Formatting a card does not wipe it. A camera format and a quick format both replace the small index that says where each picture starts and leave every image exactly where it was, which is why these recoveries succeed so often and why the only urgent thing is to stop using the card. This page covers the one version that genuinely cannot be recovered, and says so plainly.
Cards, sticks and pen drives are £250 + VAT, with the diagnostic free. A quick format or a camera format replaces the index and leaves the pictures where they are — which is why the only urgent instruction on this page is to stop using the card.
The word format covers several very different operations, and which one happened decides almost everything about what can be recovered. Work out which of these you are looking at before you do anything else.
Cameras write a fresh, empty directory and leave the pictures where they are. It is the friendliest version of this problem, and provided you have not shot anything since, the images are almost always still sitting on the card in full. Take the card out and put it somewhere safe rather than back in the camera.
The default on Windows and on most card tools. It writes a new file system and marks the whole card as empty without touching the contents. Recovery odds are high. The clock starts the moment anything is copied onto the card afterwards, because those writes land in the space your files still occupy.
A very different animal. Since Windows Vista, a full format writes zeros across the entire volume. There is nothing underneath to find afterwards, and no laboratory can change that. If you chose the slow option and let it finish, it is fair to say so now rather than take your money to confirm it.
The best possible position. That prompt means the file system is damaged and the contents are almost certainly intact. Do not agree, do not use the card, and do not let any device write to it. Rebuilding the structure from a copy of the card is routine work.
Deleting removes the directory entry and marks the space free, so the pictures remain until something overwrites them. The rules are the same: stop using the card immediately. Continuing to shoot on it is the one thing that turns a good recovery into a partial one.
It reads as zero bytes, will not mount at all, gets hot, or reports the wrong capacity. That is the controller or the flash rather than the file system. It is still worth a diagnostic, and some of this work is chip-level, which sits outside the no fix, no fee guarantee.
A memory card holds two separate things: a small area describing what is on the card and where each file starts, and the much larger area holding the contents. A quick format replaces the first and leaves the second exactly as it was. Every photograph is still physically present; what has gone is the list that told the camera and the computer where to look. Rebuilding that list, or identifying the images directly by their contents, is ordinary recovery work with good odds.
Which is also why the advice is always the same and always urgent: stop using the card. The space your pictures occupy is now marked as available, so the next thing written to that card is placed on top of them. One more afternoon of shooting on a formatted card can do more damage than the format did.
When the directory is gone, images are found by their signatures instead. Camera formats — JPEG, and the raw formats from each manufacturer — begin with recognisable byte patterns and carry their own internal structure, so they can be identified in the raw data and extracted whole. Video is harder, because a long clip is spread over many fragments and needs its container reassembled in order.
What that approach cannot give back is the original file name, the folder it lived in and sometimes the creation date, since all of that lived in the index that was overwritten. The image data is intact and the label is not. Most people are entirely happy with that once it is explained in advance, but it is better said before the job than after it.
Worth being explicit, because it saves a wasted parcel: this bench works on memory cards, USB sticks, hard drives, SSDs, external units, NAS boxes, arrays and recorder disks. It does not work on mobile phones or tablets in any form, including their internal storage. If the pictures are on the phone rather than on a card, this is not the right place and no amount of enthusiasm changes that.
Flash memory wears out. Cards used daily in a camera, a dashcam or a drone eventually reach the point where the controller starts hiding errors, and the first sign is usually a card that mounts as zero bytes, reports the wrong capacity or refuses to mount at all. Cheap cards bought from marketplaces are worse, and a proportion of them are relabelled to claim a capacity the flash inside does not have — those fail the first time they are filled past the real limit.
Many modern cards, particularly microSD, are built as a single sealed package with the controller and the flash in one piece, so there is no board to work on in the usual sense. Recovery is still possible in some cases and it is specialist, slow, chip-level work that falls outside the no fix, no fee guarantee. The diagnostic will tell you which sort of card you have before any money is spent.
Memory cards, USB sticks and pen drives are £250 + VAT, which is the whole answer for an SD card, microSD, CompactFlash or XQD. A single hard drive or SSD is £300 + VAT. Recorder disks from CCTV systems and encrypted volumes where you can supply the key are £400 + VAT. RAID, NAS, SAN and servers start at £500 + VAT and rise with the member count. Forensic work is £800 + VAT with a written report or £400 + VAT for a binary image with deleted-file extraction and no report.
The diagnostic is free and closes two working days after the card is booked in. The price is fixed in writing before anything is done. A formatted or deleted card is a logical job and runs under no fix, no fee — nothing usable returned means nothing to pay. Chip-level work on a failed card, along with electronic and mechanical failures, DVR jobs and forensic jobs, sits outside that guarantee.
Cards are small enough to lose in a large box, so tape the card to a piece of stiff card or put it in a small rigid case, then into a padded envelope. Include the shipping and booking-in form with your name, a number you actually answer and a line saying what happened — which format it was, what the card was used in, whether anything has been written since. That last detail changes the approach more than anything else on the form.
Send it tracked, or hand it in at Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD, Mon–Fri 9:00am–5:30pm. That is about 70 miles from Leicester, the M1 south to J19 then east on the A14, roughly ninety minutes, with parking outside the door two minutes from Junction 32. There is no Leicester counter and no collection service.
Card formatted in a camera and not used since: excellent odds, and often everything. Quick format on a computer with nothing written since: excellent odds. Either of those with a few days of continued use afterwards: partial, and the amount depends on how much was written. A full format that ran to completion: nothing to recover, and you deserve to be told that on the phone. A card that has physically failed: it depends on the construction, and the free diagnostic settles it.
Whatever the answer, the diagnostic costs nothing, so there is no version of this where finding out is the expensive part.
The photographs are still on there. Every new shot is written into the space they are sitting in, which is the only way this gets worse.
Cards, sticks and single drives are the easiest things in the world to post, and posting them is gentler than a day of being carried around in a coat pocket. A padded envelope handed over in Leicester tends to reach the Cambridge bench the next working day.
The general rule is the drive travels and the machine stays behind — out of the laptop, out of the tower, out of the iMac, out of the recorder under the counter. This bench does not dismantle equipment, and a repair shop will do it while you wait. Three things are the other way round, and getting them wrong costs you the recovery: an external drive stays sealed in its own case, a NAS comes as a complete unit, and a WD My Passport or My Book travels whole with its cable, because on those the encryption key is held on the bridge board rather than on the disk — separate the two and the data becomes unreadable even to us. A Fusion Mac needs both of its drives, each labelled. The one thing nobody can work round is flash soldered onto the mainboard, as on Apple Silicon machines: if it will not come off, there is nothing to post.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Address it to Cambridge Data Recovery. It is about seventy miles from Leicester if you fancy driving it — M1 south to Junction 19, then the A14 east — and the lab is two minutes off Junction 32 with parking at the door. Posting costs you a stamp and a day instead. Whichever you choose, you hear from us the moment it is booked in, and the free diagnostic closes two working days after that.
Not certain what belongs in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you tape it up, or let the free online diagnostic ask the questions for you.