[The_Mike]

Hiya everyone.

I usually hate jumping into a forum and the first thing i do is start asking a bunch of things, but this is really blowing my fuse.

I have a miniSD card. My computer likes to do this thing where it auto-formats anything i put in it, and i forgot when i plugged in my card. So i thought, no big deal, i've had pretty good success with data recovery before.

But this time, I can't get anything back. At all. Comes up zero files found every single time.

I've tried about 8 or 9 programs including FinalData, EasyRecovery Pro, getdataback FAT, CardRecovery, Don't Panic!, and a bunch of others.

NOTHING SEEMS TO WORK.

Any suggestions? Or might the card actually be completely erased this time? Don't be afraid to suggest tech savvy things as I am a huge geek and would understand exactly what your saying.

Thanks in advance.

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Formatting alone doesn't erase the actual files, it just removes the filenames from the directory table so the card appears to be empty and new files can be written to it. It's this overwriting process which does the damage to any existing files, so for any chance of recovery after a format you must not write any new data to the card.

Some utilities you haven't mentioned as having been tried already:

http://www.cgsecurit...g/wiki/PhotoRec

http://www.diskinter.../features.shtml

http://www.free-news...tail_12424.html

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/

[pip22]

Formatting alone doesn't erase the actual files, it just removes the filenames from the directory table so the card appears to be empty and new files can be written to it. It's this overwriting process which does the damage to any existing files, so for any chance of recovery after a format you must not write any new data to the card.

Some utilities you haven't mentioned as having been tried already:

http://www.cgsecurit...g/wiki/PhotoRec

http://www.diskinter.../features.shtml

http://www.free-news...tail_12424.html

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/

[The_Mike]

Just tried all of those. Nothing came up at all. But I am going to keep them for future use, especially that first one.

Thanks anyway for the help.

[John Hook]

Mike,

Check out these sites:

http://www.techspot....topic45834.html

http://software.tech...px?docid=296139

Seems that there are specific folders that need to be in place - so it's more complicated that just setting it up as a new FAT drive.

What are you trying to accomplish? Move files from the SD card to your pc - then reformat the SD card? Your phone (I'm assuming it's a phone)

should have the means of reformatting the card. If you're just trying to extract files from the SD card and move them to your PC -

you should be able to open up the SD card on your PC in READ-ONLY mode so the PC cannot mess up the SD flash card.

If you give me more specifics - I might be able to help.

- John

[The_Mike]

I do not need the card formatted. I need to get back what WAS on the card before it was formatted.

I'm not even sure how it got formatted in the first place. I plugged it in my card reader, explorer froze/crashed. I reloaded it, and the card was blank. I'm only left to assume windows took a crap on it.

In all honesty I don't even remember whats on the card, I found it sitting around here.



Is what i get when i try to run that last program.

As far as more information, let me know what you want to know, because I really don't know what else to say.

[John Hook]

Mike,

What device is the MiniSD card from? If a phone, what make & model. I've don't some searching and it seems that there are phones with MiniSD cards that encrypt the data or use a proprietary format on the card which is not standard Windows-readable FAT or FAT32 format. It may be possible to read this card on your PC via a USB card reader with a MiniSD card adapter - but ONLY if you've installed the software on your PC specific to your cell phone.

Example:

http://www.geek.com/...p?id=25954


My nephew has a LG Fusic phone with a MiniSD card that we can read-write to via an XP PC with no problems. It may be that YOUR phone brand/model is using some proprietary format on that card which cannot be read as a FAT formatted disc on a PC (possibly without some special software or drivers installed on the PC). If you insert any kind of Flash USB card in a PC that can't be read - Windows generally tells you that it needs to be formatted - and based on your response - Windows WILL format the card in a Windows readeable format. This is likely what happened with your MiniSD card. While formatting generally doesn't physically delete the files on a drive - if that card had some special/encrypted format specific to your phone - it's VERY unlikely that you'll find PC software that can recover it after it's been formatted as a FAT filesystem.

- John