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SanDisk Ultra microSDXC (A1, UHS-I) — Memory card recovery case

1 TB monolithic microSD — reached and read the raw NAND via pinout and Rusolut VNR, but the LDPC-encoded data cannot be decoded with current tooling.

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Not recoverable Case DDR-2026-0002 · Completed July 17, 2026
DeviceMemory card
ManufacturerSanDisk
ModelUltra microSDXC (A1, UHS-I)
Capacity1 TB
InterfacemicroSDXC UHS-I
OutcomeNot recoverable

Serial numbers and any customer-identifying details are deliberately omitted.

What came in

A 1 TB SanDisk Ultra microSD card that was no longer readable — it could not be accessed through a card reader or any normal means, which is what brought it to a lab rather than a repair shop.

What we found

This is a monolithic card: the controller and NAND are fused into a single moulded package rather than existing as separate components, so there is no NAND chip to lift and read conventionally. Reading one at all means identifying the card's technical pinout and wiring directly to the exposed test pads. Beyond that, this generation of card uses LDPC (Low-Density Parity-Check) error correction, which is handled inside the original controller.

What we did

We identified the monolith pinout, wired the card to the exposed test points, and connected it to Rusolut VNR (Visual NAND Reconstructor). That worked — we were able to establish a connection and read the raw NAND. The obstacle came after: the data coming off the chip is LDPC-encoded, and decoding it requires the original controller's error-correction engine. Current flash recovery tooling cannot reconstruct user data from an LDPC-encoded raw dump on this class of device.

SanDisk Ultra 1 TB microSDXC UHS-I A1 memory card, front label
The card as received — a SanDisk Ultra 1 TB microSDXC (A1, UHS-I, Class 10).
Back of the monolithic microSD card with the moulding removed to expose the grid of gold technical test pads used to read the NAND directly
The reverse of the card with the moulding worked back to expose the technical test pads. On a monolith there is no separate NAND chip to remove — reading it at all means identifying the pinout and wiring straight to these points. We got a connection and read the chip; the LDPC encoding is what stopped the recovery.

Outcome

Not recoverable. There was no recovery fee — we only charge when we get your data back.

This case is a good illustration of a limit that is not about effort or equipment. We got further than most: the pinout was identified, the connection was made, and the raw NAND was read. But on modern high-capacity monolithic cards the error correction is bound to the controller, and when that controller is gone the encoded data cannot currently be turned back into files. It is an industry-wide tooling limitation rather than a fault of this particular card — one that may ease as recovery tools evolve, but that is where things stand today. We told the customer this honestly and there was no recovery fee. If you want the underlying detail, we wrote about it in our guide to LDPC error correction.

Every device is different. This is what happened with this specific drive — it isn't a prediction about yours. Two drives with identical symptoms can have very different causes and very different outcomes, which is exactly why we diagnose before we quote, and why we don't publish a success rate.

Dealing with something similar? See our memory card data recovery service, browse more cases in the case log, or read about what makes recovery hard.

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