Shoutbox

A friend's SD card has some problems. It is a 128MB Lexar card, and reports itself as 100% full (432 KB free), yet there is almost nothing on it. In the root directory there is a file named NIKON001.DSC which is less that 1KB, and when opened in Wordpad is just a bunch of spaces. There is a folder named MISC countaining AUTPRINT.MRK and order.njb, both under 1KB. And the DCIM\100NIKON\ directory is empty.

She remembers there being photos on there which she could view on her camera, but now the camera will not show the photos or take any more, as the card reports itself as being full.

I haven't been able to find any similar problems on Google. I tried a few different data recovery programs, and the only one that found anything was a trial version, which just said that is found 7 files, you had to buy it to recover the files. I tried 3 or 4 freeware programs, all of which said there were no files found.

Has anyone ever come across something like this? Any suggestions on data recovery programs or any other method of getting any information off the card? Or is it just dead? Would reformatting allow the card to be used again? If so, is it likely that this problem will re-occur?

Thanks a lot everyone!

Dallin

For the PC click on Tools > Folder Options > View > Show Hidden Files and Folders.

Check now to see if there are any hidden folders on the card taking up space.

Thanks, but I should have mentioned that I have hidden files and folders showing. The .DSC file is hidden, the other things I mentioned in my first post are not hidden, and there are no other files, hidden or visible.

I've heard that flash-based memory eventually wears down after so many write operations [although this number is between 10,000 and 1,000,000], it's possible that the memory is just too degraded. Or that the card is damaged in some way.

The only data recovery method I know of to fix this is the "Hard-Disk in the fridge" method, but I don't know how effective it'll be with flash-based memory.

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Originally posted by andrewdodd13
The only data recovery method I know of to fix this is the "Hard-Disk in the fridge" method, but I don't know how effective it'll be with flash-based memory.

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If you try it, remember that you might end up making water condends on the (inside of the) card, possible destroying it and hopes of other recovery methods. The "Hard-Disk in the fridge" method has a scientific theory behind it, but it's not acutally been tested properly, thus it might work for a flash disk. It could be just that putting it in the fridge makes people leave their disk alone for a few hours (or days), and even if it was out of the fridge it would have worked.

that happens to me all the time if u turn your computer off while reading it or hold it near a contactless card (one of thoses travel one with the microchip) you need to use a program like filescavenger or something similar to recover the data off it. it's a pain but crap happens

Thanks guys. FileScavenger was able to find some photos, but the free demo would only restore 64KB. But, that led me on to find Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery which was able to recover 6 photos. I think there were a lot more on there, but I can't expect to get everything.

Thanks for the help everyone. I will remember the fridge trick next time a hard drive fails on me. I guess now I'll format the card and test it out a bit, to see if it will hold data, and then give it back to her.

yeah that wat happens i lost all the photos i took @ my cuz's 21st because of that, and i can only restore 6 of like the 100 that were on there and i'm a bit to scared to reformat it yet. i'll try zero assumption thanx but it's contactless cards and not safely removing it that does it.