Micro SD Card Failure (x2) - Monolithic Data Recovery With Soldering

Thunante

Thunante

Thunante

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I've had a bit of a nightmare and two of my SD cards, one used for file back up and another used to run a live version of Tails have both stopped working at the same time.

I'm not too bothered about the Tails card as I have all the seed's and PGP keys I need backed up on the other one which I was using with a USB C OTG adapter for android.

Currently when I plug the backup SD card into my laptop with an adapter ( I've tried 3 now ) it assigns a drive letter and appears as 'MXT-USB Storage Device USB Device' but when I try and access the drive it says it cant be read and needs formatting.

The card is a SanDisk Ultra 32GB Model number: ‎SDSQUA4-032G-GN6MT - (hoping that might help me find the'pin out plan' or instructions on which connectors to solder to which)

The card is a 32 GB card and when I view the card in testdisk it says its capacity is 32 / 30 mb - the data type is RAW.

I can't find any partitions even on a deep search and no data is revealed with diskpart either, after a bit of a research its my opinion that the controller must have died and I'm hoping my files are uncorrupted and still in readable shape, it appears all available software I've found cannot find any additional data on the card.

It seems my only option is monolithic data extraction through soldering which seems relatively straight forward, I read this page: https://blog.acelab.eu.com/pc-3000-flash-circuit-board-and-msd-card-preparing-and-soldering.html

The only issue is those instructions are written by the company which sells the equipment needed to extract the data and we are talking £1500 + but compared to the offer of £600 for a 30 min soldering job done in a lab I'd rather go DIY. Some of the data is also sensitive and dont want people to access it.

In this webpage of instructions you have to find a compatible pin out plan (which I cant seem to access through them) - so I guess I know which connectors to solder to which connectors on the circuit board, I then need to acquire a circuit board that has the required connectors to solder from the card onto, then an adapter to connect the circuit board to in order to extract the raw data, maybe into an img file ?

But by the sounds of things my data is sitting on the card, as its a NAND card if im not mistaken, untouched with the controller broken, so I need to extract it.

I can't see a basic circuit board and adapter costing more than £150 let alone £1000.

My question is, does anyone know of a cheap DIY solution or cheap equipment (circuit board + adapter) that would do the job ?

Or of course does anyone have any advice / alternatives I could look into ?

Appreciate the help.
 
Peculiar 2 would stop working
At the same time
First thing I would have tried plug them into
A different pc/laptop
Did you try that?
Apologies if you did but it's a very long post
So I may have missed it

@Vince is the first guy comes to mind (in these forums)
For soldering and all that other stuff you mentioned
Though have no idea
If he's got any experience with sd cards
And the stuff you mentioned
But he's certainly a clever guy and does do
A lot of mods and repair stuff

Tagged him for you anyway
Worst can happen is he says don't
Have a clue about sd cards
 
Thunante said:
I've had a bit of a nightmare and two of my SD cards, one used for file back up and another used to run a live version of Tails have both stopped working at the same time.

I'm not too bothered about the Tails card as I have all the seed's and PGP keys I need backed up on the other one which I was using with a USB C OTG adapter for android.

Currently when I plug the backup SD card into my laptop with an adapter ( I've tried 3 now ) it assigns a drive letter and appears as 'MXT-USB Storage Device USB Device' but when I try and access the drive it says it cant be read and needs formatting.

The card is a SanDisk Ultra 32GB Model number: ‎SDSQUA4-032G-GN6MT - (hoping that might help me find the'pin out plan' or instructions on which connectors to solder to which)

The card is a 32 GB card and when I view the card in testdisk it says its capacity is 32 / 30 mb - the data type is RAW.

I can't find any partitions even on a deep search and no data is revealed with diskpart either, after a bit of a research its my opinion that the controller must have died and I'm hoping my files are uncorrupted and still in readable shape, it appears all available software I've found cannot find any additional data on the card.

It seems my only option is monolithic data extraction through soldering which seems relatively straight forward, I read this page: https://blog.acelab.eu.com/pc-3000-flash-circuit-board-and-msd-card-preparing-and-soldering.html

The only issue is those instructions are written by the company which sells the equipment needed to extract the data and we are talking £1500 + but compared to the offer of £600 for a 30 min soldering job done in a lab I'd rather go DIY. Some of the data is also sensitive and dont want people to access it.

In this webpage of instructions you have to find a compatible pin out plan (which I cant seem to access through them) - so I guess I know which connectors to solder to which connectors on the circuit board, I then need to acquire a circuit board that has the required connectors to solder from the card onto, then an adapter to connect the circuit board to in order to extract the raw data, maybe into an img file ?

But by the sounds of things my data is sitting on the card, as its a NAND card if im not mistaken, untouched with the controller broken, so I need to extract it.

I can't see a basic circuit board and adapter costing more than £150 let alone £1000.

My question is, does anyone know of a cheap DIY solution or cheap equipment (circuit board + adapter) that would do the job ?

Or of course does anyone have any advice / alternatives I could look into ?

Appreciate the help.
Click to expand...

let me have a read through the link tomorrow. I might be able to build you a little board or something if its simple :) - Edit: having read that page you absolutely shouldn't try this yourself unless you have had a lot of soldering experience. There is another way you could potentially do this without the board etc using something like a t56 programmer - I do actually have a few sandisk ultras here so could potentially look into it a bit for you. I wouldn't DIY it without years of soldering experience tbh you will very likely **** it up and make it worse.
 
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Vince said:
let me have a read through the link tomorrow. I might be able to build you a little board or something if its simple :) - Edit: having read that page you absolutely shouldn't try this yourself unless you have had a lot of soldering experience. There is another way you could potentially do this without the board etc using something like a t56 programmer - I do actually have a few sandisk ultras here so could potentially look into it a bit for you. I wouldn't DIY it without years of soldering experience tbh you will very likely **** it up and make it worse.
Click to expand...
Thanks mate
Had a feeling you might be
The man for the job :)
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
Thanks mate
Had a feeling you might be
The man for the job :)
Click to expand...

I dont think I would take it on but I would be interested in seeing if I could wire one directly to my T45 or T56 and pull an image of the nand so potentially bypassing the dev board and programmer in the link. The thing is though if the data is that important/valuable just give it to a pro and reduce risk. Mind you I suspect the OP doesn't put that much value on it £150 appears to be the value put on the data and lets be honest its probably too much work for it to be worth it for £150.

eidt: So it appears that the pc3000 basically emulates the controller which makes sense I guess. This means that if you could pull a direct image of the nand you would still need the controller to make sense of whats in the image, the pc3000 basically is that controller and I guess thats why it costs ££££

There is a 3rd method. You could potentially use 2 cards, using one card to effectively read the nand on the broken card (assuming they have the same controller). Just kinda tossing ideas around in my head but technically that is possible and looking at some of the images on that site its basically running 24 wires from one card to another however micro SD cards are small and that's super fiddly work. You would also need to break the connection between the controller and the nand on the donor card which you could do by just cutting the vcc line to the nand after that its just a matter of patching them together and crossing your fingers.
 
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Yeah man for the job
Was more a you would at least have
Some ideas/suggestions
Than you would definitely be able to do it
Terminology on my part

Feel sorry for them
But as usual
If something is important to you
Backups, Backups, Backups then Backups of the Backups
32GB is such a small amount nowadays
You could probably pick up 10 x 32GB usb flash drives
For £30 or so
And have 10 Backups

I am all for fixing stuff myself
But in this instance
One mistake it could be curtains for it
If its that important I would be looking at professional
Data recovery firms
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
Yeah man for the job
Was more a you would at least have
Some ideas/suggestions
Than you would definitely be able to do it
Terminology on my part

Feel sorry for them
But as usual
If something is important to you
Backups, Backups, Backups then Backups of the Backups
32GB is such a small amount nowadays
You could probably pick up 10 x 32GB usb flash drives
For £30 or so
And have 10 Backups

I am all for fixing stuff myself
But in this instance
One mistake it could be curtains for it
If its that important I would be looking at professional
Data recovery firms
Click to expand...

I mean its totally doable in the right hands and there are a few different ways of doing it for sure. The cheapest I can think of right now of course being the two SD card method but again you need to know the chips pinout etc at least for vcc line to make it work (or you could measure it with a oscilloscope to work out data and voltage lines) - It's an interesting one but I can't see anybody taking it on or producing a dev board to help when the value put on the data is so low. Id be interested in what data recovery services would like to charge on it.
 
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