Sd Card Broken

[zacaj]

I was playing Reveira in gpSP2x, I saved the state, continues playing, an the batteries died. I got new ones, turned it on, and it said the SD was empty! My computer says theres no SD Card inserted, and my camera says it cant use that card.

 

[senquack]

I was playing Reveira in gpSP2x, I saved the state, continues playing, an the batteries died. I got new ones, turned it on, and it said the SD was empty! My computer says theres no SD Card inserted, and my camera says it cant use that card.

First, try cleaning the contacts of the card with rubbing alcohol and a q-tip (let it dry before re-inserting).

If that doesn't fix it, I would guess your card's partition table is corrupt. This can be corrected using this utility:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

You can see examples on how to recover a FAT32 partition on this page from the same site (including lots of other unimportant examples):

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_Recovery_Examples

If all this is too much for you, find a knowledgable friend, or perhaps another kind soul will guide you through the process here.

 

[imhotep]

I agree with Senor Quack that it's probably the partition table. Problem is, it's hard to use tools if your PC doesn't even recognise that a card is inserted at all.

I once had a card that had the same symptoms. I thought the PC would never recognise it, but it did after a few remove and re-inserts. I then had to use tools to wipe it and reset it.

 

[zacaj]

TestDisk says the SD Card is half its size, and when searching for partitions, gives lots of read errors

 

[senquack]

TestDisk says the SD Card is half its size, and when searching for partitions, gives lots of read errors

That's not good...

Just how important is the data to you?

 

[zacaj]

Very. All my emulators are on it, most of the roms I dont have backed up to my computer, and I have Dial Up, so its take weeks to redownload them. Most of the games are very far in. (Final boss in Sonic 2, Ive been playing most of the RPG's and platformers for weeks apiece.

 

[senquack]

Very. All my emulators are on it, most of the roms I dont have backed up to my computer, and I have Dial Up, so its take weeks to redownload them. Most of the games are very far in. (Final boss in Sonic 2, Ive been playing most of the RPG's and platformers for weeks apiece.

Download and run this diagnostic program by Western Digital:

edit: ok, fixed the download link by uploading my older version of this damned utility:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AXBF9IJ0

(Like most companies, WD has completely let their marketing department take over everything, so the new utility won't work like the old one.. this older version should work)

It is meant for hard drives, but it works great for doing a low-level read test for flash disks, too, in my experience. You must use a good card reader on your PC.

Run the EXTENDED TEST by double-clicking on the drive in the upper list. If it up with a bunch of errors, you are probably looking at a lot of effort to get the data back, and to be honest it's probably not worth it if all you had were saved emulator games. This test will not overwrite your data.

If you want to at least try to get your SD card usable again, you can use this same utility to write zeroes to the entire flash disk (BE VERYYYYYYY CAREFUL you don't write to your main hard disk). Then, re-partition and re-format it FAT32 using the Windows disk administrator. All your data will be gone, but at least you might have a working flash disk again.

 

[imhotep]

Senor Quack is spot on.

I agree with him that your card is probably repairable for future use by using a zero fill utility, but that your current data is probably too hard to recover.

 

[zacaj]

Wait, if you can write it all to zeros, why cant you read it?

 

[zacaj]

I ran the program, and it said read error. I don care about the card, I have extras, I just wanted the data

 

[tutut]

I suggest you try GetDataBack for FAT Demo, that will tell if you can recover your data or which files are not corrupted.
Another way to check your card would be to boot a Linux Live CD and use fdisk in a terminal, more complicated for a Windows user.

 

[zacaj]

I have a live CD, for some reason never thought of fdisk, although that would just tell me wether it has a partiton on it. When I booted into linux, I couldnt even find it, so id have a problem with using fdisk....

 

[tutut]

Log in as root, then open a terminal (xterm, konsole for ex.)
Linux see your card as a drive, after you inserted your card in the reader, type dmesg
you should see something like that :
QUOTE
SCSI device sdc: 1990656 512-byte hdwr sectors (1019 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is off
sdc: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
sdc: sdc1

another way is to list the devices with the "ls" command :
QUOTE
root@my_computer:/tmp# ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sdc /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf /dev/sdg

You can see the card as /dev/sdc with a partition in /dev/sdc1.
QUOTE
root@my_computer:/tmp# fdisk /dev/sdc

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 3159.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): m
Command action
a toggle a bootable flag
b edit bsd disklabel
c toggle the dos compatibility flag
d delete a partition
l list known partition types
m print this menu
n add a new partition
o create a new empty DOS partition table
p print the partition table
q quit without saving changes
s create a new empty Sun disklabel
t change a partition's system id
u change display/entry units
v verify the partition table
w write table to disk and exit
x extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 1019 MB, 1019215872 bytes
14 heads, 45 sectors/track, 3159 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 630 * 512 = 322560 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 3160 995203+ 6 FAT16

Command (m for help): v
248 unallocated sectors

Command (m for help): q

As you can see, you can check your partition table, the file system and the memory size of your card.

 

[bacteria]

This is quality stuff, I have bookmarked it my favourites folder in case I get this problem again (I had it about a year and a half ago, threw card away). This is why I tend to use 1Gb cards and not bigger, it isn't so painful to replace a cheaper lower capacity SD card than a higher capacity and more expensive one. They can, and do, fail.

 

[lubidog]

2nd

 

[tutut]

This is why I tend to use 1Gb cards and not bigger, it isn't so painful to replace a cheaper lower capacity SD card than a higher capacity and more expensive one. They can, and do, fail.

I ordered a 4 GB SDHC card, when I received it Saturday, I noticed my card reader didn't support it.
I had no other choice than connecting the card to the PC through my gpette, worked fine first, but after 3 or 4 connections, my card had lots of crappy files I couldn't delete.

I bought a new card reader (9.9€) and tried to delete those weird files, no way. :angry:
I removed the partition and used the usual Linux tools (my PC is under Linux), fdisk to create a partition and mkdosfs to format
(graphical front ends for those tools are gparted or qtparted).

The gpette didn't recognize the card first, it worked fine after 7 or 8 attempts.
I think it's the last time I buy a 4 GB card, I agree with you, it's easier and safe with 1GB cards.


There's a Live CD using a mini Linux system and gparted here .