Unreadable SD memory card

hanspb · 05-23-2007, 08:06 AM

I have a TwinMOS Ultra-X 1 GB SD memorycard in my camera that has become corrupted. As far as I have found out it should be possible to recover the pictures on the card, but this would involve copying the card to the hard drive using dd. The problem is I can't copy it. When I try to copy with

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda of=minnekort.img bs=512

dd just hangs. If I use /dev/sda1 instead of /dev/sda, I get the following:

Code:

dd: opening «/dev/sda1»: No such file or directory

The drive is sda, and the partition on it should be sda1, but it seems not to exist. However,

Code:

hpb@HPlaptop:~$ cat /proc/partitions|grep sda

gives out

Code:

 8     0     980992 sda
 8     1     980864 sda1

so sda1 seems to be there.

I really want to solve this, do you experts have any ideas?
This is on Ubuntu 6.10, with kernel 2.6.17-11-386.

GrueMaster · 05-23-2007, 10:58 AM

I've used this program successfully in the past. It hasn't been updated in a while, and I'm not sure what the license is, other than it is freeware (the source has a copyright for the author, but no license).

Give it a try.

hanspb · 05-23-2007, 02:44 PM

Still no luck. It seems like the card is not readable at all. Recover just hangs when I try

Code:

recover /dev/sda

just as dd does.

hottdogg · 05-24-2007, 08:52 PM

How about dd_rescue
or ddrescue

I haven't tried both though...

hanspb · 05-28-2007, 11:16 AM

I tried the Gnu ddrescue, same thing, it just hangs.

maroonbaboon · 06-01-2007, 08:50 AM

I assume you can't mount the card and see anything of the filesystem.

Maybe try the 'seek' option on dd to skip some blocks before attempting to read?

If the hardware inside the SD card has failed I have no idea what to do

Try a different card reader?

Some electronic components will recover temporarily after being put in the freezer for while. I have used this with a video card, and have seen reports of it working with hard drives. Never with a memory card tho'. Maybe a last resort... Avoid moisture and condensation of course.