to compensate for bits that may spontaneously fail during normal device operation. This ECC may correct as little as one bit error in each 2048 bits, or up to 22 bits in each 2048 bits. If ECC cannot correct the error during read, it may still detect the error. When doing erase or program operations, the device can detect blocks that fail to program or erase and mark them bad. The data is then written to a different, good block, and the bad block map is updated.
Most NAND devices are shipped from the factory with some bad blocks which are typically identified and marked according to a specified bad block marking strategy. By allowing some bad blocks, the manufacturers achieve far higher yields than would be possible if all blocks had to be verified good. This significantly reduces NAND flash costs and only slightly decreases the storage capacity of the parts.
When executing software from NAND memories, virtual memory strategies are often used: memory contents must first be paged or copied into memory-mapped RAM and executed there (leading to the common combination of NAND + RAM). A memory management unit (MMU) in the system is helpful, but this can also be accomplished with overlays. For this reason, some systems will use a combination of NOR and NAND memories, where a smaller NOR memory is used as software ROM and a larger NAND memory is partitioned with a file system for use as a non-volatile data storage area.
NAND is best suited to systems requiring high capacity data storage. This type of flash architecture offers higher densities and larger capacities at lower cost with faster erase, sequential write, and sequential read speeds, sacrificing the random-access and execute in place advantage of the NOR architecture.
Data Recovery
Caution is required when storing data as the devices that the data is stored on can tend to fail with no warning. Many of the flash memory devices also known as thumb drives, memory cards or USB sticks fail with zero warning. These devices can fail for many reasons, some due to bad workmanship and others fail due to misuse.
Types Of Card Damage
In general, the causes of the above symptoms that stop us from accessing the data fall into two categories - Logical Damage and Physical Damage:
Logical Damage includes file system corruption, accidentally deleted, etc.; in such cases, the devices are physically in good condition, and files can be recovered by using our specialised software techniques.
Physical Damage is data loss caused by damage of device components (PCB, controller chip) and service area information (both in controller chip and flash memory chip); recovery from such kind of devices requires the ability to work on the NAND chip directly for reading the data and rebuilding the data to an original status without the service area information (controller content).
For these situations the internal NAND chip usually requires unsoldering from the memory card, cloning it using special a special flash reader device and using specialised software and algorithms to decipher image contents. It is a very a time-consuming process and requires a lot of patience and knowledge.
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