Unreadable / Corrupted SD Card...

WetDaddy

Yes, it's another one of *those* threads... Well, not quite

So all my machines (no matter what the platform / hardware) are refusing to correctly read an SD Card I have. The issue, to summarise, is that it was taken out of Vivtar Camera and placed into a Windows 7 machine. This machine didn't have the ADMA KB patch applied and it went and did something awful to the card.

Nothing additional (e.g. photos / formatting) has been done to the card since then, but I've spent a HUGE amount of time trying everything under the Sun to recover the data. About 20 different programs, media card readers, Ubuntu, XP, Windows 7 (!), Server 2008, etc.

I did, however, manage to create a full dump of the card using Roadkil's Sector Editor, which gives me *some* hope! However, the problem I have now is that I have a .bin file which is (to the best of my knowledge) a straight hex dump of the card. The initial bunch of sectors are mostly empty, which makes me think that the MBR has gotten screwed up and consequently no app will read it properly.

So... What can I do with this .bin file? Is there any software out there that I can get to do something like brute force trundle through the dump and try to interpret the data, convert it into hex? Or perhaps try and recreate the MBR / FAT and mount the .bin file as a virtual disk for reading?

Thanks in advance!

Ghost Train

this software is good
http://www.pcinspector.de/SmartRecovery/info.htm?language=1

you'll need to quick format the card, then run the software to see if it can find any files

RogerThis

Have you tried the free software PhotoRec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
It has saved my ass more than once.

simoniz

RogerThis wrote: »

Have you tried the free software PhotoRec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
It has saved my ass more than once.

Used this once and I recover some of it not all. anyway what U expect for free software:D

WetDaddy

Thanks for the suggestions, lads. I've tried all of them with the card itself but with no luck.

This scenario is a bit different, though: Nothing will even format the card. However, I did get a raw rip of the sectors, so I want to try and use *that* with some recovery software.

It's been ripped with a hex editor to a .bin file - does anyone know if any of those options can read in files like what I have? I know lots of them do imaging options on disks, but they seem to only read their own proprietary formats and not anything else.

Alternatively, is there any such software that'll trawl through the .bin file and see if it can interpret / decode JPEG data in there?

Ghost Train

WetDaddy wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions, lads. I've tried all of them with the card itself but with no luck.

This scenario is a bit different, though: Nothing will even format the card. However, I did get a raw rip of the sectors, so I want to try and use *that* with some recovery software.

It's been ripped with a hex editor to a .bin file - does anyone know if any of those options can read in files like what I have? I know lots of them do imaging options on disks, but they seem to only read their own proprietary formats and not anything else.

Alternatively, is there any such software that'll trawl through the .bin file and see if it can interpret / decode JPEG data in there?

what I'd try is get a working flash drive or card, copy the dump file to it, then run the smart recovery program I linked to

maybe quick formating the drive or card too so it has to look through the raw bits

whizbang

is it by any chance a 4Gb SDHC card ?
if so, buy a new cardreader thingy, check the card compatibility list first.