# Card Failure: Lexar CF 32GB 1000x



## Chris Burch (Apr 28, 2014)

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.


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## neuroanatomist (Apr 28, 2014)

Probably a longshot, but have you contacted Lexar?

Good luck!


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## Orangutan (Apr 28, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> 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.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Apr 28, 2014)

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.


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## Chris Burch (Apr 29, 2014)

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.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Apr 29, 2014)

Chris Burch said:


> 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.


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## Chris Burch (May 1, 2014)

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.


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## adhocphotographer (May 3, 2014)

Chris Burch said:


> 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!


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## Don Haines (May 3, 2014)

Chris Burch said:


> 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....


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## Orangutan (May 3, 2014)

Chris Burch said:


> 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.


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## Andrew Davies Photography (May 8, 2014)

Chris Burch said:


> 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


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## expatinasia (May 8, 2014)

Andrew Davies Photography said:


> 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.


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## Chris Burch (May 29, 2014)

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.


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## Orangutan (May 29, 2014)

Chris Burch said:


> 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?


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## fugu82 (May 29, 2014)

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


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## Mt Spokane Photography (May 29, 2014)

Andrew Davies Photography said:


> Chris Burch said:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> ...


 
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.


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## infared (May 29, 2014)

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.


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## Boyer U. Klum-Cey (May 30, 2014)

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.


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## Joe M (May 30, 2014)

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.


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## drmikeinpdx (May 30, 2014)

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.


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## Maui5150 (May 30, 2014)

As for a chip swap.. Good luck with that. Even though a card may be the same, often their are tweaks in a generation, so two identical 32GB 1000x may have different internals.

Learned this the hard way. Not with flash cards, but with flash drives... speaking of which, I back my USB drives regularly to my PC and even if functioning, after about 18 months, I toss and replace.

They run like a tank, even with daily use... until they fail.


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## chris haylett (May 30, 2014)

I had a Lexar 32GB 1000x card fail awhile back and spoke with various people at Lexar about it. I had been using an older Sandisk FW800 card reader, as my MAC location laptop only had Firewire 800 and not USB3. Lexar, in no uncertain terms informed me that all their UDMA 7 cards must be downloaded using a UDMA 7 compliant card reader - they didn't care which brand, just UDMA 7. They said that using a non-UDMA card reader might not cause the card to fail immediately, but it will eventually - no if, and's or buts. They replaced my card N/C. I posted about this awhile back and got flamed by someone claiming to be an engineer, blah, blah, blah, but the fact is, Lexar themselves is saying this, not me. So, I don't know if the card reader really is/was the entire problem, but I'm sure not taking a chance. I'm using a new UDMA card reader and suffering with the slower transfer times as it's bottlenecking into the USB2 port, but better that than going against Lexar's directive and potentially wrecking a card and losing all my images.


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## scottburgess (May 30, 2014)

Orangutan said:


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



From the company's web site: 
http://datarecovery.lc-tech.com/documents/lctechnologydatarecoveryservice.pdf


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## stein (Sep 18, 2014)

This is a true nightmare , I've been using the LEXAR 128GB 800x with NO problems for a year in 7D and 5D mkIII - but my SD 128Gb Sandisk broke/split as I inserted it into the camera in darkness (night time photo). SD-cards are so weak physically so be aware! Another SD-card failure is trying to insert it wrong way (contacts opposite) that breaks the card as well 
Stein, Norway
http://tromsofoto.net


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## Mitch.Conner (Sep 19, 2014)

Boyer U. Klum-Cey said:


> 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.



I own two Lexar 32GB 1000x CF cards that I use much more than my SanDisk Extreme Pro 32GB cards. This thread has me concerned and wondering if I should just use my current (and buy more) SanDisk Extreme Pro cards from now on.


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## Chris Burch (Sep 19, 2014)

In talking with the company that eventually recovered the data, he said they see about equal numbers of Lexar and SanDisk failures. He did mention that SanDisk encrypts the data within the card, which makes recovery more difficult. As a result, I havne't abandoned my Lexar cards. It is unnerving though. I've started dual writing a lot more.


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## expatinasia (Sep 23, 2014)

Chris Burch said:


> In talking with the company that eventually recovered the data, he said they see about equal numbers of Lexar and SanDisk failures.



Thanks for highlight that important fact. I think it is all too easy for threads like this to become a SanDisk v Lexar and ultimately it all boils down to our own experiences with each brand. My cards are mainly Lexar at the moment and so far so good. (probably shouldn't have said that!! : )


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## alexanderferdinand (Oct 24, 2014)

Owning different brands in the past and now (Sandisk, Lexar, Transcend, Sony, Samsung, Toshiba) I had issues with:
Transcend 16GB CF 600x (very slow, didnt loose images. Slow. compared to others 1/3 speed)
Sandisk 16GB CF 60MB/s (look above)
Samsung SD (the metal one) didnt work at all at delivery
Sony SD 16GB 94MB/s didnt work in the Sony RX100 (!!), h2test found errors

My 1D Mk4 has sometimes hickup at longer series with the CF card (no matter which), cannot reproduce or provoke it........

My observations thrown in.
addendum: the more expensive a card is, the more honest seem to be their speed.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 24, 2014)

Mitch.Conner said:


> Boyer U. Klum-Cey said:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> ...


 
All cards have failures. Some have mentioned that their companies will no longer buy Sandisk due to high failure rates and a analysis of the problem. Its all overblown. 

Always have spare cards, any of them can fail.


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## Warrenl (Oct 24, 2014)

chris haylett said:


> They said that using a non-UDMA card reader might not cause the card to fail immediately, but it will eventually - no if, and's or buts.



I had two Lexar 1000x 32G cards fail within one month of each other. I got the same advice as Chris from Lexar. Was also using Firewire 800 card readers.


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## No Mayo (Oct 25, 2014)

I just called Lexar and was told…
1) Yes, using the firewire 800 card reader has probably already corrupted my 1000 speed lexar cards. Even though they continue to work fine for now.
2) Order the new card reader that is USB 3.0 and most importantly supports UDMA 7.
3) All card readers ordered directly from LEXAR will be REV E (revision E?). This (latest) revision addresses this latest card corruption issue.
4) Yes, I can order it from B+H for $15 cheaper and if it does not have "revE" printed in the serial/model number I can update it's firmware for free directly from www.lexar.com.
5) I can then also repair my 1000 speed cards using my new and updated card reader.
6) This will make my cards new again and remove any data corruption that is skulking on my cards.
7) The cards affected include all the 800 speed and up.
He also explained that the issue was that the new cards are sending info faster than the reader can process it. The reader then sends some of the overflow data back onto the card. (The new reader can manage the data properly with the buffer.) This is the corruption source and evidently if left unfixed it is a time bomb. While I agree that any card can fail at any time, I will be thwarting this cause by ordering the new reader and following the lexar update instructions.
8) I did not ask for a link to do the updates/repairs on the new reader (if necessary) and the cards. I told him that I would call when I had my new card reader.


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## Warrenl (Oct 25, 2014)

No Mayo said:


> I just called Lexar and was told…
> 1) Yes, using the firewire 800 card reader has probably already corrupted my 1000 speed lexar cards. Even though they continue to work fine for now.
> 
> 
> Interesting....


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 25, 2014)

No Mayo said:


> I just called Lexar and was told…
> 1) Yes, using the firewire 800 card reader has probably already corrupted my 1000 speed lexar cards. Even though they continue to work fine for now.
> 2) Order the new card reader that is USB 3.0 and most importantly supports UDMA 7.
> 3) All card readers ordered directly from LEXAR will be REV E (revision E?). This (latest) revision addresses this latest card corruption issue.
> ...


 
The new reader and firmware updates for the old have been around for years now. Lexar sent me a new one 6 months ago when I complained that my old one dropped off line after a hour or two. The replacement doesn't do that.


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