Undelete files from an exFAT SD card

Using TestDisk to undelete files
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Author
recuperation
Posts: 2729
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Undelete files from an exFAT SD card

#11 Post by recuperation »

We are heading into the wrong direction.

Just try other recovery software to see what that gives instead of discussing about what Testdisk is supposed to show you.

When in doubt, use another SD card and do some testing by deleting files and trying to recover them using Testdisk in a setting where NO intermediate write operations are done on the card.

In addition to that a system that is writing on storage where you want to recover data from is not suitable for recovery.
Either prevent your system from writing or use a Linux recovery environment.
I should have discussing here because what you did is a major error.

Depending on fragmentation writing a little amount of data on a device can make recovery of a big amount of data impossible.

Your use profile of your SD card is unprofessional.
Apart from Compact flash / CFast every other little storage is shitty and unreliable. This sad situation requires a profile of use where fragmentation is avoided to increase the chances of recovery in case of a problem with that device.

With this idea in mind, do not delete single files on your SD card.
Copy the whole content to another disk. Verify the copy result either by binary compare or by checking the content of the duplicated pictures visually. When finished with that, format your SD card. A long format would be the best to avoid remains of data are affecting your next recovery session.

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