LinuxQuestions.org - Recoving compact flash card

Evening all ... a small and niggly little challenge I have been posed.

A friend of mine has a 512 SDCard (Kingston 512MB Compact Flash) that he has stored lots of photos on. While taking said photos, the card appeared to corrupt in the camera and now cannot be mounted. He has turned to me to see whether linux can recover it cos (bizarrely enough) WinXP cant even spin up the card.

Alas I am suffering with a lack of knowledge of hex and where partitions should exist to really do the problem justice so any help would be much appreciated.

The card is placed in a card reader and connected through USB.

On connection the following is displayed in /var/log/messages (using FC3):

Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: SCSI device sda: 1006992 512-byte hdwr sectors (516 MB)
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: sda:<6>sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: Additional sense: No additional sense information
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: unknown partition table
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Aug 2 18:33:30 falcon scsi.agent[6074]: disk at /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.2/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0

This appears okay except for the "Current sense key" message and the unknown partition table.

Seeing as it is a dev, I have dd'ed a backup off of the card to play with but not necessarily got much further. I did try running gpart on it to see whether that would scan okay and got the output shown at the bottom of this post. I admit I got tired of waiting for gpart to finish and exited it, especially due to these messages appearing every 20 seconds or so. These also appeared during the dd copying (which took about 12 hours to complete).

Aug 2 15:12:28 falcon kernel: sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
Aug 2 15:12:28 falcon kernel: Additional sense: No additional sense information

Is the hardware screwed and no playing with partitions will cure it?
Can I recover by staring at the hex etc... using od for instance like the guy did at this address -> http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8366/print ??

Any ideas, thoughts, more knowledge on the subject would be much appreciated and I know recoving the photos on the disk will be worth its weight in gold...

Many thanks

ThePhantom

### sfdisk output ####
Disk /dev/sda: 1015 cylinders, 16 heads, 62 sectors/track

### GPART OUTPUT ####
/sbin/gpart -vvvv /dev/sda

dev(/dev/sda) mss(512) chs(1015/16/62) #s(1006880) size(491mb)

* Warning: strange partition table magic 0x0012.
Primary partition(1)
type: 013(0x0D)(UNKNOWN)
size: 320704mb #s(656801823) s(488374290-1145176112)
chs: (6/0/7)-(12/0/13)d (492312/12/43)-(1154411/6/29)r
hex: 11 00 07 06 0D 00 0D 0C 12 00 1C 1D 1F 00 26 27

Primary partition(2)
type: 038(0x26)(UNKNOWN)
size: 312288mb #s(639565862) s(639565864-1279131725)
chs: (41/0/39)-(43/0/40)d (644723/10/29)-(1289447/4/54)r
hex: 27 00 27 29 26 00 28 2B 28 00 1F 26 26 00 1F 26

Primary partition(3)
type: 051(0x33)(UNKNOWN)
size: 781120mb #s(1599733810) s(386990140-1986723949)
chs: (35/0/28)-(35/0/29)d (390111/0/29)-(2002745/14/42)r
hex: 2C 00 1C 23 33 00 1D 23 3C 00 11 17 32 00 5A 5F

Primary partition(4)
type: 006(0x06)(Primary 'big' DOS (> 32MB))
size: 132416mb #s(271187986) s(271187986-542375971)
chs: (0/0/0)-(16/0/42)d (273374/15/49)-(546749/15/34)r
hex: 74 00 00 00 06 00 2A 10 12 00 2A 10 12 00 2A 10

dev(/dev/sda) master boot record (w/o partition table):
0000: 58 60 8c 00 5a 61 8d 00 5b 63 8f 00 5b 63 8f 00
X ` . . Z a . . [ c . . [ c . .
0010: 5a 61 8d 00 57 5f 8a 00 5a 5e 8c 00 5a 5e 8c 00
Z a . . W _ . . Z ^ . . Z ^ . .
0020: 59 5d 8b 00 58 5c 8a 00 56 5a 88 00 55 5a 87 00
Y ] . . X \ . . V Z . . U Z . .
0030: 55 59 87 00 55 59 87 00 4e 55 85 00 4c 53 83 00
U Y . . U Y . . N U . . L S . .
0040: 4a 50 82 00 47 4c 80 00 46 4b 80 00 46 4b 80 00
J P . . G L . . F K . . F K . .
0050: 47 4b 82 00 47 4c 82 00 43 4a 7c 00 42 48 7a 00
G K . . G L . . C J | . B H z .
0060: 44 4a 7c 00 4a 4e 80 00 4d 50 82 00 4d 4f 82 00
D J | . J N . . M P . . M O . .
0070: 4d 4f 82 00 51 51 84 00 49 4c 7d 00 4c 4f 82 00
M O . . Q Q . . I L } . L O . .
0080: 49 4d 83 00 3f 44 7e 00 30 3a 74 00 24 33 6c 00
I M . . ? D ~ . 0 : t . $ 3 l .
0090: 24 37 6f 00 31 47 7d 00 3d 4b 7c 00 41 50 80 00
$ 7 o . 1 G } . = K | . A P . .
00A0: 32 43 73 00 1a 2d 5d 00 10 25 55 00 10 26 56 00
2 C s . . - ] . . % U . . & V .
00B0: 18 30 5f 00 2a 43 72 00 41 52 7c 00 41 50 7c 00
. 0 _ . * C r . A R | . A P | .
00C0: 3d 4a 79 00 38 42 73 00 37 3d 73 00 3a 3d 76 00
= J y . 8 B s . 7 = s . : = v .
00D0: 3a 3b 76 00 38 37 74 00 32 3a 6b 00 32 37 6f 00
: ; v . 8 7 t . 2 : k . 2 7 o .
00E0: 34 39 74 00 3d 44 74 00 22 29 47 00 00 05 11 00
4 9 t . = D t . " ) G . . . . .
00F0: 06 08 0f 00 0c 08 10 00 06 0a 0c 00 06 08 0a 00
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0100: 0d 0b 0d 00 0a 07 08 00 12 0f 10 00 0d 0f 0d 00
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0110: 07 0d 0a 00 33 3c 38 00 62 69 67 00 56 5d 5b 00
. . . . 3 < 8 . b i g . V ] [ .
0120: 51 58 54 00 5a 5e 5b 00 5a 5e 5a 00 41 46 40 00
Q X T . Z ^ [ . Z ^ Z . A F @ .
0130: 1f 23 1c 00 17 1b 14 00 1a 1c 16 00 1c 1f 19 00
. # . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0140: 24 29 24 00 29 30 2e 00 1f 26 29 00 09 10 19 00
$ ) $ . ) 0 . . . & ) . . . . .
0150: 01 06 14 00 07 0b 1d 00 06 0e 38 00 07 11 41 00
. . . . . . . . . . 8 . . . A .
0160: 06 15 4b 00 06 17 54 00 03 15 57 00 01 15 58 00
. . K . . . T . . . W . . . X .
0170: 01 14 55 00 01 14 53 00 00 12 55 00 00 12 56 00
. . U . . . S . . . U . . . V .
0180: 00 12 56 00 00 13 57 00 00 14 59 00 00 14 5b 00
. . V . . . W . . . Y . . . [ .
0190: 00 15 5d 00 01 16 5d 00 01 15 5d 00 03 14 59 00
. . ] . . . ] . . . ] . . . Y .
01A0: 08 17 5b 00 05 17 5f 00 00 14 5e 00 02 17 57 00
. . [ . . . _ . . . ^ . . . W .