Recently I had my first experience of a critical memory card failing. In my case I had inadvertently deleted the files from my laptop and formatted the memory card they came from beofre I had copied them to my main computer. The images were critical to a magazine article I was writing. As a result I have invested in some professional memory card recovery software, and in the case of my files it managed to restore them all. A couple of weeks later I had a workshop participant contact me in a panic. All of the images he had made on a workshop with me were on a card which was failing to read. He posted the card to me and by return post I was able to send him a DVD with all of his images recovered.

This got me to thinking that this can happen to any of us at any time. Sometimes the images are not critical and so we put it down to experience. But on other occasions the files may be very important to us so I have decided to offer a disaster recovery service. It will work like this. If you have a card which is failing to read, post it to me. I will attempt to recover the files and if I do I will burn them to CD/DVD and return them to you ASAP with your memory card. If I fail to recover the files I will return your card to you. If I do succeed in recovering some or all of the images my fee will be £18 per card including Royal Mail Special Delivery return postage. NO FIX, NO FEE. I will return your card by post free of charge if I cannot retrieve your files.

Hopefully you will never need the service, but in case disaster strikes you have a good chance of getting your precious images back.