Author Topic: Windows 7 "Scan and Fix (Recommended)" corrupted my MicroSD card (Read 20807 times)

duugg · « **on:** February 09, 2015, 07:58:41 pm »

I went out for New Year Eve, had a wonderful time and took many pictures. Upon reviewing my pictures, I noticed that about half of them were a blank icon with a lightning bolt in the top center. I was very upset about this, but said to myself "well, at least I have half of my pictures".

Then I took the microSD card out of my phone and put it into a card reader and plugged it into my Windows 7 computer.
Upon doing so, I got the message ".......Scan and Fix (recommended) with the option to continue or cancel. I chose continue and all my pictures were deleted from New Years Eve. Ironically, all of my other pictures remained intact and available.

I downloaded and tried more than 15 different data recovery software programs and it only found files that I had already copied; no files from New Years Eve.

I read somewhere that there might be a place where the pictures may be in a hidden file system area under a different file extension and that all I had to do was change the file extension and I would get my pictures back.

Well, after a thorough search, I came up with no files.

I've been reading about "dirty bits" and ran "CHKDSK" from an administrator command prompt typed "fsutil dirty query e:" and it does say that the volume is dirty. I don't want to clear the dirty bit by formatting my microsd card because I will hurt my chances even more of recovering my files. I spoke with Microsoft for over an hour today and no one seems to know about "dirty bits". I believe I read that clearing the dirty bit MAY allow me to see and recover my pictures, but I won't know until I can make that happen.

The file system on the Sandisc microsd 64GB SDHC card is ExFAT and the operating system I tried this on is windows 7 64bit Ultimate . I also tried to recover these files from my Samsung Galaxy S4 and had no luck either.

The worse thing is that I DO use Google backup for my pictures, but I had just factory reset my phone THAT day and hadn't yet had a chance to set it up

If anyone knows of a way to restore my beautiful, priceless pictures from New Years Eve, I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks so much to anyone that can help a very sad person who's new year didn't start off the right way.

Shane · « **Reply #1 on:** February 10, 2015, 02:31:47 pm »

So sounds like your microsd card has bad sectors on it and is why you are having so much trouble.

Are you able to put the card into your system (If you have a card read) so that you can do a chkdsk on it? OOr if your camera will allow you to scan it while plugged in.

Here is an example,

You have the card plugged in and it gets a drive letter of E: (Just as an example)

Then you open a cmd.exe window as administrator, then type this in

chkdsk E: /f /r

and hit enter and it will do a file system check and repair and also scan for any bad sectors and try to recover any data that it can.

Also, time to get a new sd card

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #2 on:** February 11, 2015, 01:00:57 pm »

I know that there are a lot of different parameters used with chkdsk, but I'm not sure if I tried those or not. I will check that when I get home. Thanks much

Shane · « **Reply #3 on:** February 11, 2015, 01:02:38 pm »

/f is to fix any errors it finds
/r will scan all the sectors and try to fix them, much longer scan.

Normally you dont need /f when using /r, but I am just use to always putting /f with it lol

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #4 on:** February 11, 2015, 01:49:50 pm »

ok, so I got the message "Chdssk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process.....Would you like to force a dismount of this volume (Y/N).

I selected Yes and now says "Windows is verifying files and folder" and is doing its magic.

duugg · « **Reply #5 on:** February 11, 2015, 01:55:15 pm »

So it ran the test and came back with "0 KB in bad sectors".

That might be a good thing?

Thanks

Shane · « **Reply #6 on:** February 11, 2015, 03:56:16 pm »

Ok so you seen it go through the 5 steps of the chkdsk then? When using just /f there is 3 steps when using /r there is 5

So if you did do the /r and it shows 0kb in bad sectors then that means it didnt find any bad sectors.

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #7 on:** February 11, 2015, 04:36:08 pm »

Yes, zero bad sectors. So what does that mean? Do I have hope? If yes, what should I do?

Shane · « **Reply #8 on:** February 12, 2015, 11:40:11 am »

Well it is good that their is no bad sectors. So the question is why you are having trouble getting the files off the camera. And you cant view the pictures on the camera either correct?

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #9 on:** February 13, 2015, 10:23:25 pm »

That's correct. This is the microsd card from my Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. I tried over 15 recovery software and none of them worked. They recovered files I had deleted a long time ago, but not the ones I had deleted just the night before.

Shane · « **Reply #10 on:** February 16, 2015, 03:24:33 pm »

They may have not been able to recover the newer files IF they got overwritten. Here is why,

When you delete a file the data to the file isnt removed, only the basic info for the file. Think of a folder in a file file cabinet, and instead of throwing a folder out you simply rip off the top of the folder showing its name.

Well thats how it is on a drive, the data is still there and the sectors it is on are marked as ok to overwrite. So until that data gets overwritten you can recover the data. BUT if something overwrote those sectors already, like taking new pictures since, then you wont be able to recover those files since the data was overwritten.

Thats why you see the scans bringing up old pictures, the data for those pictures are on sectors that havent gotten overwritten yet.

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #11 on:** February 16, 2015, 06:51:23 pm »

Yes, I'm aware of that. Nothing has been written to the card since this happened. I purposely haven't used the card because of that very reason. Any more ideas on this? Thanks

Shane · « **Reply #12 on:** February 17, 2015, 08:45:57 am »

Not sure, you did the right thing making sure nothing overwrote the data. So the data should be there.

What programs did you use and what type of scan did you do? Reason why I ask is I use a few different programs and they offer a quick delete scan, which doesnt find everything, and then they have a deep scan that scans every sector, takes a while but it does find the most.

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #13 on:** February 17, 2015, 10:49:49 am »

Wow, what programs DIDN'T I use as I tried so many is probably the better question lol.

I can't recall all of them, but to name a few...

Recuva, Stellar, Easeus, Zar, CardRecovery, Pandora

And I always did a deep scan whenever that option was present.

Shane · « **Reply #14 on:** February 17, 2015, 11:09:39 am »

Where those programs that ran on the phone? I never had much luck with those because they normally would need root access.

Instead I would take the card out and put it into a card reader and run some windows programs that can do a proper scan of it. Do you have a card reader? If so I could connect to you and help you do the scan with the programs I have.

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #15 on:** February 24, 2015, 09:30:43 pm »

Yeah, I already did that. I ran all these programs through a card reader. I would be interested to know what programs you are referring to though. Maybe I can download and try them.

Shane · « **Reply #16 on:** February 25, 2015, 02:25:17 pm »

The one I have had most success with has been Ontrack Easy Recovery, when I use it I am able to view thumbnails of found pictures and such before I save them, allowing me to find the ones I am looking for without having to grab everything.

Shane

duugg · « **Reply #17 on:** March 01, 2015, 05:58:21 pm »

Well, I tried that and no luck. Thanks for all your help.