Card Failure: Lexar CF 32GB 1000x

[Chris Burch]

About 2 weeks ago after a long shoot, my second shooter had a complete failure of a Lexar 32GB 1000x CF Card. The card had completely normal handling and had been used numerous times before without incident. For whatever reason, the controller chip on the card failed, which prevents all access to the card data. I found a company that specializes in "off-chip" data recovery where they pull the chips off and hook up to a NAND reader to pull the data. Unfortunately, this card is using a brand new chip for which no one seems to have the right socket to do this type of recovery. Has anyone else needed to do an off-chip recovery of this card? If so, I would REALLY appreciate knowing what company did it.

This isn't a request for recovery methods or software recommendations...it's a full hardware failure which requires specific equipment to read.

Thanks.

 

[Loswr]

Probably a longshot, but have you contacted Lexar?

Good luck!

 

[Orangutan]

Probably a longshot, but have you contacted Lexar?

Good luck!

+1

Lexar may be interested in doing a forensic exam to find out why their chip failed in a premium product. It could benefit both of you: they get info, you get your data back.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Lexar has a lifetime warranty on their cards, so sending it to them is the way to go. Of course, if someone has taken it apart, they may not be interested, as that for sure voids any warranty.

 

[Chris Burch]

I'm not trying to get replacement -- trying to get the data off of the card.

I asked about contacting Lexar and apparently these "sockets" are only used in data recovery, not something the manufacturers use. So far the only place that seems to have it is some company in Russia that may not be all that reliable.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I'm not trying to get replacement -- trying to get the data off of the card.

I asked about contacting Lexar and apparently these "sockets" are only used in data recovery, not something the manufacturers use. So far the only place that seems to have it is some company in Russia that may not be all that reliable.

It is indeed a long shot, but it takes only a short time to contact Lexar. If they don't do data recovery, they might be able to point you to a company that can deal with that particular card.

 

[Chris Burch]

Email to Lexar didn't prove to be useful. All they did was say there weren't aware of any problems with this card and offered to replace.

 

[adhocphotographer]

Email to Lexar didn't prove to be useful. All they did was say there weren't aware of any problems with this card and offered to replace.

Sounds useful to me!

 

[Don Haines]

Email to Lexar didn't prove to be useful. All they did was say there weren't aware of any problems with this card and offered to replace.

Not a very useful response at all. If you can't find someone to do the recovery, the only thing I can think of is to buy an identical card and do a chip swap... but that requires some very specialized soldering/desoldering equipment and lots of skill/experience with that sort of thing.... I am surprised that Lexar can't do that....

 

[Orangutan]

Email to Lexar didn't prove to be useful. All they did was say there weren't aware of any problems with this card and offered to replace.

Google for "drive recovery service" and "memory card recovery service." Some of the hard drive recovery services also do memory devices. If not, they should know who does. Make sure to follow-up and search for additional info on individual businesses once you've determined that they can do the work.

And here's Sandisk's page on lost data: http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4985/~/data-recovery-for-memory-cards-and-flash-drives, which refers to a recovery service.

 

[Andrew Davies Photography]

Email to Lexar didn't prove to be useful. All they did was say there weren't aware of any problems with this card and offered to replace.

Given that google indexes forum posts the Lexar Compact Flash Failure should be of importance for them to fix in order to instill faith in their premium range to US the photographers !

Maybe someone needs to point out this thread to them and if we all add our piece it will gain higher ranking in google and get notice by somebody with a brain in Lexar

 

[expatinasia]

Given that google indexes forum posts the Lexar Compact Flash Failure should be of importance for them to fix in order to instill faith in their premium range to US the photographers !

Maybe someone needs to point out this thread to them and if we all add our piece it will gain higher ranking in google and get notice by somebody with a brain in Lexar

I very much doubt it. What do we really have here? One person who had a problem with one card. I have a few Lexar cards, including a 64GB 1066X, two 32GB 1000X and a few others and have never had a problem. I am sure there are many more like me on these forums as well. I am also sure that there are a few that have had problems, but that would apply to SanDisk, Transcend and other brands as well. Lexar sells millions of cards per year, but most of the time you would only ever hear about those cards that caused problems. I feel for the OP, and I hope he finds a solution but I really do not think this one thread is going to deter pros from buying Lexar. It doesn't me.

 

[Chris Burch]

Final Update:

The first company I sent the card to spent almost a month trying to find a socket to read the chips on this card. I started calling around and found a different company, LC Technologies, who makes their own sockets and were optimistic about support the Lexar card. The first company finally gave up and offered to send the card to LC Tech with only a minimal charge. LC Tech received the card on a Monday and by Wednesday, already retrieved the data and had a USB drive in the mail. In the end, there were only 18 photos with partial to full corruption out of 893 total shots. I also card the Lexar card back with the removed chips, so I can return it for replacement.

I can't speak highly enough of LC Technologies (http://datarecovery.lc-tech.com/) and definitely recommend you use them if you need to recover data from a damaged card.

 

[Orangutan]

Final Update:

The first company I sent the card to spent almost a month trying to find a socket to read the chips on this card. I started calling around and found a different company, LC Technologies, who makes their own sockets and were optimistic about support the Lexar card. The first company finally gave up and offered to send the card to LC Tech with only a minimal charge. LC Tech received the card on a Monday and by Wednesday, already retrieved the data and had a USB drive in the mail. In the end, there were only 18 photos with partial to full corruption out of 893 total shots. I also card the Lexar card back with the removed chips, so I can return it for replacement.

I can't speak highly enough of LC Technologies (http://datarecovery.lc-tech.com/) and definitely recommend you use them if you need to recover data from a damaged card.

Do you mind sharing how much it cost for the recovery?

 

[fugu82]

Glad things finally worked out, and thanx for sharing info on LC. I will keep them in mind if this happens to me.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Email to Lexar didn't prove to be useful. All they did was say there weren't aware of any problems with this card and offered to replace.

Given that google indexes forum posts the Lexar Compact Flash Failure should be of importance for them to fix in order to instill faith in their premium range to US the photographers !

Maybe someone needs to point out this thread to them and if we all add our piece it will gain higher ranking in google and get notice by somebody with a brain in Lexar

I'm glad you retrieved the images. I just worked with Lexar Monday, I was not happy with the USB 3 dual slot reader I bought a little over a year ago. They offered to exchange it, so I sent it in on Tuesday. Its always possible that its the USB controller on my PC, whatever, it loses connectivity after a hour or two.

Fortunately, I didn't have a data issue, just have to unplug and re plug in the USB cable to bring it to life. I went thru a whole host of trial fixes first, but none worked.

I'll see if the replacement works ok. If not, I might buy a add-in USB 3 card and see if that fixes it.

 

[infared]

Hey...I had the same CPF card fail for me....can't remember the error message I was getting whilst shooting..but my 5DIII was giving me a strange error message...butt....I could view the images in the camera on the card...so I thought everything was cool....but when I got home ....nothing.. ...Glad I had the SD card..saved my but...I just reshot stuff....as I was suspicious even though I could view the images on the LCD....
I even tried my iSky Soft Data recovery software.
http://www.iskysoft.com/data-recovery-mac

Has worked great for me in the past if I format the card or something stupid (duh)...it gets it all back for me! ;D
...but alas..It did not recover any images off of the failed Lexar..
....So whatever happened with the failure of the card I attribute to Lexar....
The card was not mishandled, always ejected..blah..blah....
I got in touch with them and sent it in and they sent me another card......No Charge...
I have never had that happen before.......my Sandisks have never failed.......At least mine was not something with super important images.....
....but just be careful if you ever get an error message (it had a number assoc.with it.. ...but I do not remember what the number was)...cause even if you can view them on the camera's LCD...you could be $hit out of luck!!!!!
From what Chris has told us..I believe that my card failure was similar in nature to the type he had as my data recovery software did no work.

 

[Boyer U. Klum-Cey]

Same happened to me on Tuesday night using the same Lexar card as yours. Fortunately, I was shooting with two cameras, and retained more than the 30 images I need for the event on camera 2. This is my first Lexar failure ever from the days of my 40D to present. A bigg thank you to the authors of all the "build in redundancy" advice I have read on Canon Rumors.

 

[Joe M]

In all my days using digital, I've used Sandisk with the exception of picking up a Lexar Pro 64gb 400x about a year and a half ago. I'm very happy not to have lost data over the quirk it had but I did get it replaced. See my thread here...http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=20799.0
I'm now using the replacement which has been fine so far. Talking to tech support, I was told it sounded like a sector issue. I don't know about that and again, just glad I had a hint something might be up before losing photos.
To the OP, I'm sorry to hear you had issues but glad you could recover them. I'm hoping I don't jinx myself by bookmarking the recovery company but it's nice to know that should the worst ever happen, there is hope. Thank you.

 

[drmikeinpdx]

Thanks for the report. That's the same card I use in my 5D3. No problems in over a year and a half, but this may prompt me to pop an SD card in the second slot for backup.