Lost Data!


FaeMinx

FaeMinx

Rainbow Liberation Instigation
Joined
Dec 11, 2010
Messages
3,143
Age
44
Location
outside looking in side looking out
A terrible thing has just happened.


I was deleting MP3s from my music folder on my 32GB SD card to make space for Broken Sword. I got called away to do something, and when I returned - 29GB of data was missing from my card! :( the only thing left is a few mp3 folders and a couple pnds I hadn't yet put into the correct folder structure - everything in my 'pandora' folder is gone!


I've taken the card out and looked at it with a card reader in my laptop. It is indeed all gone. I could cry.


Please, how do I recover the data??? I use win XP *crying*
 
First of all, don't store anything on the card. There's lots of programs out there to "undelete" files. Google file restoration. It's also importment to not restore the files *to* the SD-card, as that will probably overwrite other data.
 
I'm not going to touch the card. I've done a search and what I've found so far for SD card file recovery are aimed at restoring pictures... *bah*


I have a 1TB external drive I'll restore the data to when I find the right program.


Do you have any recommendations? :(
 
Ok... In the process of recovering data.


29GB will take quite some time though...


To be safe, I'm going to recover the data multiple times with a program I found 'MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.5 Freeware', and the ones you two suggested. Thanks.


I'll let you know how it goes. *holds thumbs*


Please oh please let all my PNDs work... and my roms and especially - my *save files* :mellow:
 
Mr Rob said:
Recuva (http://www.piriform.com/recuva) also seems to work pretty well.


I tend to be excessively paranoid about backups, I did one yesterday even. T'is a good reminder to everyone.
Click to expand...

I'll have learn't my lesson after this I tell you. :mellow:


So far so good... but looks like I'll have to go through my data with a fine tooth comb - there are many duplicate files and files that have been slightly renamed (usually the duplicates).


This is by using MiniTool. I'll check out Recuva as well. Thanks!
 
Could be worse, back in the DOS days, a file was marked deleted by simply "removing" the first character. Recovering the file was still possible, provided the particular blocks on disk hadn't been used, but you'd have to fill in the first character manually.


I once accidentally deleted thousands of files. Recovery took... a while.
 
WizardStan said:
Could be worse, back in the DOS days, a file was marked deleted by simply "removing" the first character. Recovering the file was still possible, provided the particular blocks on disk hadn't been used, but you'd have to fill in the first character manually.


I once accidentally deleted thousands of files. Recovery took... a while.
Click to expand...

Ouch! I've just recovered over 10000 files... If I had to rename them all... gosh... I can't imagine the agony of that.


Thank heavens my folder structure has been restored and that I have backups of most things anyway. For some reason I haven't been backing up my PNDs (why why you fool?). So priority one was getting those back as well as my appdata folder.


If I really have to I can reinstall my dos games, Scumm games, etc... but that would be tedious and take days when I don't have days to spare.


*** I've just finished recovering data with MiniTool. Took *ages*. Now I'm doing it all over again with Recuva, except I've excluded the Playstation, Music, and Movies folders. Tells me it'll be done in 40min... much more manageable.


I'll do this twice again with the other two recommended programs...


... then say a prayer and start copying data back onto the card. :unsure:
 
This is most distressing! In the two recovery sessions I've done my 'menu' folder doesn't show up at all... and that's where I kept all my PNDs.


Some of them show up in 'desktop' - but I haven't kept PNDs there for quite some time.


Why on earth would 'menu' just be completely gone?


Is there anything more I can do? :(
 
FaeMinx said:
This is most distressing! In the two recovery sessions I've done my 'menu' folder doesn't show up at all... and that's where I kept all my PNDs.


Some of them show up in 'desktop' - but I haven't kept PNDs there for quite some time.


Why on earth would 'menu' just be completely gone?


Is there anything more I can do? :(
Click to expand...

Trying to recover data is often a fickle experience. On most file systems, when you delete something, you really delete an entry in a table pointing to where the data is. So the deep scanning process is trying to find 'files' solely based on the data on the drive itself; the ones and zeros that made up the file. For say a jpeg image or even a text file (most of my 'appdata' is text), it's easier to find because a jpeg file has a certain header that defines geeky image stuff, text would fall within a range (think ASCII to binary conversions). But for PND files, I doubt those files will stand out easily. Plus then some PNDs are big and you now have say a single file fragmented all over the filesystem.


So yeah, file recovery sucks; I'm actually a bit shocked you've found some PNDs at least.
 
Mr Rob said:
So yeah, file recovery sucks; I'm actually a bit shocked you've found some PNDs at least.
Click to expand...

Yes, the two deep scans I performed last night turned up nothing new except a folder marked '?' filled with thousands of garbled files, a bunch of mp3s, and about 400 .zip files all named with consecutive numbers... I recovered the zips... on the off chance they may be PNDs ???


But I think I've done everything I can now... unless someone out there knows of a file recovery system that can recognize PNDs?


If I get no response to this I'll accept they're gone and start the slow process of putting my card back together again.


Thankfully there are a couple of people here who have offered to help by sending me a DVD or two of the PNDs I lost. Thank heavens for this community!


Should I reformat the card before I put data back on?
 
Don't stress yourself out, FaeMinx. It sounds like you did what you could. Someone will help replace your missing PND's. I would backup anything else you need off the card, reformat it, and start over (just my opinion). I hope your card is ok, as it is not really clear what happened there. Good Luck.
 
LuciferRising said:
it is not really clear what happened there. Good Luck.
Click to expand...

I know! I was using the 'Delete Permanently' script that I'd integrated into my right click menu... But I was inside my Music folder... perhaps I clicked on the 'pandora' folder in error... but why was there still stuff left inside it? I.e. my music folder was still inside 'pandora' but only a few sub-folders inside that remained.


It doesn't make sense.


I'm going to format the card now. Fat32 is best yes?
 
SONY said:
I thought NTFS would be more suitable for Windows users due to the 4GB max file size limitation that FAT32 has?
Click to expand...

Uuum, for Windows users who also have a Pandora, FAT32 I feel would be best. Stick the SD card into your laptop and it works in Windows just fine.


I doubt the OpenPandora Team can actually ship Pandora's with NTFS capability built in, due to licensing stuff -- the 'community codecs pack' allows the mounting of an NTFS filesystem, but with dubious legal implications. Also, most users won't run into the 4GB file limitation of FAT32.


For a Linux user using a Pandora, EXT2 would probably be best. FAT32 doesn't preserve all off Linux's file permissions and such, though for Pandora use it isn't a big deal. And EXT3 or EXT4 is write-heavy (due to their journaled nature).


Mmmm, file systems.
 
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