Corrupt SD data recovery process for Mac

[ryan brown]

So after FOUR days of trial and error, I've successfully recovered all the data from a corrupt SD card. I tried MANY programs, and in the end only two of them worked. This should work for accidental formats too.

Here's a simplified process:

1. DO NOT re-write ANYTHING on the card once you know it's crapped out.

2. Make a sector by sector copy of the card to your hard drive: Pop your SD card in a card reader (not the camera), and download the trial version of Data Rescue's software, PhotoRescue. Do not try and just copy the card over to your hard drive, as it will run into errors. You need to do a sector by sector copy. Follow the instructions through their website.

3. Now we want our recovery software to extract and recover from the COPY we have on our hard drive. After trying over 50 "data recovery" programs, two ended up working. Data Rescue's PhotoRecovery, which you would need to purchase for $29 in order to save the files, however you CAN run it and see exactly what it found before purchasing. This process took about 5 hours on a 16gb sd card. The other program that worked is Photorec. This program is FREE, but it runs through terminal so it may be a little more difficult to figure out to novice users. It's really not difficult if you just pay attention to what it's asking you. This program saves your files as .m2ts vs what a lot of us are used to (.mts), but I assure you, they are full rez and the same. You can even change the file extension to .mts and it'll play just fine. This program did the recovery in 15 minutes!.

4. Now you just need to convert your .mts (or .m2ts) files to pro rezz for editing in FCP, or whatever editing application you use. I use Toast to do this, but there are many out there. Unfortunately, as of feb 2011, there's no good, free software out there that I'm aware of to do this conversion. Clipwrap seems to be popular also.

I hope this saves others some headache... it's been a stressful few days for me, but in the end, it all worked out OK. My confidence in the HMC-150 is seriously shaken, I must say. Shooting to only one SD card is a serious issue, as these cards are NOT very reliable. If you haven't run into a card corrupting yet, you will eventually. I assure you that.

Cheers

-ryan brown

 

[jmlau]

What kind of card were you using that had this problem?

 

[Jonathan_Healey]

Thanks for this post. It helped me retrieve some data from one of my shooter's GH1

 

[ryan brown]

I forget what card I was using... but it was a pretty standard card that a lot of people are using. After further inspection of the card, I noticed on one of the corners, the two plastic pieces began to separate... that was what caused the problem.

 

[ryan brown]

P.S. If a mod reads this, maybe we can make it a sticky?

 

[AirBender]

It's fine if you have as much time for the recovery of your data but there is another way which takes less time and recovered all your data instantly and accurately. Try Kernel for FAT and NTFS data recovery software which quickly scan your corrupted card and then show you the all data on it in scan mode and then you can easily select and save the required or all the file.

 

[L Train]

Photorec just made my day!! I was able to retrieve some wedding reception footage and Photorec worked flawlessly.

Thank you Ryan for sharing your findings with us!

 

[Michael Carter]

My son shot some footage to a substandard card and got a "bad card" error - we were unable to even boot the card, wouldn't show up in disk utility, etc - anyone tried to recover something along those lines?