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RE: HOWTO: Repairing corrupted cards via Linux

Ashu — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:14:21 GMT

hi,

i saw your post.I am very interested in trying out what you have proposed.Cause my 64mb card has corrupted,and i have no clue.And most options that i do hear is that i haev re format it.

But ther eis some really important data on the chip,so i would like to know what exactly are the chances of retrieving it.

i have gone to the linux site you mentioned and i have downloaded...install-x86-minimal-2005.1

now is this software ok?and i am not a linux user,so can you give me step by step instructions,as to how to do it.

thank you very much....really would appreciate your help

Ashu

RE: Repairing corrupted cards via Linux

webmaster — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 22:59:53 GMT

mat,

we for one will not be blaming you for alien invasion.

we very much appreciate the LINUX contribution, we are Windows top-heavy on our HOWTO guides at the moment. If you are happy with it, we will edit your post and add it to our HOWTO section for more general consumption (we will leave your disclaimer on it!)

now if there are any MAC users out there that can provide a similar guide for their platform, please step forward..

HOWTO: Repairing corrupted cards via Linux

cyberfish — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 02:50:18 GMT

Right as a linux user I thought a might contribute a possible non windows solution (if windows crashes whilst formating this might be your way out!). This will reformat your card hence lose everything on it!

If you use a linux live cd (ie whole os booting from cd) you can pop in the cd, boot, re-partition, format and hopefully that should make it work again without changing anything from your window setup.

The best linux cd I can think of for this purpose would be the gentoo linux minimal install live cd as it has a feature called devfs which will should make your cardreader work straight away. Also if you unplug any unwanted usb drives (ie usb hard disk, pen drive etc) that way your cardreader should be the first usb drive and given sda as its label (my guide works around that)

http://gentoo.blueyonder.co.uk/releases/x86/2004.3/livecd/install-x86-minimal-2004.3.iso
(50.5 meg)

Burn the above file to cd, then place in drive (or just not take it out) then restart your computer and select cd boot (this maybe automatic)

Make sure you have your cardreader installed before booting your computer.
Once the cd finishes booting you should be left with a prompt like this

root #

chances are your phone has corrupted the cards partition table so we'll use fdisk to delete the partition, recreate the partition then format to fat16.

fdisk /dev/sda
p (to show partitions)

You should then see the cards partition (sda1)

d (delete partition)
n (new partition)
p (primary partition)
1 (first primary partition)
[enter] (use default)
[enter] (use default)
t (change partition type)
6 (fat16)
p (to show partitions)

You should have the sda1 back

w (to write partition table and quit)

now if you now reformat the card as fat16

mkdosfs -F 16 /dev/sda1

hopefully that will sort it.
I should say that I know linux and how to use it, but if dont and you follow this guide and some how make your computer blowup, wipe your hard disc or induce an alien attack etc dont blame me (I could do without the hassle )!

btw, "shutdown -t now" to turn off your computer!

~mat