Memory cards · filesystem fault · ADR-2025-3457
The Folder Read Empty. The Numbers Disagreed.
The card had sat for half a year, unused, in the old camera for approximately six months
, and when it came out of the drawer it looked the way it did when it went in: physically undamaged
, with no marks anywhere. All three machines she tried it on (laptop, desktop and a second camera) gave her the same unhelpful message, that the folder is empty or that there are no valid pictures
. Then she noticed the important detail that made the enquiry worth having. The card was only showing 14gb of usable space
, and that was out of the sixteen that the card actually held. She had done the maths.
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What failed, and why.
One number was lying, and one number was telling the truth. A genuine blank card will give you all of its available space as free. Her card offered two gigabytes less than it holds, which tells you that the file system is saying that there is something taking up that space, although it cannot identify what that is. This is what a damaged index appears as from the outside: the records that provide names for the images and point to where they start have become nonsensical. Each machine that reads cards has politely reported exactly what it found: nothing. Nothing is touching the actual images themselves. They remain in place where the camera placed them, completely unaware if anyone is able to locate them or not.
What the bench did with it.
The order of the job →| Equipment used | Its work on this job | The reason for it |
|---|---|---|
| Klennet Carver, stills | Rebuilt whole photographs using blocks that the index no longer named | Reads the internal layout of a picture file; other tools return a file in individual parts that open in nothing |
| PC-3000 Flash | Copied the entire contents of the card prior to examining a single structure | Directly reads the flash off the chips, going around the controller, with a maker-ID library kept updated here |
| UFS Explorer Professional Recovery | Restored any remaining records, and read the blocks they had stopped listing | When other applications will not open it, this application will open APFS, ReFS, XFS, ZFS and Btrfs. |
What the bench did with it.
The copy comes before the question
First imaging took place on a controlled reader, behind a write blocker, with a hash written across the copy so that each subsequent action would show evidence that it occurred based upon these same bytes. The card was then placed into a bag and remained inside until completion of all necessary actions. No diagnosis is ever urgent enough to warrant performing it on an original.
The occupied space was the place to look
Next, on the copy itself, the structures were opened and examined, and what they showed confirmed what she had noted herself. The records representing the folder were damaged, and although many blocks were identified as being in-use (for example by their presence in the allocation table) none of them had been referenced by any record in the directory. In cases where a record still held together it was repaired and used to lift each image, since an image lifted via its own entry retains its metadata (filename, date created, etc.) along with its associated chain. The blocks with no references were the real job.
A photograph will identify itself if asked
Images carve well because images are constructed according to a predetermined pattern, and this predetermined pattern allows each image to be recognised from within. This is the whole reason a card with a non-functional index is worth sending anywhere. Each of those occupied blocks was subsequently analysed to extract the signature at the beginning of each JPEG image file and camera RAW image file; each set of extracted data was re-assembled in order and then verified by attempting to open it instead of simply verifying its existence. If an image will not render then it has not been recovered, regardless of what a listing indicates about it.
What went home.
Many years' worth of images went home onto brand new media. Where there were surviving records, they returned under their original filenames and creation dates. Any additional images returned under names assigned by the bench. There was one caveat accompanying all of them: if a device offers to fix a card that reads empty, don't allow it to attempt to repair your card, as doing so would involve writing over records that would have otherwise brought the pictures back. Cards are priced in the published £250 + VAT band, which is seen in writing prior to any work.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
More jobs off camera cards.
Yours doing something similar? Power it down first.
Published prices are fixed. Memory cards and USB sticks are £250 + VAT. Any stand-alone drive is £300 + VAT. Drive configurations containing multiple disks (RAID, NAS or server) start at £500 + VAT. First assessments are always complimentary. Thereafter, data recovery charges are also fixed in advance and in writing, so you'll always know how much you owe before paying any money. Shut it down, get a quote first (by phone or with the form), then send it in or drop it off at our Guildford intake laboratory, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). On most jobs you only pay if we recover your data.