yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
I see, I see.........this clarifies your sd card behaviour alot!

There have been reports of suspiciously similar behaviour on non-BML ROMs (ie, CM7), including activity affecting 'mmc' and the like......usually traceable to the use of the microSD Card as an external storage location for apps that actively perform background services + which would be better served stored in the phone's physical memory ...... 99.99% of the time, erratic activity is wrongly attributed to the ROMs, IMO.

.........reserving your mSD card mostly, but not solely, for music transfers (w/ the 700 range in mind, no problem ;) ) + parking second-tier apps elsewhere + upgrading to a class10 card will really alleviate this situation.........transferring data is lite tasking, whereas writing data is intensive activity for an mSD card, so there really is no reason to be experiencing constant reboots........indeed, your 2MB stock memory card may be telling you something you don't really want to hear, lol.

Thanks for sharing this very curious scenario, lots of music lovers will benefit from this conversation, no doubt.
[Epic 4G General] CASHVILLEBOS:
Wish I wouoldve saw this yesterday....formatted my SD lost EVERYTHING. Now I'm starting from scratch smh bless my heart.
[Epic 4G General] ninj0r:
saved some lost data, thanks
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
@CASHVILLEBOS

:( hummmm, sorry about your loss.............try Zero Assumption anyways (if you've still got your microSD Card,) you never know what may be recovered despite a RE-FORMAT.........on a good day, most --if not all-- of yesterday's deleted files have been known to come back to life! LOL .........if you can get a cheap temporary msd card for your device, while you troubleshoot your re-formatted one, no reason not to jump on that pc for a last chance recovery session!.......good luck w/ this, hopefully some data is still accessible for you.
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
Super pleased :) to have been able to help w/ your data........always a pleasure to receive positive comments!
[Epic 4G General] CASHVILLEBOS:
Seriously? Ok wow I'm going to hop on right now lol!!! Thanx a million!
[Epic 4G General] DroidApprentice:
Adding a reply here because I recently sprang for a very well-priced 32GB Transcend card, class 4. The one that came with the Epic was a Class 2 16GB one.

The difference in performance, at least so far, is huge. Everything from the initial media scan which less frequently or maybe never happens twice, to opening up the gallery, to music playback (no skips unless doing more CPU intensive stuff at the same time, which affects everything anyway) and video recording. The included Samsung card simply doesn't cut it, especially it seems after a long period of use and many writes/rewrites. The Transcend is well-reviewed so hopefully it'll last a long time and performance won't take a hit any time soon. So the memory card proves to be a very vital part of the phone's overall operation!
[Epic 4G General] rando991:
Not to mention, better performance (no FCs) with HiDef video capture!
[Epic 4G General] lost_:
Thanks! I have a bunch of cheap VPS accounts with 20-100GB that I rsync my files using foldersync, but having 50GB Box accounts is useful.
[Epic 4G General] drot84:
You all saved (most of my) bacon. Thanks!
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
@drot84

WOOT!.........gr8 to hear, congrats! ;)
[Epic 4G General] TheRidge69:
Awesome info! Thanks for that. Im sorry for the trouble you had to go through, but when stuff like that happens, I chalk it up as a "Learning Experience" LOL!

Ridge :)
[Epic 4G General] MДЯCЦSДИT:
This still does not help me find an SD card I dropped :)
[Epic 4G General] KennyG123:
The Nyan cat is playing with it.
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
The Nyan cat's a real twerp, ya know? :)

.........sent from today's android = 4.0.4
[Epic 4G General] coolshirtrobert:
buy a new one
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
card = $12.99 at the grocery store.

lost data = priceless :D :D :D

.....................speaking of microSD Cards + data, here's an interesting article by Chainfire that will clarify a few points about the way these things work + why we always end up having to wrestle w/ data (the creation, transfer, movement, import/export + protection of DATA):

http://www.chainfire.eu/articles/113/Is_Google_blocking_apps_writing_to_SD_cards_/

Enjoy!
[Epic 4G General] lainestephen:
micro sd card recovery

Hi there,

As the information shared are good, i would like to add something to it. Micro SD card recovery can easily be done but there is only condition after the data loss SD card must not be written with the different data. So to recover the card you need to download the third party tool. There are many trail version download link are available on internet.

Regard

Shinny
[Epic 4G General] austin420:
i use CARD RECOVERY by winrecover software. not only does it bring back deleted files, if they have been partially written over, it matches sectors from other writes of the file to restore corrupted data.
[Epic 4G General] jfg69:
Been searching for a while now, and came across this thread. Seems that most of the data recovery threads are dealing with cards that are not with physical damage. I have a card that is physically damaged, it now has a scratch on the back of it, there is some gold color showing through it; I assume it to be shorted. Upon plugging it in to a reader or adapter, it gets hot and doesn't appear to be seen. There are probably 300 vacation photos on this thing, what are the odds of recovery?
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
No reason your data is NOT still on your microSD card.

Your issue is the classic worthwhile cause, for which recovery best practices extends your best efforts in allowing you a stab at saving your valuable photographs. From the sounds of it, replacing the case should be your first priority (a cursory review of this technique is towards the beginning of this thread.) Then the card can go into a reader again. If this should not yield fruit, you may have to resort to the pro recovery folks: pricey, but only if they recover your images otherwise no charge.

I have faith that you can do it, just takes a little patience, manual dexterity + skill ;)

Let us know how it goes.
[Epic 4G General] jfg69:
I dont know if doing case surgery will be the cure.. it seems as if the memory is "stuck" on to the back of the card, like a little lump with paint (epoxy?) over it.. the contacts all seem to be in order. The issue seems to be that when my sis-in-law tried to remove the card from her epic after reinserting it backwards, with a paper clip (dont ask, yikes!) She scratched the coating and there is some gold showing thru where it got scratched.

Actually, the thought I was having was something similar to being able to format a drive when it is unmounted in gparted or whatever.. is there a way to get to the data in a similar way by wiring up a homemade adapter that I can plug into without actually putting power through the card? I was looking at pinouts for the microsd, but Im kind of clueless as to which to try and which will fry.. :confused:
[Epic 4G General] o0adam0o:
Bookmarking this thanks!
[Epic 4G General] pinpollo:
Thanks man
[Epic 4G General] MarkStinger:
Thank you OP!!! I have the Galaxy Note and I found these steps by doing a quick search in Google (even though I am already a member at XDA). Today my 32GB Lexar SD Card starting giving the "Damaged" message stating I had to reformat. Thankfully I was able to get all of my files back after following your steps.

On a side note, this is the second Lexar media that I have had go bad in a short time of owning it. I am going back to SanDisk which never gave me these types of problems.
[Epic 4G General] jericho111:
I just registered to say thank you! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! I recovered all photos and videos, and didn't even think that this would be so easy to recover!!! Again, thank you a lot!!!
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
Very pleased for you, + glad to have been able to help! : D
[Epic 4G General] sonarchist:
With pleasure............glad this is helpful to our community. :)
[Epic 4G General] smokeboy67:
Thank you for this
[Epic 4G General] vipersilver:
many thanks
[Epic 4G General] ayemy:
thanks a billion
[Epic 4G General] TexasAggie97:
Question: What happens if I back-up/move all my files to my CPU, reformat my SD Card in my phone when prompted, then simply move all the files and folders back to the SD Card?

Will all the programs still run or do I need to reinstall them?
[Epic 4G General] kendigr:
Great data recovery suggestion

Nice work, thanks.
[Epic 4G General] djmcho:
THANK YOU!

Thank you for this bit of info. I don't need it but did copy it for my archives. Very invaluable info for sure. Thanks again:good:
[Epic 4G General] lindabrilance:
Recovery of SD cards

Hello there :o,

SD cards are generally used in cameras, and there are some other devices too in which SD cards are used. Most of the users are there which use SD cards but don't even know how to use it,:crying: that means there are some ways to use the cards and if violence done then there could be card corruption and at last you will be in the stage to recover corrupted SD card, Fortunately there is way to recover the data :p and just you need to use the software download link.I too have same problem and i used software.

........

MOD EDIT: only free software please , and a source website with info about the software

Regards

Linda
[Epic 4G General] connettj:
Hahahahaha THANK YOU! I only needed to do the checkdisk and I had all my data back!
[Epic 4G General] wilsong:
SD card recovery

Hello there,

There are many more ideas rather than recovering or repairing of file from skipping from data loss, as there are many other ways like you can use precautionary steps to use SD cards, create backups, restoring points can help a lot. Or you can recover corrupted SD cards by using software intended to do a recovery. You can download the software from the internet.

Regards

Linda
[Epic 4G General] MarkStinger:
Or you can just use the built-in features of Windows to do those same tasks without having to install unnecessary software. And if you read the first post you would see that a free software solution was mentioned, which 9 pages later, seems to be doing just fine. There are better ways to provide assistance to others than continually trying to spam your software.
[Epic 4G General] Effsi:
worked like a charm. thanks for this.
[Epic 4G General] gdelsalto:
Thank you

I tried to recover hd video and jpgs captured with a sony digital camera and tried EaseUS data recovery, it was able to find everything that was lost but only let me save 1 gb of data and for the rest, I had to pay for it like 70 dlls. Then I tried recuva 'cause some one told me about it being 5 stars, but it couldn't read not one piece of data. Tried free wondershare photo recovery and it only found the jpgs. Then luckyly found this post and voila! I finally could recover all the *.mts videos from my micro SD card inmediately and for free with ZARecovery, so thank u thank u thank u!! It's amazing how there are people who share their experiences with everyone without expecting anything, in this world where apparently there is a price for everything, u're all :angel:s !!!
[Epic 4G General] jseward922:
extremely informative!! Thanks for sharing this!!!!!:good:
[Epic 4G General] pasths:
After the verizon update this morning I received the "damaged SD card" error. How do I mount to windows 7. I found the mount settings on the phone, but it just restates damaged sd card. Is there a mount option in Windows 7? I have galaxy s3.

Thanks!
[Epic 4G General] suedely:
ZAR saved all of my pictures tonight and for free!

ZAR saved all of my pictures tonight and for free! The full download has a free picture recovery (which also did my mp4 videos) and it found 972 pictures/videos. My 16GB microSD card got corrupted in my Skyrocket, due to a rar file trying to be extracted on my phone (which was not my intent). Fantastic product!
[Epic 4G General] coolmalayalee:
Good thread... but could not find a solution to my problem. Can someone help?

My 32GB Sandisk MicroSD has become corrupted in my phone. (Don't remember how it happened) One fine morning I got the error on my phone saying sdcard error.. and no sd card visible.. (I am using SGS-II with ICS 4.1). I attached the card to my laptop (running Windows 7). PC is recognizing the MicroSD but not reading it. If I right click and try formating it will hang the machine. I tried chkdsk /r from command line but it returns an error saying my SD card is now a RAW file system (error “Chkdsk not availiable for RAW”). It was a FAT32, so it has corrupted to become RAW. Tried using ZAR but it is not returning anything. Physically examined the SD and doesnt seem to have any issues.

I dont mind formating the card.. I got back up of my data already.. so worries on the data front.. Anyways to rescue the MicroSD card? Thanks for your help.
[Epic 4G General] Curb71:
Can't believe I did step one and a couple minutes later my sd card was accessible! amazing! thanks OP. :good:
[Epic 4G General] reverend remiel:
I had the same problem with my 64gb card. My solution:

I downloaded a linux distro (Fedora 17 - first one that sprung to mind, any linux distro will do) and put that on a USB disk, booted it and changed the partition type from whatever it was to type 0x07 (HPFS/NTFS/exFAT), saved the partition table, quit fdisk and synced the changes. Then I unplugged the card reader and took it back to my Windows computer and plugged it back in. Windows still complained that the volume was unreadable and asked to format it, which I declined. Ran CHKDSK /R M: and noticed that CHKDSK now correctly recognized the volume as being exFAT, but that the boot sector was corrupted and hence unreadable. I waited patiently until it finished, and suddenly the volume was readable again.

Currently making a backup of the card's contents...

Edit: File copy completed, all files are readable, and the phone accepted the card without complaining or prompting to reformat. Win!
[Epic 4G General] jon3sh:
Thanks!!!
[Epic 4G General] supermanss327:
Awesome must give this a try
[Epic 4G General] teshxx:
What commands did you use? I not fluent in linux so any help will be appreciated. I tried google, but couldn't find anything that showed how to change partition type.

I tried Gparted aswell on ubuntu, but couldn't find an option to change partiton size.

EDIT:

I found this thread and it is a LOT easier and can be performed in windows itself http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1797499

"With this problem you can restore data in more easily way.

Insert your SDcard in CardReader, connect to PC, run Command line (cmd) and type:

chkdsk X: /f

where X is your card volume name. After operations is complete, you can use you card again and NO data had been lost."
[Epic 4G General] SubMatrix:
Not sure if this has already been asked, but what do you do when the sd card is not even recognized at all? I've tried a card reader, but Windows doesn't detect anything as being mounted, presumably because the sd card isn't even recognized as anything more than a piece of plastic.

In other words, what to do when you can't even get a drive letter to run recovery programs or run chkdsk on?
[Epic 4G General] indianninja:
I had the same but this is easier

I had the exact same problem and I looked at this post and started like as it told, but the cmd> chkdsk was running too slow so I cancelled it.

Then I simply used minitool partition wizard and selected the card attached to pc with a card reader, and selected check file system> check and fix errors. That did the job fine and recovered whole disc with media and apps. :p
[Epic 4G General] rrackman:
Many THANKS, I knew there was hope for my card. I have had problems with regular SD cards in the past but it has been so long I forgot the tools and procedures.

Mine got corrupted while installing a new ROM on my Galaxy Note 2, after the new ROM install the card was not readable, thought it was a ROM issue so I used my Nandroid back up ON THE mSD card, it worked but the card still could not be read, working on your solution now, it is a 64gb so the scan is taking extra long.

Thanks again for the re-education!
[Epic 4G General] sotong33:
It worked! Thanks!

All of a sudden, I got the "Damaged SD Card" message on my phone. As most of my apps were transferred to SD card, I couldn't access them. Started to panic. Then I found and followed your guide and was able to restore the card. Most of my pics/photos were restored as well without using the ZARrecovery method. Only lost a few pics that are not a big deal.

After recovering card, most of the apps won't open. Not a problem as these are easily solved by 1) reinstalling or 2) restore from backup from computer (since the data on the SD card was originally corrupted).

Thanks for the fix! :good:
[Epic 4G General] cmtrion:
Same symptons: "card error", chkdsk not possible due to "raw" etc.

After an afternoon of search, it turned out to be a corrupted/destroyed partition.

Completely solved my problem for free with a small tool called "testdisk":

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

Fast results with instant verification of the problem and no Data lossed!

(yes, it´s another tool. I also hate filling my HD with small, senseless "gadgets", but this one stays!)

Maybe someone is helped with. :)
[Epic 4G General] jonscott8:
Chkdsk made my drive readable again

I registered just to share my experience and give thanks to the author for the contribution.

After rebooting my Galaxy SIII, my microSD card was unreadable, stated it need to be formatted. Plugged it into the SD adapter and popped it into my laptop with the same result, drive unreadable, needs to be formatted.

Ran a chkdsk as is suggested in Step 1 (output listed below) and my drive was again readable (took about 5 minutes to run). Have since taken a backup and compared to previous backups, look to have no (or so minimal I can't identify it) data loss.

Thanks again.

C:\Users\jshz999>chkdsk e: /r

The type of the file system is FAT32.

Volume Serial Number is 4358-15F0

The \ entry contains a nonvalid link.

Windows is verifying files and folders...

\µOST.DIR first allocation unit is not valid. The entry will be truncated.

File and folder verification is complete.

Windows is verifying free space...

Free space verification is complete.

Windows has made corrections to the file system.

15,616,088 KB total disk space.

288 KB in 15 folders.

3,598,648 KB in 1,725 files.

12,017,144 KB are available.

8,192 bytes in each allocation unit.

1,952,011 total allocation units on disk.

1,502,143 allocation units available on disk.
[Epic 4G General] ghmw:
thank you!

Had to register just to say a HUGE thank you to sonarchist. Solved my card issue with ease, following these very clear and simple instructions. Saved me from a nervous breakdown. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Graham.
[Epic 4G General] Hated-by-Many:
Happy st pattys everyone so I got a question I got a 32 gb sd and I'm curious if I format my card will it wipe all my files? Thanks
[Epic 4G General] slurpy1:
@sonarchist

Why................do..............you.............use...............all.................the...............dots? It's really annoying to read. Didn't they used to start sentences with capitals?
[Epic 4G General] steve austin:
thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!

i searched for 4 days trying to find a "real" solution to my corrupted disk problem. I found a lot of unanswered threads and even more spam. This took about 2 hours, but once it got finished the scan the card was immediately readable and i could copy files to a hard drive without even using the zarrecovery program. It found the corrupted file and asked did i want to convert it. I entered yes and it was back to scanning and done. nothing erased (from first glance). you saved me a heap of regret and frustration my friend, thank you again!
[Epic 4G General] wadialdoor:
than you thank you thank

you saved my day
[Epic 4G General] raymix1000:
thank you for that.
[Epic 4G General] nickmiller980:
There is a tutorial can help you to Recover Lost Data from SD Card

Step 1: Install Photo Data Recovery by following the guidance in the interface of the software and run it. Choose a module according to the file you want to recover. Choose "Photos", "Music" or "Video" according to your need (If you want to recover various types of files, please click "All".), and click "Next".

Step 2: Select your SD card disk where the lost photos have been. Then click the "Next" button to start scanning.

Step 3: Press "Stop" button to finish scanning, and in the left column you will see file/folder tree. Select a folder and click the file in the list to preview. Then recover them by clicking the "Recover" button - to save the delete photos to local folder.

Step 4: You are not allowed to save the files to the source partition, so save the photos to another partition or drive and click "OK". Then finish recovering.
[Epic 4G General] pittiehensley:
Not a disk drive

I have the newer Samsung Galaxy S4, and this just happened to me. Rebooted my phone and suddenly got the SD card failure. When I first got this phone (just a couple months ago), I reformatted my card inside the phone to make sure it would work before moving my stuff from my old phone back onto it.

I'm running into issues on my first step. I pulled the microSD, and put it into an adapter I had, and into the SD card slot on my older PC. Wouldn't read it.

I put the SD card back into my phone, and connected the phone to my Windows Vista laptop - wouldn't read it.

Finally connected my phone to my Windows 7 pc at work - Finally! Except -

Windows 7 doesn't assign a "drive" to it. It puts it in the "portable devices category.

I can't do the chkdsk step because of this. None of the tools I have tried "zarecovery, piriform's recuva etc" can see the device plugged in.

Any ideas?
[Epic 4G General] rhodiggah:
Have you tried this?

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

You may be able to recover some data on your card...
[Epic 4G General] beastliest:
I had a damaged SD card that probably was damaged when ejecting the SD card while one application in Win 7 was still using it. Put the card into my camera and it said "Card Error. Needs to be formatted before use." Now I tried to recover the photos using those programs you can readily download thinking it was probably an easy fix. However those all work if the listed size of your card in Windows is the same as the actual listed size on the card itself. I had about 1500 pictures so it was pretty valuable to me. I had seen on some forums that Recoverfab was helpful (www.recoverfab.com) The guy there said that he would be able to help me out if I ship over the SD card. So, I sent him the card via USPS Priority Mail, which took about 6 weeks to finally get there (I had thought it was lost in the mail after a while). Upon receipt (which they email you about), it only took 2 days to recover all the photos from my card. I really recommend you guys give this guy a shot if self-fixing solutions don't work.
[Epic 4G General] JeffATL:
Hi

I recently replaced a 16gb with a 32gb sd card in S3 and after a few weeks this happened. I still have my 16gb so most of my data is on there. I am currently trying this method so big thanks to OP.

Should I convert lost chains to files in chkdisk???

Is this the right link to download ZAR - http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm ? I wasnt following the suggestion to navigate to data recovery software,,, etc - was that on xda?

Also, any tips to prevent this from happening again in S3.?
[Epic 4G General] JeffATL:
Im having issues again. I can see the files fine in my PC. And I ran chkdsk /r from command line and it fixed a few minor errors, but s3 is not detecting card, I am not getting error on phone, just not detected. Recovery TWRP does not detect either.
[Epic 4G General] Howiewowie:
CMD

Wow all I did was run CMD and Chkdsk f: /r mine was f and it fixed the read and( it was saying damaged microSD) it fixed my problem nothing lost all still there...I did Backup again for future.... tyvm:cowboy:

Samsung Galaxy s4

SPH-L720

ANDROID 4.2.2

KERNEL 3.4.10_AGAT_FREEGS4