Help needed to recover SD Card

[harrym]

Hi, I have a micro SD card from my phone that has become unreadable.

My phone had crashed so I removed the battery to restart it, upon restarting it I noticed some problems. After some testing, it seems the Micro SD Card is no longer readable.

I have plugged the SD card in to a card reader and a drive letter shows in Windows (7) but when trying to access it I get an error 'Please insert a disk in to Removable Drive F:, same sort of error when trying to format it.

When I load up Recuva, I get an error the device is not ready when trying to scan the SD card. I have tried plugging my phone in to my PC with the SD card in it with similar results.

Is there anything else to try or is it a lost cause?

Thanks

[DennisD]

Hi harry, and welcome to the forum.

All I can suggest is to have a try with other software, such as "PhotoRec" and it's sister program "TestDisk".

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

Both utilities are included in the download, and although they look like command line, they are actually menu driven, and there are good help files and a forum.

The first may be able to recover your files, and the second may be able to repair the card.

PhotoRec Step By Step:

TestDisk Step By Step:

Trying to repair your card would involve writing to it, and in case that makes things worse, you could try making a back up Image of your card beforehand. If one repair option fails, then you could restore the back up Image and try something else.

USB Image Backup Tool:

Hope that helps.

EDIT: There is another possibility, and that is to see if "SDFormatter" will format the drive when Windows can't.

https://www.sdcard.o...ds/formatter_3/

I do know of it having some success formatting when Windows fails, and although this might also fail, it's worth a try. Just make sure the correct drive is selected if you have more than 1 USB drive attached ...

... and make sure that "Quick Format" is selected ...

If it does carry out a quick format, it will initialise the file system but leave the data untouched, and you could scan the card with Recuva.

You will of course, if you make one as suggested above, have an Image back up of the card to restore if needs be.