Lab Operational Since: 17 Years, 9 Months, 30 Days·Facility Status: Fully Operational & Accepting New Cases·
Lab Operational Since: 17 Years, 9 Months, 30 Days·Facility Status: Fully Operational & Accepting New Cases·
Lab Operational Since: 17 Years, 9 Months, 30 Days·Facility Status: Fully Operational & Accepting New Cases·
Drone Data Recovery
Crashed DJI, Autel, and Skydio Footage from microSD and Onboard Storage
When a drone hits the ground, the camera rarely finishes the file it was writing. The aircraft loses power on impact, or the battery pops loose, before the camera writes the index that makes an MP4 playable. The footage is still on the microSD card; the file just has no map to it. We rebuild that map by hand, and if the card cracked in the crash, we read the NAND directly.
A drone writes its video the same way every clean recording does: the picture data goes down first, and a small index is written last when you stop recording. A crash cuts power before that last step. So the file holds the whole flight but carries no index, and every player rejects it as broken or zero bytes.
That distinction matters, because the footage you care about is sitting in the file untouched. The data is intact; the bookkeeping is missing. Recovering it is a reconstruction job, not a magic-trick of pulling deleted frames out of nowhere. We rebuild the missing index so a normal player can read the flight you already recorded.
Drone Failures We Recover03/11
Drone Failures We Recover
Unfinalized Recording After a Crash
The camera writes the video payload box (the mdat) as it flies, then writes the moov atom index when recording ends. A crash or a battery ejection on impact cuts power first, so the mdat is full but the moov atom never gets written.
The clip shows as 0 bytes, refuses to open, or plays for a fraction of a second and stops. This is the single most common drone case, and it is one of the more recoverable ones because the picture data is already on the card.
exFAT Corruption from Power Loss
DJI and most drones format the microSD card as exFAT. exFAT keeps one allocation table with no backup copy, so a power cut during a metadata write can orphan whole cluster chains and leave the card reading as RAW or empty. We image the card and rebuild the exFAT allocation bitmap and directory entries from the surviving structures so the files map back to their data.
Impact-Cracked microSD Card
A hard crash can crack the card body, snap the gold contacts, or shear a PCB trace. The NAND flash die that holds your footage usually survives that mechanical damage. When the card will not read in any slot, we go to the chip directly: desolder the NAND and read it on a dedicated NAND reader, then rebuild the image from the raw dump.
Card Pulled While the Aircraft Was Writing
Yanking the card before the drone has finished closing the file produces the same unfinalized MP4 as a crash, plus possible directory damage. The fix is the same: repair the file system, then reconstruct any clip whose moov atom never made it to the card.
Onboard Internal Storage
Some drone models cache video to internal storage on the aircraft alongside, or instead of, a removable card. When the card path is not available and the storage is soldered to the board, we read it at the board level rather than swapping it like a card.
Water and Mud Ingress
Crashes into water, snow, or wet ground push contaminants into the card slot and onto the contacts. We clean and stabilize the card before imaging so corrosion does not spread during the read, then recover the footage off the cleaned media.
Drones We Recover04/11
Drones We Recover
DJI Mavic, Air, and Mini
DJI consumer drones record to a removable microSD card, commonly formatted as exFAT, and write H.264 or H.265 video inside an MP4 or MOV container. Consumer DJI SD-card footage is generally not encrypted at rest, so once we image the card the video is readable. The usual case after a crash is an unfinalized clip plus some exFAT damage; we repair the file system and rebuild the orphaned recording.
Autel EVO
Autel EVO drones record to microSD with the same container format and the same moov-last write order as DJI, so the crash failure pattern is the same: a full mdat with no index. We image the card, repair the file system, and reconstruct the unfinalized clip using a same-model reference for the codec settings.
Skydio
Skydio drones store footage on microSD and, on some models, onboard internal storage. When the card reads, we treat it as a standard exFAT and MP4 recovery. When the only copy is on soldered internal storage, we read it at the board level.
Other UAVs and Action-Camera Payloads
Custom and FPV builds, agricultural and survey drones, and aircraft carrying a GoPro or similar action camera all record to flash media with the same H.264 or H.265 video in an MP4 or MOV container. The recovery workflow is identical: image the media, repair the file system, and rebuild any unfinalized clip.
What Not to Do with a Crashed Drone Card05/11
What Not to Do with a Crashed Drone Card
Do not let the drone or your phone reformat the card. When an aircraft sees a corrupted exFAT card, it often offers to format it so it can keep recording. A format overwrites the directory and allocation structures we use to map your files back to their data. Pull the card and set it aside instead.
Do not run chkdsk on the card. Windows chkdsk treats the orphaned clusters of an unfinalized clip as lost data and truncates them into .chk files. That breaks the contiguous video payload the reconstruction depends on, and the damage does not undo.
Do not keep flying on a card that misbehaved. If the card threw an error or dropped a clip, every new recording reuses the same free space and can overwrite the footage you want back. Stop using the card the moment it acts up.
Do not force a cracked card into a reader. A card with a snapped body or bent contacts can short a reader and damage the NAND. If the card is physically broken, leave it alone and ship it; we read the chip directly in the lab.
Why Must a Wet Drone Card Be Cleaned Before It Is Read?06/11
Why Must a Wet Drone Card Be Cleaned Before It Is Read?
A card pulled out of water has to be cleaned before it sees voltage. Applying power across contacts that still hold an electrolyte film drives anodic dissolution: the metal in the contacts and traces dissolves while current flows. Dissolved salts and minerals keep conducting long after the card looks dry.
Water on its own is not what kills a memory card. Voltage across a wet card is. The card that went into a pond and then straight into a reader is usually in worse condition than the one that stayed in the wet aircraft, and a card that looks and feels dry can still be conductive in the places that matter.
Salt water is the harder case. Dissolved salt leaves a conductive, corrosive film on the contacts and on any exposed trace, so the reaction keeps running after the visible water is gone and it speeds up the moment anything powers the card. Fresh water leaves mineral residue behind as well, in smaller quantity, and neither residue evaporates.
Do not dry the card out and then power it on. Rice pulls moisture out of the surrounding air, not out of the card, and a hair dryer only drives the water off and leaves the dissolved load behind. The rice and air-drying myth does its damage two days later, when the card someone has declared dry goes into a reader. Ship it wet rather than powered.
How a Water-Landed Card Is Cleaned and Imaged
The moisture is displaced with 99% isopropyl alcohol, which mixes with the water and carries it off the contacts and out of the seams instead of leaving it to evaporate in place and leave its dissolved load behind.
Cavitation in an ultrasonic bath clears the residue off the contact field and out of the seams around it, which a wipe or a rinse does not reach.
Inspection under the microscope comes next, looking for lifted pads, eaten traces, and residue the bath did not clear.
Only then is the card imaged. The card is read once, during imaging, and every later step runs on the image.
Cleaning does not reverse what corrosion already ate. Once it has worked through the connections into the die itself, there is no read path left to restore. The same goes for a card that was powered up repeatedly while wet and for untreated salt-water immersion left to sit for weeks; each one hands the reaction more time and more current to work with.
When the card body is past cleaning, the work moves to the die-level path in the chip-off step below, the same route as a monolithic microSD extraction. This is the cleaning sequence our board-level water damage recovery work runs on phone and laptop boards, applied to a much smaller piece of media.
DJI Splits Flight Data Across Three Places07/11
DJI Splits Flight Data Across Three Places
A flight log is a separate deliverable from the video. An insurance adjuster, a manufacturer handling a warranty dispute, or an incident report wants what the aircraft recorded about its own state: attitude, battery, motor and control inputs, position, and error codes. The video file carries none of that.
On DJI aircraft that data is spread across three separate places, and which one you need decides whether this is a card job, a phone job, or a board-level job on the airframe.
Caption telemetry written beside the footage
With video captions enabled, DJI cameras record flight values as subtitle data alongside the clip on the camera microSD card, written on most models as a companion .SRT file next to the clip and on some models into the video file itself. Either way it travels with the footage, because it is inside the same card image we take before any repair work starts. Recovering it is not a separate job.
App-side log on the pilot's phone or tablet
The flight app keeps its own record on the device that was flying the aircraft. That record was never on the drone, so a crashed airframe cannot produce it and neither can we. If you still have the phone or tablet you flew with, the log is still sitting where the app wrote it.
Aircraft-side log on the drone's internal storage
The airframe writes its own .DAT flight record to internal storage on the aircraft. On current DJI firmware that record is encrypted, and DJI does not publish the key, so reading the internal storage at the chip level returns ciphertext rather than a readable log. Older generations built before that encryption are the exception.
What the aircraft can still hand over depends on the state it came back in. A destroyed airframe means the internal storage is read at the board level before anything can be evaluated, and on current firmware that read still returns encrypted contents. An aircraft that kept flying and logging after the incident overwrites the records you wanted with later flights. Cut the power instantly on impact and the last entries never reached storage.
We hand over the file the aircraft wrote and stop there. We do not interpret telemetry and we do not offer an opinion on what caused a crash; that reading belongs to the adjuster, the manufacturer, or whoever is writing the incident report.
Pricing for Drone Data Recovery08/11
Pricing for Drone Data Recovery
Drone recovery uses our flash media pricing. The tier depends on whether the work is logical (exFAT repair, moov atom reconstruction) or physical (an impact-cracked card that needs the NAND read directly). Every tier includes our no data, no fee guarantee, and there are no diagnostic fees.
01
Low complexity
Simple Copy
Your flash drive or SD card works, you just need the data moved off it
Functional media; data transfer to new storage
Rush available: +$100
$200
3-5 business days
02
Low complexity
Most Common
File System Recovery
Your flash drive or SD card isn't showing up, but it's not physically damaged
File system corruption. Visible to recovery software (R-Studio, UFS) but not to OS
Starting price; final depends on complexity
$300–$600
2-4 weeks
03
Medium complexity
PCB Repair
Your flash drive or SD card has shorted components or won't power on
PCB issues: simple shorts, failed components on the drive's circuit board
May require a donor drive (additional cost)
$600–$900
3-6 weeks
04
High complexity
Chip-off Data Recovery
Your flash drive or SD card needs physical NAND chip extraction to recover the data
NAND chip extraction via soldering, pin-out identification, and raw data reconstruction
50% deposit required
50% deposit required
$1,200–$1,500
4-8 weeks
Hardware Repair vs. Software Locks
Our "no data, no fee" policy applies to hardware recovery. We do not bill for unsuccessful physical repairs. If we replace a hard drive read/write head assembly or repair a liquid-damaged logic board to a bootable state, the hardware repair is complete and standard rates apply. If data remains inaccessible due to user-configured software locks, a forgotten passcode, or a remote wipe command, the physical repair is still billable. We cannot bypass user encryption or activation locks.
No data, no fee. Free evaluation and firm quote before any paid work. Full guarantee details. Chip-off recovery requires a 50% deposit because the extraction process is destructive to the original media.
Rush fee
+$100 rush fee to move to the front of the queue
All prices are plus applicable tax.
How We Rebuild a Crashed Drone Recording09/11
How We Rebuild a Crashed Drone Recording
Step 1: Image the Card Before Anything Else
We take a bit-for-bit image of the microSD card before any repair. If the card is healthy it goes into a write-blocked reader and clones in one pass. If it is unstable, we image it on a DeepSpar Disk Imager to manage read errors without stressing weak areas. Every later step works on the image, so the original card is never touched again once it is copied.
Step 2: Repair the exFAT File System
Drone cards are almost always exFAT. A power cut during a write can leave the allocation bitmap inconsistent and the directory entries half-updated, which is why the card shows as RAW or empty. We rebuild the exFAT structures from the surviving directory records and the allocation bitmap so the clips map back to their data. If the directory is gone, we move to carving the recordings out of the raw image instead.
Step 3: Isolate the Orphaned mdat
An unfinalized MP4 has its mdat box, the raw H.264 or H.265 bitstream of the flight, but no moov atom. We locate the mdat in the image and confirm its boundaries, then read into the bitstream to find the access-unit and NAL-unit structure. At this stage the data is all present; it has no index telling a player where each frame starts, how long it runs, or what codec settings to use.
Step 4: Rebuild the moov Atom from a Same-Model Reference
To synthesize the missing moov atom we use a healthy clip recorded by the same drone model on the same firmware. That reference supplies the sample description in stsd, which carries the codec configuration the orphaned bitstream was encoded with, plus the frame cadence in stts, the sample sizes in stsz, the sample-to-chunk map in stsc, and the chunk offsets in stco or co64.
We rebuild those sample tables against the orphaned mdat so the new index points at the real frames. A reference from a different model or firmware encodes frames differently and produces a file that will not decode, which is why the same-model clip is required.
Step 5: Validate the Rebuilt File
A rebuilt container is only finished when it decodes cleanly. We play the file end to end and check that the timing, audio sync, and frame count match the recorded flight rather than producing green frames, freezes, or a truncated clip. The output is a standard MP4 or MOV that opens in normal players without transcoding.
Step 6: Chip-Off for a Cracked Card
When the card body is broken and will not read in any slot, the data path is the NAND die itself. We desolder the NAND with an Atten 862 hot air rework station, repair any lifted pads with a Hakko FM-2032 iron, and read the bare chip on a dedicated NAND reader.
The raw dump still carries the flash translation layer scrambling and ECC, so we resolve the controller's layout to reassemble a logical image, then run the same exFAT and container reconstruction as any other card. This path is destructive to the original card, which is why it sits in the chip-off tier with a deposit.
When Drone Footage Is Worth Recovering10/11
When Drone Footage Is Worth Recovering
A crashed drone often holds the only copy of footage that cannot be reshot. The flight is over, the conditions are gone, and the client is waiting. These are the cases people send us most.
One failure on this list is not recoverable at any price, which is why it is worth ruling out before a flight rather than after one. If the card was sold reporting a capacity its flash does not have, footage written past the real boundary was discarded by the controller instead of stored, and there is nothing on the die for us to read.
Paid client work: wedding, real estate, and event footage that was shot once and cannot be repeated.
Survey and inspection data: mapping, agricultural, and structural inspection flights where the aircraft was lost on the last pass.
Incident documentation: footage of the crash itself or the moments leading up to it, needed for an insurance claim or a warranty dispute.
Personal flights: travel and family recordings from a trip that is not happening again.
Data Recovery Standards & Verification
Our Austin lab operates on a transparency-first model. We use industry-standard recovery tools, including PC-3000 and DeepSpar, combined with strict environmental controls to maintain drive integrity. This approach allows us to serve clients nationwide with consistent technical standards.
Serving clients nationwide via mail-in service since 2008. Our lead engineer holds PC-3000 and HEX Akademia certifications for hard drive firmware repair and mechanical recovery.
Our "No Data, No Charge" policy means we assume the risk of the recovery attempt, not the client.
LR
Technical Oversight
Louis Rossmann
Our engineers review all lab protocols to maintain technical accuracy and honest service. Since 2008, his focus has been on clear technical communication and accurate diagnostics rather than sales-driven explanations.
We believe in showing the bench rather than just describing it. Open-drive work runs on a 0.02 micron ULPA-filtered laminar clean bench, and we filmed it.
“All I can say is.. WOW. I spilled water on my laptop and couldn't find anywhere that would fix it, I kept thinking I would have to pay $1000+ for data recovery (always backup your files, kids) and thankfully I found Rossmann! I mailed it in right away!
They do water damage, no problem. Patrick was great and super helpful through the process and made everything smooth sailing. They also fixed my Mac within 48 hours and shipped it right back out to me. It was like all I did was shutdown the computer!”
“They are the best! My daughter spilled water on her keyboard. Apple store would charge $750 even though we still are in warranty saying they don't cover water damage. Rossmann group fixed it would Q-tips and didn't charge me anything! just told me "next time bring in something really broken". Will tell all my friends to go here for tech need!”
“These guys are awesome! Called a bunch of shops around San Antonio and they all said the whole motherboard would need to be replaced after I spilled water on mine and it would cost me around 1000$ to fix it, not only that, all my data would be lost (might as well buy a new laptop).”
“Sent my Mac for a water damage charging port and the transaction was transparent I’ve received a proposal and my computer is living again after Apple told me it couldn’t be repaired and the repair would cost so much I would be better buying a new one.”
Often, yes. The most common crash failure is an unfinalized recording: the drone lost power on impact before the camera wrote the moov atom, so the MP4 holds a valid video payload (the mdat) but no index, and no player will open it. We reconstruct the missing moov atom from the orphaned mdat using a healthy same-model reference clip from the same camera and firmware, which supplies the codec configuration and frame cadence needed to map the raw H.264 or H.265 bitstream. If the microSD card itself cracked on impact, we read the NAND directly after chip-off.
How much does drone data recovery cost?
Drone recovery follows our flash media pricing. A simple copy from a working microSD card sits at the lowest tier; a logical repair for exFAT corruption or moov atom reconstruction sits in the file system tier; an impact-cracked card that needs the NAND desoldered and read directly sits in the chip-off tier, which carries a deposit because the extraction is destructive to the original card. You get a firm quote after the free evaluation, and there is no charge if we recover nothing.
Why do you need a healthy reference clip from the same drone?
An unfinalized MP4 has the recorded bitstream in its mdat box but is missing the moov atom that indexes it. To rebuild that index we need the exact sample structure: the stsd codec configuration, the frame timing in stts, the sample sizes in stsz, the sample-to-chunk mapping in stsc, and the chunk offsets in stco or co64. A clip recorded by the same DJI, Autel, or Skydio model on the same firmware produces that structure, so it lets us map the orphaned payload correctly. A clip from a different model or firmware encodes frames differently and produces a file that will not play.
Can you recover a DJI Mavic, Air, or Mini SD card?
Yes. DJI Mavic, Air, and Mini drones record to a removable microSD card, commonly formatted as exFAT. If the card was pulled or the aircraft lost power during a write, the exFAT allocation bitmap and directory entries can be left inconsistent, which makes the card show as RAW or empty. We image the card, repair the exFAT metadata, and rebuild any unfinalized MP4 or MOV containers. Consumer DJI SD-card footage is generally not encrypted at rest, so once the card is imaged the video is readable.
My microSD card cracked in the crash. Is the footage gone?
Not necessarily. A microSD card stores data in a NAND flash die; a cracked plastic body or snapped contacts do not erase that die. When the card body is physically broken, we read the NAND directly: the chip is desoldered and read on a dedicated NAND reader, then the raw dump is reassembled into the exFAT image and the video files are carved out. This board-level path is the high-complexity tier and is destructive to the original card, so it requires a deposit.
What format do drones record in and why does it corrupt?
Most consumer drones record H.264 or H.265 video inside an MP4 or MOV container on an exFAT microSD card. The camera writes the large video payload (the mdat box) first and writes the moov atom index last, when recording stops cleanly. A crash or battery ejection cuts power before that final write, so the file has its footage but no index. exFAT compounds the risk because it keeps a single allocation table with no backup copy, so a power cut during a metadata update can orphan whole cluster chains.
Do you recover footage from Autel EVO and Skydio drones?
Yes. Autel EVO and Skydio drones record to microSD storage with the same MP4 or MOV container and the same moov-last write order as DJI, so the same crash failures apply. We image the card, repair the file system, and reconstruct unfinalized clips using a same-model reference for the codec configuration and frame cadence. Models with onboard internal storage instead of, or alongside, a card are read at the board level when the card path is not available.
My drone went into water. What do I do before shipping it?
Do not dry it out and power it on. Voltage applied across contacts that still hold an electrolyte film drives anodic dissolution, so the metal in the contacts and traces dissolves while the card is powered, and the dissolved salts and minerals keep conducting long after the card looks dry. Salt water is worse than fresh because the salt leaves a conductive, corrosive film that does not evaporate. Pull the microSD card if it comes out without force, keep it out of every reader, and ship it. Rice pulls moisture out of the surrounding air, not out of the card, and a hair dryer only drives the water off and leaves the dissolved load behind. In the lab we displace the moisture with 99% isopropyl alcohol, run the card through an ultrasonic bath so cavitation clears the residue off the contact field and out of the seams around it, inspect it, and only then image it. Corrosion that has already worked through into the die's own connections is where this stops being recoverable.
Can you get the flight log as well as the video?
It depends which of the three logs you need. With video captions enabled, DJI cameras record flight values as subtitle data alongside the clip on the camera microSD card, written on most models as a companion .SRT file and on some models into the video file itself, so that one comes back inside the same card image as the footage. The app-side log is a record on the pilot's phone or tablet; it was never on the aircraft, so a crashed drone cannot produce it. The aircraft writes its own .DAT record to internal storage, and on current DJI firmware that record is encrypted with a key DJI does not publish, so reading the internal storage at the chip level returns ciphertext rather than a readable log. Older generations built before that encryption are the exception. If the airframe is destroyed, the internal storage has to be read at the board level first, and an aircraft that kept flying after the incident can overwrite the records you wanted. We hand over the file the aircraft wrote; we do not decrypt it, interpret it, or offer an opinion on what caused the crash.
