A desk chair went over an SD card lying on the floor. It is slightly bent, and since then no device will read it. The images on it are wanted. Being bent is a better description than being broken, and the difference matters, because a card is not one component. It is a small circuit board carrying a memory chip and a controller, with a row of gold contacts along one edge and a plastic shell around the lot. A crushing force cracks the board, tears the contact pads and flexes the shell. The memory package itself is a solid moulded block and is a good deal tougher than the things around it. If it survived, and it usually does, the images are still in it and the job is to read them without going through the broken parts.
| Media | SD card run over by a desk chair. Visibly bent, no longer read by any device. Images sought. |
| Reported situation | SD card · rolled over by a desk chair · slightly bent · no longer read by any device · images needed · recovery sought. |
| Fault class | Physical damage to the contacts or the board from a crushing force. The memory chip is normally intact behind cracked contacts or a fractured board. The images come back by reading the memory itself at chip level and going round the damage, unless the crush cracked the memory package itself. |
| Equipment used | Examined under the microscope at magnification, the bend, the contact pads and the board assessed for fractures · memory read at chip level past the damaged contacts, the package lifted off with hot air and read on a dedicated flash programmer where the board was unusable · the controller's translation rebuilt and the data descrambled, images carved out by content signature in PhotoRec, every frame rendered before it counted, then written to fresh media. |
Take a card apart in your head. Along one edge there are gold contact pads that the reader presses against. Behind them sits a small board carrying two components: a controller and a memory package. The plastic shell holds it together and does very little else. A crushing load flexes the whole assembly, and what fails first is almost always the pads and the board's copper traces, because they are thin and they are supported by nothing.
The memory itself is a different proposition. It is a moulded block of epoxy with silicon inside, and it tolerates flexing far better than the traces running to it. So a card that has been bent frequently has healthy memory sitting behind a broken road to it. That is why bent is not the same as gone.
Reading it means going round the damage rather than through it. Where the board still holds together, contact can be made past the ruined pads. Where it does not, the memory package is lifted off with hot air and read on a dedicated flash programmer directly. Both routes get raw memory contents, which are not files yet — flash controllers scramble and interleave data across the chip and keep a private translation table, so the raw dump has to be descrambled and the translation reconstructed before anything readable appears.
One thing to be clear about: this process destroys the card. That is the trade and it is stated in the quote, not discovered afterwards. The card was already unreadable, so there is nothing being given up except the plastic. It is priced as physical work with half the figure due before that stage, after a free assessment that finishes within 2 working days of arrival.
It went under the microscope at magnification, where the extent of the bend, the state of the contact pads and any fracture in the board could be seen properly. The memory package was checked for cracking first, because that is the one finding that changes the answer. It had survived. The memory was then read at chip level past the damaged contacts, with the package lifted off with hot air and read on a dedicated flash programmer where the board would not support a connection. The raw dump was descrambled, the controller's translation rebuilt, and the images lifted out by content signature in PhotoRec. Every frame was rendered before it counted as recovered, then written to fresh media.
Memory read at chip level, the images recovered onto fresh media, and the card itself consumed in the process as expected. The assessment cost nothing and ended with one fixed written figure for the fault found before any work began, with half due before the physical stage and the balance owed only on the result. The general point about cards is worth making here rather than in a leaflet: they are small, they get put down on desks and in pockets, and they are the least protected storage most people own. Anything you would be upset to lose should be off the card and onto something else before the end of the day it was shot.
Do not try to straighten it. Flexing a cracked board a second time is how surviving traces get torn and how a memory package that came through the first event gets cracked in the second. Do not push it into a reader repeatedly to see whether it catches; a bent card can short across damaged pads and damage what is left. Do not run recovery software, because nothing can read the card in the first place. Put it in a small rigid container so it cannot flex any further, mention how it was damaged, and send it. Expect to be told the card will not survive the recovery — that is normal for chip-level work and it is the honest cost of getting the pictures back.
Each file below comes from a genuine enquiry taken from households and firms across Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and the wider north-east, anonymised so nobody can be identified. Each one sets out how the fault was reasoned through, what was done about it, and which equipment did the work.
Assessment is free and takes 2 working days at most once it lands, the figure is fixed in writing, and logical work carries no fix no fee. Begin online, or lift the phone.