Corrupted exFAT SD card

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
Forum rules
When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Locked
Message
Author
Knocknoc
Posts: 3
Joined: 05 Feb 2019, 14:25

Corrupted exFAT SD card

#1 Post by Knocknoc »

Yes, another one of those :(

I have a 128GB microSD card in my smartphone which never gave any trouble until today when the phone could no longer access it's content and ask me if I want to format the card. I declined, hoping that it was just the phone glitching, but after putting the microSD card into my card reader, and Windows failing to read the drive (also asking me if I wanted to reformat it - which I also declined), and detecting as a "RAW" I am pretty certain that the card is corrupted.

PhotoRec seems to have managed to recover a lot (hard to tell how much given that I am dealing with about 61GB of data) which is kind of a relief.. but I've lost all the file name and folder structure and it would take a huge amount of time to re-organise everything (fortunately, I do have a lot backed-up, but there is still enough there to keep me rather busy even if I can find an easy way to identify the files I already have backed up and remove them).

I have ran TestDisk, and getting the message that the Partition doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55.

It then finds a partition marked as NTFS at the top, but exFAT at the bottom. Structure is marked as OK.

http://prntscr.com/mgy9i5

When I press 'p' to list all files, the file name, and file structures appear to be all there intact (having not checked every single one). There is one file that is highlighted red, I am not sure what it means (unrecoverable?).

http://prntscr.com/mgyep1

At first I tried to select all and copy to an external HD, but as soon as it hits something it is unable to recover, it just seems to hang there forever (it also create some jiberish files with extremely long name that Windows find hard to deal with).

What would be the best thing to do at this point? Ideally I would like to be able to recover as much as I can in it's original file name/structure so that I can pick out what I haven't backed up, and perhaps a list of files that can't be recovered.

Thanks.

User avatar
cgrenier
Site Admin
Posts: 5432
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 15:08
Location: Le Perreux Sur Marne, France
Contact:

Re: Corrupted exFAT SD card

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Names listed in red are deleted files.
You can use the "h" key to hide them and only copy the non-deleted one.

You should run "cmd" (right click run as administrator") and "chkdsk /f d:" (replace d: by the correct drive letter).

Knocknoc
Posts: 3
Joined: 05 Feb 2019, 14:25

Re: Corrupted exFAT SD card

#3 Post by Knocknoc »

Thank you for the reply.

chkdsk /f "fixes" the drive right? i.e. changes will be made. Should I clone the drive in case things go wrong (and if so, any recommendation on what to use)?

Also, what can I expect after chkdsk runs it's course?

From memory, chkdsk tend to convert lost chains to files that I can't use anyway (least I have never managed to get anything out of it) which isn't that helpful, but can it actually turn my "RAW" partition (as identified by Windows), back into an exFat partition with the files that hasn't been corrupted normally accessible again?

Edit: I am now in the process of "copying" all the non-deleted files. There were a couple of failures amongst some of the android data related files but not too worried about those. All the photos were recovered which is great. All that is left is my large music collection where I am encountering something strange. At the beginning I didn't encounter any failure, but after it has recovered most of the files, the failures just keeping piling up (the whole night). It goes way beyond the amount of music files I have in the first place so I am not too alerted, but what is going on? If I had to guess, it is trying to copy stuff from the empty portion of the microSD card (which is just half full) but it is spending sev time the amount of time an it took to l recover most of my files. I will attach a screenshot later (I am letting it run while I am at work hoping that it will be done by the time I go home).

Edit2:
Still going. Even though the number of "ok" has increased, the amount of files copied doesn't seem to have changed.
http://prntscr.com/mhsa6h
I am thinking of stopping the process..

Knocknoc
Posts: 3
Joined: 05 Feb 2019, 14:25

Re: Corrupted exFAT SD card

#4 Post by Knocknoc »

I eventually cancelled the process since it didn't seem to be creating new files on the hard drive I picked to copy the files.

But now I am faced with a new problem.

Prior using TestDisk & Photorec, I am positive that I had about 400+ free space in my hard drive. Recovering using Photorec and TestDisk used up 61GB and 56GB respectively.

So it seems that about 300GB just vanished on my HD.

And it reminded me of something: when TestDisk "fails" to recover a file, it sometime creates a file that is too long for Windows to deal with (I had to get a 3rd party app to delete one file because I couldn't use Windows to delete, rename, or do anything). And I am wondering if this is what happened when I let TestDisk fail to copy some files for so long as per my last post.

Any idea how I may resolve this?

Locked