Computer Science Labs

Flash Doctor

The newly introduced Salvation Data Flash Data Recovery doctor is a professional tool for recovering data from damaged flash media devices suffering from either physical or logical failures. This is an advanced stand-alone kit comprised of both hardware and software.

The hardware helps to access and extract the flash user data content despite any damage to front end interfaces or memory controllers. Using a non-standard interface and commands, the software helps to reassemble and rebuild the extracted data which, due to the complex data distribution, defect list management and ‘wear-levelling’ techniques used by manufacturers (often referred to as ‘Data Mix’), would otherwise be unrecoverable.

Flash Data Recovery doctor employs a unique algorithm for all unencrypted NAND Flash memory chips from all vendors, irrespective of controller type, which detects and unscrambles the data mix without the need to know/use/emulate/analyse the original controller.

Thus the Flash Doctor can recover the ‘raw’ data directly from the flash memory storage components themselves and then re-assemble this recover the user data files.

The Flash Recovery Doctor supports data recovery from all NAND based flash storage devices such as SD, SM, MMC, XD, USB Flashdrive (unencrypted), MemoryStick, CompactFlash etc. (except those slim cards using non-standard NAND chips).

Recover data from the following failures:

Accidental file deletion/re-partition/format
File system corruption

Interface/PCB physical damage

Microcontroller firmware corruption

From the following devices:

USB Pendrive

SD Card

Memory Stick

CompactFlash Card

The Flash Recovery suite contains:

Stand-alone NAND Adaptor (adaptors for other flash microchips to be added soon)

Central Processing Console (USB Flash Reader)

Console to PC USB interconnect cable

User manual with data recovery case studies
Flash devices commonly fail due to the following problems

Logical problems such as file system damage or deleted files

Bad blocks in the flash chip(s), in such cases the device may be detected by the host PC, but fail to work properly or behave in an unstable manner

Device cannot be detected by the host PC at all.

The recovery process using the Flash Recovery Doctor would be as follows:

Attach the individual memory chip(s) to the adaptor/reader

Extract raw data as a file for all memory chips involved

Import all raw data files to the Flash Data Recovery doctor software, File Structure Emulator, for analysis operation. In Automatic Mode, the utility will automatically carry out all the necessary operations to recover the data. If the utility algorithm cannot build any suitable file structure model automatically Manual Mode can be activated allowing the user to individually adjust and set all the parameters for the rebuilding process until the file structure is reconstructed.

Browse the resulting file tree and recover to alternative media

Flash Doctor Data Sheet

Support List