September 26, 2012 at 20:32Photos from a memory card that survived two winters on the street
This story happened to Andy Ihnatko, the columnist of The Chicago Sun Times, as he walked around the Boston Public Garden. During the walk, the journalist noticed how something shines underfoot. It turned out to be a camera. In very poor condition:
The entire rear panel was rust and corrosion. There was no point in saving the camera, but you could try to save the memory card. He took it out of the camera and opened the flash drive with a knife.
A camera found by Andy (photo of Andy)
After cleaning the card with a toothbrush from dirt, he found an old card reader and inserted a USB flash drive into it, but nothing happened. The map was dead.
Memory card removed from the camera (photo by Andy)
Then he decided to send her to a Boston-based data recovery company DriveSavers. A few days later, experts reported on how progress is being made on recovering data from a flash card. To begin with, they had to order spare parts. A few more days passed and, they achieved their goal, having restored more than 140 photos and 2 videos. Here are some of these shots:
According to DriveSavers, water corroded the contacts between the memory card and the chips of the USB controllers. Engineers cleaned the contacts and re-soldered them together. They did this work in a "clean room."
In addition to photo and video files, it was possible to restore the headers of documents that were once on the map but long ago deleted. Unfortunately, the contents of these documents have been permanently lost.
Memory Card (Photo DataSavers)
The biggest surprise was that the camera, along with the memory card, lay in water and mud for about two years. The flash card suffered two complete freezing and thawing. Recent photos were dated June 24, 2010.
Since Andy Ihnatko did not own this memory card, DriveSavers specialists, following their security policy, retained all the recovered data and the storage medium itself.
Two excellent conclusions follow from this story:
Well, from the translator we’ll also add conclusion No. 3: if you live not in Boston, but in Moscow, and want to repeat a similar trick with data recovery, contact the Storelab laboratory . We can handle it no worse ;-)
The entire rear panel was rust and corrosion. There was no point in saving the camera, but you could try to save the memory card. He took it out of the camera and opened the flash drive with a knife.
A camera found by Andy (photo of Andy)
After cleaning the card with a toothbrush from dirt, he found an old card reader and inserted a USB flash drive into it, but nothing happened. The map was dead.
Memory card removed from the camera (photo by Andy)
Then he decided to send her to a Boston-based data recovery company DriveSavers. A few days later, experts reported on how progress is being made on recovering data from a flash card. To begin with, they had to order spare parts. A few more days passed and, they achieved their goal, having restored more than 140 photos and 2 videos. Here are some of these shots:
According to DriveSavers, water corroded the contacts between the memory card and the chips of the USB controllers. Engineers cleaned the contacts and re-soldered them together. They did this work in a "clean room."
In addition to photo and video files, it was possible to restore the headers of documents that were once on the map but long ago deleted. Unfortunately, the contents of these documents have been permanently lost.
Memory Card (Photo DataSavers)
The biggest surprise was that the camera, along with the memory card, lay in water and mud for about two years. The flash card suffered two complete freezing and thawing. Recent photos were dated June 24, 2010.
Since Andy Ihnatko did not own this memory card, DriveSavers specialists, following their security policy, retained all the recovered data and the storage medium itself.
Two excellent conclusions follow from this story:
- There is no limit to what a service for recovering data from storage media can do, even if it has been lying in terrible conditions for several years.
- Use the strap so as not to lose the camera!
Well, from the translator we’ll also add conclusion No. 3: if you live not in Boston, but in Moscow, and want to repeat a similar trick with data recovery, contact the Storelab laboratory . We can handle it no worse ;-)