How To Recover Data from a damaged SD card

This is from the XDA forums, and I’m really mad because I had pictures on an SD card that I just could not recover for over a year before I found this post… and now I can’t find it.

Anyway, I hope this helps somebody out there.  From sonarchist on the XDA forums: Damaged microSD Card…(this is how I recovered my Data)

…….right in the middle of a super demanding day, the message “damaged SD Card / Reformat” appeared on my Epic, when I least expected it (inopportune is the word)………… changing firmware is never without its more interesting moments, + this may or may not be a symptom (went froyo to gingerbread), however,……….. am sharing this post to the Epic community, as i sense this to be an important enough issue………..no one really knows the specific cause of sd card corruption + failure: it’s variable + always somewhat circumstantial (ie, saw it mentioned elsewhere that overheating from an overclocked cpu could cause damage as well)……………….so, moving forward I simply want to contribute as a brief description, here, how i was able to recover (most) of the files from my ‘damaged micro sd card:’

First, when i saw ‘damaged sd card / format card’ on the phone, when it became possible 4 me to do so many hours later, instead of ‘formatting’ I replaced the damaged card for a new one (pny 16gb sdhc class 10)…booted the phone everything was fine (15.91gb space available)……..as expected, no files in the SD Card………………….next:

(1) placed ‘damaged’ sd card into the reader that came w/ the device, and mounted to pc, selected the drive (followed by confirmation beep ‘device detected’ sound, then the language: ‘d:\ not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable’ came on the screen……….went to RUN and typed CMD……..from new window, I typed Chkdsk d: /r and the PC began reading the contents of the damaged SD card (most of the android zip files etcetera were there, as were a number of files w/ no content) + next i typed ‘exit’ (no quotations, just the letters) to return to the windows desktop…….OK, so now the only files missing are the pix + video mov’s (far as I can remember).

……….(2) next, to recover pix + video, from the pc desktop i opened ZARecovery (if you do not already have it go to Data Recovery Software, Solutions, Tutorials, Forum – ZAR Data Recovery and download the free recovery program from that site).

………….(3) from the ZARrecovery main page, selected sd card as device, selected ‘next’, selected ‘root’ folder for all files that ZAR was able to detect as recoverable, entered destination folder name (for transfer of recovered pix + video to PC….note: NEVER to sd card itself!), + lastly, selected ‘start copying selected files’………and that was it, closed ZAR + began viewing the content of the recovery folder to get an assessment of what had actually been recovered, and what had been lost……………..fortunately 4 me, the loss was minimal, as I tend to create backups (Nandroids, every half year; pic, videos, email attachments = pretty regularly).

Hope this helps those of you that have been experiencing microSD Card damage (from whatever source).

Remember, + not to speak to the Choir, but can not to overstate this: BACKUP…………. BACKUP…………. BACKUP………….BACKUP

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Verizon wants to monitor your web habits, if this bothers you — opt out | Android Central

Believe it or not, this is an improvement.  There was a time where it was just part of your End User Agreement and you can “opt out” by cancelling your service.

Anyway, click through, and opt out if you are on Verizon.

Having the option to opt out is great! Having been opted in by default — not so great. If youre not down with Verizon doing this, then make sure you opt out as soon as possible.

via Verizon wants to monitor your web habits, if this bothers you — opt out | Android Central.

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The gadgets police use to snarf cell phone data

This issue has gotten a bit of press lately, and Ars goes through the details of the actual technology the police might be using on your cell phone.

If a police officer stops you in the course of investigating some matter, can she peruse the contents of your mobile device as she might demand your identification or the contents of the glove compartment of your vehicle? Does a routine traffic stop allow access to your phone’s photos, videos, text messages, and contacts?

The gear to grab this data is widely available. Cell phone extraction hardware made by CelleBrite, for instance, can grab a phone’s contacts database, its text message log, call history, pictures, videos, ringtones, or even a “complete file system memory dump.” The Michigan State Police is a CelleBrite customer, and its routine use is raising questions about the propriety of law enforcement accessing data stored on cell phones.

via The gadgets police use to snarf cell phone data.

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Oracle gives up on OpenOffice after community forks the project

Bravo, open source community.

A group of prominent OOo contributors eventually decided to fork the project, creating an alternative called LibreOffice. They founded a nonprofit organization called The Document Foundation (TDF) in order to create a truly vendor-neutral governance body for the software. LibreOffice is based on the OOo source code, but it also incorporates a large number of other improvements driven by its own developer community.

Most of the major companies that have historically been involved in OOo development have moved to stand behind TDF and LibreOffice, including Red Hat, Novell, Google, and Canonical. LibreOffice has also succeeded in attracting a significant portion of OOo’s independent contributors. The ecosystem-wide shift in favor of LibreOffice has left Oracle as the only major party still developing OOo, forcing the company to compete against the broader community.

via Oracle gives up on OpenOffice after community forks the project.

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First release of LibreOffice arrives with improvements over OOo

It’s about time.  The office software that the Corporations don’t want you to have.  Time to move away from OpenOffice and Microsoft Office to LibreOffice.

The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the availability of LibreOffice 3.3, the first official stable release of the open source office suite. It introduces a number of noteworthy new features and there are improvements throughout the included applications. More significantly, the release reflects the growing strength of the nascent LibreOffice project.

TDF was founded last year when a key group of OpenOffice.org (OOo) contributors decided to form an independent organization to develop a community-driven fork of OOo. The move was necessitated by Oracle’s failure to address the governance problems that had plagued OOo under Sun’s leadership, particularly the project’s controversial copyright assignment policies. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and subsequent mismanagement of Sun’s open source assets have created further uncertainty about the future of OOo and the sustainability of its community under Oracle’s stewardship.

via First release of LibreOffice arrives with improvements over OOo.

I’m looking forward to being able to have up to a million rows in a spreadsheet.  It is really useful for some of the large data-set analysis stuff that I do.

A direct link to the website is here: http://www.libreoffice.org/

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Froyo for the Epic 4G coming ASAP | Android Central

Hmm, the screenshot of the @sprint twitter account is not showing in the quote, but that is basically the source.  hat tip to Android Central.

I was actually in the process of loading a custom rom to my phone when this came out.  I might hold off.  I still kinda want to try the ext4 format, but on the other hand I’m really not experiencing a whole lot of screen-lag either.  hmmm.

 

With news that the Samsung Vibrant may start seeing Froyo roll out as early as Jan. 21, all eyes are on the other major U.S. carriers and their news or lack of about the Froyo update for the rest of the US Galaxy S line of phones.  Sprint has come forward via Twitter and let everyone know they are still working closely with Samsung and will release Froyo for the Epic 4G once it meets the “rigorous testing criteria” it has for the popular handset.

via Froyo for the Epic 4G coming ASAP | Android Central.

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Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are “fair use”

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was written in 1998 to protect digital intellectual property, and forbids most attempts to bypass digital security measures.  Every 3 years, the Library of Congress has the ability to create exceptions to the DMCA, thereby legalizing cracking Digital Rights Management.

Excerpt and Link from Ars Technica:

This time, the Library went (comparatively) nuts, allowing widespread bypassing of the CSS encryption on DVDs, declaring iPhone jailbreaking to be “fair use,” and letting consumers crack their legally purchased e-books in order to have them read aloud by computers.

via Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are “fair use”.

The linked post has a great summary.  But the key point has to do with the iPhone, most notably… jailbreaking is officially legal.

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Game reviews on Metacritic: why we avoid inclusion

I found this article interesting, particularly from the eye of a statistician.  Particularly since some of the same problems that results for “meta-analysis” studies are actually reflected in this articles, which deals with the aggregation of Video Game reviews.  In many ways, we see that the problems are similar to the weakness in a meta-analysis study.  Namely, different studies (or in this case, reviewers) have different purposes and designs to how they evaluate something, and trying to put them all together in a nice simple number is just, well, too simplifying.

Linked below for reference.

The world of game reviews is often difficult to navigate. Everyone uses different scores, and a large emphasis is placed on the single score given to games by Metacritic, a review-aggregation site. Metacritic uses a scale of 1 to 100 for reviews, a figure calculated by averaging multiple scores. What comes out after that averaging is seen as something akin to a gold standard for judging the quality of a game. Weve been asked numerous times why were not included in the game rankings given by Metacritic: our reviews arent linked from the site, and were not included in the final uber-score. Thats by design.

via Game reviews on Metacritic: why we avoid inclusion.

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No rules: Internet security a Hobbesian “state of nature”

A report from DC think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies pains a pretty stark picture about the security dangers of major enterprises around the.  Ars has a summary, and you can get a direct link to the pdf document by clicking here.

No rules: Internet security a Hobbesian “state of nature”

By Nate Anderson |

Life in cyberspace can be nasty, brutish, and short. So says a new report PDF on international cybersecurity, which argues that the Internet is a Hobbesian “state of nature” where anything goes, where even government attacks maintain “plausible deniability,” and where 80 percent of industrial control software is hooked into an IP network.It’s also a world where the US is both a model and a bully. When 600 senior IT security managers were asked which state actor was most likely to engage in cyberattacks, the top response was the US 36 percent, even among traditional US allies. On the other hand, US security practices were some of the world’s most admired.

via No rules: Internet security a Hobbesian “state of nature”.

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Trying to find a bulletproof computer setup for the elderly

Well, I had an old G4 PowerMac tower that was running at my grandparent’s place for the last couple years, but it looks like the power died, and I’m not sure it is worth fixing.  The truth is, it was to difficult for them to use anyway (they are both over age 85 and have never used a computer), and it was only being used by visitors.

So… I started poking around craiglist for some old desktops, and I’m looking to setup some sort of bulletproof installation which will allow them to do all the basics: email, web surf, watch video, check out online photos, maybe even skype/videochat.  I want to lock it down to a user-level so that nothing can break.  Even better if I can setup VPN so that I can remotely login to provide tech support.

So… Windows is out, it will eventually slow down and break, or some virus or worm will get on it.  Mac has proven too hard to use.  Google Chrome OS appears to have some potential but is too half-baked at this time.

Then I found Eldy.eu, and project that originated out of Italy to create an easy interface for the eldery.  They have a linux version, it looks like it can be installed over most linux distributions including Ubuntu, which is something I haven’t had problems installing before.

Who knows, does anyone know of any other strategies out there for this problem?  I’ll try to update this post with a followup…

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