exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

Using TestDisk to repair the filesystem
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Deleted User 9684

exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#1 Post by Deleted User 9684 »

One day the SD card stopped working in my Mac and tells me to "initialize" it, so I open disk utility and try first aid and I am met with this:

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Repairing file system.
Volume is already unmounted.
Performing fsck_exfat -y -x /dev/rdisk2s1
Checking volume.
Checking main boot region.
Main boot region is invalid.  Trying alternate boot region.
Checking alternate boot region.
Alternate boot region is invalid.
The volume  could not be verified completely.
File system check exit code is 1.
Restoring the original state found as unmounted.
File system verify or repair failed.
Operation failed…
Googled and tried to self-solve and found this: https://craigsmith.id.au/2014/07/06/rep ... partition/
I tried It but never got "Main boot region needs to be updated. Yes/No?" and this was the result:

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sudo fsck_exfat -d disk2s1
Password:
Opening /dev/rdisk2s1
** Checking volume.
** Checking main boot region.
fsck_exfat: Invalid version (000E)
   Main boot region is invalid.  Trying alternate boot region.
** Checking alternate boot region.
fsck_exfat: Invalid version (000E)
   Alternate boot region is invalid.
** The volume  could not be verified completely.
I then remembered TestDisk - I have used it before for the Boot Camp partition, and I read the guide here: https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
I tried the instructions in section 7.4 and copied the backup to the main; still no luck--same as above.
I tried to search and write a partition; maybe I'm not doing it right, but no luck.
I tried chkdsk on Windows, but the filesystem in RAW.
I haven't reformatted it, but I have used EaseUS to recover much, if not all, of the data, but it didn't keep my folder structure and I'm sure not everything is there/uncorrupted.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance. I tried to do my own research before asking, but now I'm stumped.

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cgrenier
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Re: exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Try PhotoRec. Choose [Whole] instead of [Free] after selecting the partition.
Does it recover your data ? (It will not recover the original filenames)

Deleted User 9684

Re: exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#3 Post by Deleted User 9684 »

Yeah, that seemed to work in recovering files. I canceled it about a minute in and looked into the directory to see and there were many files I recognized. However, I saved the files through EaseUS (I'll probably do a full save from PhotoRec tonight), so I'm more interested in recovering the filesystem. Any ideas there? I appreciate your help already; thank you!

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cgrenier
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Re: exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#4 Post by cgrenier »

You may try a "chkdsk /f d:" on a WIndows computer, it may work better than fsck_exfat

Deleted User 9684

Re: exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#5 Post by Deleted User 9684 »

I tried that too, It says the filesystem is RAW.

Deleted User 9684

Re: exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#6 Post by Deleted User 9684 »

Just wondering if you had any other ideas?

Thanks in advance.

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cgrenier
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Re: exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#7 Post by cgrenier »

No other idea, sorry

Deleted User 9684

Re: exFAT SD Card on Mac Corrupted - I've tried a lot of things

#8 Post by Deleted User 9684 »

There's no way to reformat the filesystem boot info?

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