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Is this a real 32GB SDHC card? Here are two images of how the chip looks that I extracted from inside the case of the card.

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Sorry for the horrible picture quality. The side with the contacts has smooth black shiny plastic and the backside is also black but doesn't have a smooth finish. No signs of circuitry.

Card shows up with 524KB of space on an unknown file system. fsck told me it was read only. Windows tells me to format it. For some reason its case popped open just by gently putting my nail in the seam. I was requested to do data recovery from it. I guess it's not a real card then and nothing was ever written on it?

Interestingly howstuffworks shows in their example of what an SD card looks inside something similar to what I found inside except a bit longer. Is the one they showed real? http://computer.howstuffworks.com/secure-digital-memory-cards4.htm

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CausingUnderflowsEverywhere
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    Basic Windows tools are no option for identifying potentially damaged disk contents, since they'll always suggest formatting, if the format appears to be unknown. – Mario Oct 01 '16 at 06:24
  • Don't worry, I used linux tools and they didn't work. Also used a windows partition finding and fixing thing and it didn't find any partitions. – CausingUnderflowsEverywhere Oct 01 '16 at 06:26
  • There are tools that will write as much data, then verify the data was actually written, we cant tell anything from the pictures. Use one of those tools to verify the actual size of the card – Ramhound Oct 01 '16 at 06:50
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    From the photos it is impossible to tell. Given how small MicroSD cards are I wouldn't be surprised to see the basic circuitry of a Micro card being put into what is effectively a size adaptor. It would play well for manufacturing costs as the silicon is the most expensive part, while a plastic moulding is relatively cheap. Doing a longer run on a single expensive part is always cheaper than designing and making several smaller runs of different parts, even after you do post processing steps like putting them in different enclosures. – Mokubai Oct 01 '16 at 07:35
  • Why do you say that you can't tell anything from the photos, it's not the quality right? I'm just showing the size of it, which is exactly 1cm long. There is literally nothing to see on it as it's just black plastic. No sign of any IC – CausingUnderflowsEverywhere Oct 01 '16 at 14:53
  • Upon extreme close inspection of the chip using an enlarging eye piece, theres this line on a corner of the chip, I dont think it's manufacturer made, That guess comes from the fact that by inspecting the crack, it's not a clean cut, it's zigzagy like a rip. It's on the side of the chip where the switch would've been. I wonder if this chip received some damage to have the switch lost.

    @Ramhound I cannot use such a tool. The reason I have this card is I was asked to do data recovery. Can't overwrite their data if there truly is something here.

     – CausingUnderflowsEverywhere Oct 01 '16 at 15:00
  • Alright so I made an image of the 524KB using ddrescue, now looking at it with a hex editor there's some data starting at 512 bytes, everything before that is zeroes. But I supposed we've gotten off topic over to file system structures now. – CausingUnderflowsEverywhere Oct 01 '16 at 16:38
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    Those photos look like they are UFOs. Can you really not get better pictures? – Burgi Mar 23 '17 at 14:24

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Size doesn't matter for the actual storage (consider how small micro SD cards are). The outer shell is just to comply with the standard. Maybe that's missing here as well?

You should create a direct 1:1 image copy of the whole disk with dd and then use testdisk to look for partitions.

Mario
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