Question 1

What kinds of drone failures does AerialRestore handle?

Accepted Answer

Accidental delete from the camera or card reader. SD card formatted in the drone or in a computer. 'Card error' / 'unable to write' mid-flight. Corrupted last clip when the battery died during recording. Cards that suddenly show 0 bytes or RAW filesystem. Clips that play as a black screen with audio. Files truncated or stuck at 0 KB. Camera says 'no SD card' even though one is inserted.

Question 2

My DJI says the last clip is corrupted — is that recoverable?

Accepted Answer

Almost always yes. When a DJI battery dies mid-record (or the drone crashes), the moov atom never gets written to the .MP4. The video data is still on the card; just the index is missing. AerialRestore reconstructs the missing moov atom and rewraps the H.264/H.265 stream into a playable file. We see this multiple times a day on Mavic 3 and Air 3 footage.

Question 3

Does it work on encrypted DJI .DAT logs?

Accepted Answer

We recover the .DAT files themselves so you can analyze them in DJI Assistant or DatCon. We do not break DJI's encryption — that's against their EULA — but we restore the file intact, which is what flight log analysts need.

Question 4

What about ProRes from Inspire 3 / X9-8K?

Accepted Answer

Yes. ProRes 422 HQ and ProRes RAW from Inspire 3 / Inspire 2 with X7/X9 cameras carve cleanly because Apple ProRes uses a well-defined frame structure. CFexpress cards from Inspire 3 supported via a card reader.

Question 5

Will recovering damage my card?

Accepted Answer

No — AerialRestore only reads from your card. Nothing is written back to it during scanning. We image the card in memory and recover from the image, so your physical card is untouched.

Question 6

Why $12.99 when Disk Drill / Recoverit charge $89+?

Accepted Answer

Because we built one tool for one job: drone video. We're not trying to be a Swiss-army recovery suite. Less surface area, less code, less price. One-time fee. No subscription. Lifetime updates.

Question 7

What if my card is physically damaged?

Accepted Answer

If the card is bent, snapped, or burnt — software can't help. We'll tell you that during the scan and refund you. For physical recovery, send the card to a clean-room lab (DriveSavers, Salvage Data) — expect $400-1500.

Drone Footage Recovery — DJI, Autel, Skydio