[ajzNew Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Posts: 1 Offline]

This is a follow up to retrieval when the SD card fails with the M9 w/ 1.62 firmware.

I made images last August 28th. I was using Transcend SDHC 16 gig card in a Leica M9; it was producing only DNG files which were about 37meg each.

I made a number of images in the morning and had reviewed several near noon. I then made more images in the afternoon with a few successful reviews on the camera’s screen. Near the late afternoon, I made an image and decided to review it and the image correctly came up but it was listed as 1 of 1 image. All the other images were missing. I made an immediate second image, and it was also listed as 1 or 1 image with the immediate previously image having disappeared as well as the day’s entire number of images missing in the review function within the camera.

I was traveling by bicycle in the middle of Illinois and I only had a netbook. The netbook stated that the SD card required formatting. I did not format the card. I tried several different downloadable recover softwares but none were able to even access the card as the label volume was not readable. Plus I was on the road, needing to carry on and couldn't be fiddling with software ‘play' on the road…The next day I got a message from Transcend saying that some of the their HC cards were failing…and by looking at the details on the Leica forum you can see more iterations of these failures.

I tried a number of software when I returned home. None worked. I sent the card to a recovery agency in Florida (L Technology). They broke apart the card (I presume to remove/check the lock on the card—which I never used and do not ever use on my cards). They were unable to produce any recovered files. I was able to place the card in two different card readers and the computer will recognize that the volume is not readable.

So I searched around and found Memofix, a Canadian company. They received my card at the end of Sept and returned it to me last week (Oct 28, 2011) with 195 complete images and 17 damaged images. They were able indeed to retrieve a host of images. I am completely satisfied that they accomplished this. They were courteous and informative. I asked the rep, Bob, what did they have to do? His reply:

As to your question of the work done let me explain in brief as it is the techs that do this job and I am a step removed. Basically, we removed your memory chip from the circuit board and read the chip. This work is not the big challenge. The challenge is figuring out the data translation. Simply put, there is more memory on these chips than advertised because the manufacturers alternate where data is written to so it is not written in the same spot all the time. They do this to prolong the life of these devices. Different manufacturers have different schemes (or algorithms) on how these patterns work. So, the big challenge in these cases is to figure this info out. It takes skill, research and trial and error to find the closest pattern possible. Think of it as a large puzzle with the image being mainly one color. As you can see, not easy and very time consuming. With many memory devices now larger in capacity, we are seeing them comprised of multiple chips. In these cases, the complexity of the recovery goes up by many factors of magnitude.

So that's my story. I realize that Leica is about to produce a new firmware to address this. But I thought that perhaps there may be other episodes of different kind of failures that this place may be able to help any and all of us. I have no financial interest in this company other than I paid them a lot of money. I would easily ask them for help again. (that is also why I posted this in two places)
Z
(travel images: picasaweb.google.com/ajz2020)

Software that failed:
Stellar Phoenix
Undeleter
Odboso PhotoRetrieval
CardRecovery (SanDisk Rescue Pro)
RecoverPlusPro (Arcksoft)
iCare Data Recovery

Company attempted but failed rescue:
LC Technology, LC Technology International Inc.
They took the SD card apart but were unable to retrieve anything; they did not reformat or harm the card other than splitting it physically apart.

Successful company was Memofix,
Memofix Hitech Services Inc. – Data Recovery, Drive Repairs, Service Logistics

[ajzNew Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Posts: 1 Offline]