SD card damaged in freak accident

AshleyS · Jun 17, 2012

Hey guys!

I dropped my shootsac (on concrete..ouchie) with my Canon 100mm 2.8 and 50 1.4 in it. While the 50 is broken and won't focus, the 100mm is just fine. However, I had just slipped an 8gb SD card full of the detail shots into the pocket with the 100mm, before the bag dropped.

Are you following? The 100mm (which was capped at both ends, thank goodness) fell so hard that the SD card under it basically took the weight of it and the gold readable part of the card has a slight bend and the plastic dividers are clearly shifted a bit. It's not broken or cracked at all though.

The card is not readable by my USB cable from camera to Mac, SD card reader, printer card reader, or in the actual camera.

I need the best advice as these are important images and I've learned a great deal. I don't need to be told what I should have done, etc.

Does SanDisc do recovery services for situations like these? Thank you in advance

480sparky · Jun 17, 2012

"Recovery" software is designed to retrieve photos that have been deleted (trashed) or the card has been formatted.

If it's just the plastic that's damaged, you could get another super-cheap (1 or 2gb) card, and carefully swap the guts from this to the new cards' case. Or if there's part of the plastic that sticks up further than it should, that my prevent the card reader from making contact.

I'm sure just a little careful, judicious reworking of the card's shell will do the trick.

TCampbell · Jun 17, 2012

I've had the end of an SD card get slightly mangled and had to cut off the little plastic ribs that separate each contact. After doing that, the card was readable.

If, as you say, the card is not "broken or cracked", then likely it is just that the reader isn't getting solid contact with the card. Just trim away any damaged plastic rib. They are not actually critical to the proper function of the card and mostly serve to prevent things from touching the contacts (e.g. if it were in a pocket with some loose change, you wouldn't want the coins conducting across all the contacts.)