pocket pc problem - sd card files... gone?

michael_w · March 2006

I should probably go to a different forum for this but I'll throw it out there and see if anyone knows...

I just installed this Pocket Music and liked it but it made the processor work too hard so I uninstalled it. After this uninstall I noticed that I can't see any of the files on my sd card anymore. It still sees the card and shows that it only has 12mb left out of 968. It shows the files are taking up space but can't seem to actually see the files.

Any ideas why I can no longer see the files on the card (though activesync on my desktop or on the ppc itself)? I'm running pocket pc 2003 premium on an hp ipaq h4150 if that makes any difference.

I can reformat the card but I'm really really hoping I can get the files off it because there is some very important stuff on it, which I havn't backed up in a while

edit: Well I've been searching like crazy and it seems I have a corrupted sd card. Looks like I need to find a way to do some data recovery if possible before I reformat the card :rolleyes:

edit#2: I seem to have another little issue on my hands now... When I soft-reset the ppc it loads everything and then locks everything up. Yay..
I can boot it in safe mode and it won't freeze, which is good. Maybe I'll try a hard reset and then do a restore...

edit #3: tried a chkdsk scan on it... no luck. Moved onto using a program called "getdataback". It's scanning right now and it's seeing the files. Hopefully it can recover them. I really only care about a single file off the card.

BIZILL · March 2006

you said you can view via activesync. can you not just explore your files onto a folder on your home pc?

michael_w · March 2006

I can't see the files through activesync or on the ppc itself. The card is corrupted and I need to figure out how to recover the files...

About 45 minutes into using GetDataBack my computer decided to crash by freezing and restarting itself :rolleyes: Time to do some scans to make sure my comp isn't infected with anything or maybe I just overloaded it. (I did happen to be doing a ton of stuff at the time)

I'll try that getdataback again tomorrow and see what comes of it.

Thanks for the reply.

jwienand · March 2006

Souns like you may need to have a few drinks and cut your losses.

michael_w · March 2006

Yeah I'd love to but I really need to figure out how to get this one damn file off the card... stupid me hasn't backed it up in months. It's the file that carries all the information about me working for a company and my day to day activities -- this is also needed in order to get credit for a course I'm taking, which just so happens to be something I need to graduate. There are ways around it if I can't get the file but it won't be pretty.

masanz1 · March 2006

try a program called badcopypro. There is a free eval.

http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/?rid=BadCopy&vid=3.80&bid=1108

phoneisbusy · March 2006

Any luck Michael? Any chance you have an undelete program? Perhaps you can recover a previous copy of the file? It might be less painful to recover or reconstruct that?

regards

Dave

michael_w · March 2006

Just tried badcopypro (eval version) and didn't have any luck. It doesn't seem to be able to recover .xls files (ppc format excel files - the file I need is in that format) as well as not being able to actually save any of the files without buying the full version.

I'll give getdataback another shot in a bit and hope it can see .xls's...

See where I screwed up was that I thought this file I really need was stored on the pocket pc memory. I backup that about every week, but I don't usually have anything important on the sd card so I don't back that up. Turns out I had the file on the card the whole time so I have no backups of it :rolleyes:

Edit: finished trying getdataback again and found out that it also doesn't recover the files without buying the full version. Not a big deal though since it can't seem to actually work... it gets to the exact same spot as last time and crashes my computer. Onto pci filerecovery to see if that works! It also supports .xls, so it might work nicely... - update coming soon.

update: this is getting frustrating. It seems to hit this one point on the card where it has errors and then it just shuts my computer down instantly... not good for the recovery and risking damage to my computer. I'll have to try it on a different computer to see if it's something to do with the computer itself or the card.

michael_w · March 2006

Just a little update here for any guests or w/e who happen to have the same problem and need some direction.

After hours and hours of trial and error, frustration and continually trying things I've managed to recover my file. It came down to me using PC Inspector File Recovery. It's a free program used for data recovery. I'd highly recommend it, since it actually works quite well and provides a free alternative to the other programs that happen to also cost a lot (over $100 for a lot of them).

I first used PC Inspector File Recovery to search for lost files. Once I did that a couple times (kept crashing and all this random crap...) I managed to get a folder on the card named 'found000'. Inside it contained about 600 .CHK files. From there I saved the files onto my computer and began the long and boring process of finding out what the files actually are. At first I was just dragging each individual file into excel, hoping it would be able to find the file I was looking for. Amazingly I found half of the file I needed within the first ten files I tried. After doing about another 300 files manually (opening each one in excel) I decided to use a great program called 'unCHK' Available here (also free

). It takes the .chk files and converts them to known formats, in an attempt to recover any files you might have had.

After all that I ended up with three files that contained the info I needed, but every file was all jumbled with extra code and was nearly unreadable. I just had to go through each file and take out the essential information and complie a single file that had what I needed. It's such a relief I was able to actually get the file off the card. I'm also quite glad that I only needed the single file, otherwise this would have been even more of a nightmare. Time to reformat the card and reinstall everything.

Thanks again to everyone for the help and tips.

pocket pc problem - sd card files... gone?

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