Invalid FAT boot sector

[Induna123]

Hi. Can anybody help me?

My sister just came back from holiday with a load of photos and videos on her digital camera. The memory card is an 8GB MicroSD SanDisk. She put it in my card reader with an adapter and it came up fine but the second time she did it Windows didn't find them and said it needed formating.

I tried different data recovery programs with no luck before using TestDisk. It came up as "Bad boot sector". I used the rebuild BS option but it didn't work. I looked on the net and read I should try cmd (I'm using Windows XP). Type chkdsk /X /F X: (X: being the drive letter, in my case it's G:). Now the card boots up but it's blank and only 1GB instead of 7.6GB as it was before.

I think I've messed it up. Is there anyway to rescue her photos or are they gone forever?

Here are the screenshots from testdisk

[Fiona]

Would it be possible to have a boot sector diagnose using partition tbale type None?
You should use the menu Advanced for your boot sector diagnose.
If your partition appears as UNKNOWN you can use the menu Type to change it.
Normally standard for memory cards and cameras you should choose FAT32.
Use the menu Boot and Rebuild BS.

Fiona

[Induna123]

Sorry, I didn't quite follow that.

Are you saying from the main menu select "Advanced"?

[Fiona]

It was only a test, does that small partition contains data?
But it doesn't.
It's only a little bigger than 1 GB.
Quick and Deeper Search didn't find something.
It means your partition looks altered.

Sometimes it helped to diagnose a SD card using partition table type None as already suggested in my previous post.
Same procedur like in this case;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/part ... h-t14.html
Immediately after disk selction, you should pay a little bit attention and not choose partition table type Intel, but None.
In case it might be possible that Advanced lists your disk as Unknown.
In cas chreck Type, press enter and add FAT32.

Fiona

[Induna123]

I understand now. Here are the screenshots.






So the partition did show up as Unknown. I changed it to FAT32 and then selected boot, the "bad boot sector" plus "bad backup" message appeared. I clicked on Rebuild BS but when it finished the "can't find cluster size" message showed up again as before.

Is seems the cluster size is an issue here.

The reason why it shows as a smaller 1GB partition I explained earlier. I looked on the net and was told I should try cmd (I'm using Windows XP). Type chkdsk /X /F X: (X: being the drive letter, in my case it's G:). Checkdisk with the f/ switch fixes errors. Now the card boots up but it's blank and only shows up as 1GB instead of 7.6GB.

[Induna123]

Any ideas Fiona or is all over?

[cgrenier]

To recover your sister pictures, run PhotoRec. It won't repair the boot sector but it should be able to recover the lost data.