Trouble with SD Cards

[sandcoffeee]

Hi guys! I need some help!

 

So this last weekend a friend and I were going to a convention, and l borrowed a camera from my highschool yearbook class as my camera's wide angle lens is broken. We arrived Friday night, and everything was going well; that night we emptied out footage onto a laptop with no problems.

 

Saturday morning we filled up a couple (an 8 GB and a 32 GB) SD cards, and at around 1 PM we started dumping our footage again. But this time something weird happened. I don't exactly remember how it happened, but we ended up with two SD cards (both used in my borrowed camera) giving us the "Would you like to format?" messages. We ignored them and used our other SD cards.

 

So come Monday we're trying to figure out if we can recover our lost footage. I found out about Recuva, and as it had some good reviews and a discussion forum, I decided to give it a shot (the free version of course).

 

So I've tried both regular scanning and deep scanning the SD cards, but all that's come up is a Warning message saying "Failed to scan the following drives: F: : Unable to determine file system type".

 

So are we completely screwed, or is there acctually a way to recover our stuff?

[Augeas]

Probably screwed, as far as Recuva is concerned. If it can't determine the file system then I can't see it going any further. Have you tried a deep scan with no other options selected?

 

You could try Partition magic to attempt to resurrect your file system. It does some amazing things. Your cards are probably FAT32.

[ricoscoro]

Hi guys! I need some help!

 

So this last weekend a friend and I were going to a convention, and l borrowed a camera from my highschool yearbook class as my camera's wide angle lens is broken. We arrived Friday night, and everything was going well; that night we emptied out footage onto a laptop with no problems.

 

Saturday morning we filled up a couple (an 8 GB and a 32 GB) SD cards, and at around 1 PM we started dumping our footage again. But this time something weird happened. I don't exactly remember how it happened, but we ended up with two SD cards (both used in my borrowed camera) giving us the "Would you like to format?" messages. We ignored them and used our other SD cards.

 

So come Monday we're trying to figure out if we can recover our lost footage. I found out about Recuva, and as it had some good reviews and a discussion forum, I decided to give it a shot (the free version of course).

 

So I've tried both regular scanning and deep scanning the SD cards, but all that's come up is a Warning message saying "Failed to scan the following drives: F: : Unable to determine file system type".

 

So are we completely screwed, or is there acctually a way to recover our stuff?

 

Did you end up formatting the card?

 

What was the result?  I am having a similar issue with a card that has been corrupted and have been afraid to do even a basic format.

 

Moderator, if we use Partition Magic, what settings should we use for a basic SD card format to minimize any additional damage?

[Augeas]

Can't help with PM, I used it a couple of years ago, it may help to repair the partitions so it's worth trying before having to format.