Database Develop

Storage card pretents to be empty when it is not?

I am running Duttys March 4 Dual Touch, No Cube on my Kaiser. Probably unrelated, but yesterday every thing on my 6GB Sandisk Storage Card disappeared
About 750mb of data! The card appears empty in File Manager until I select "Show all files" when a single folder called WMDRM containing a single 132kb file shows up.
If I go to Settings> System> Memory The storage card shows 738mb used and 5084mb free. So it appears the data is there but inaccessible. If I browse the card from activeSync the same is also the case. Properties tell be 738mb used, but nothing is visibel except the single small file.
Any ideas on how I might be able to get it back? Really want to get my data back....

Storage Card scrambled files?
logger said:
I am running Duttys March 4 Dual Touch, No Cube on my Kaiser. Probably unrelated, but yesterday every thing on my 6GB Sandisk Storage Card disappeared
About 750mb of data! The card appears empty in File Manager until I select "Show all files" when a single folder called WMDRM containing a single 132kb file shows up.
If I go to Settings> System> Memory The storage card shows 738mb used and 5084mb free. So it appears the data is there but inaccessible. If I browse the card from activeSync the same is also the case. Properties tell be 738mb used, but nothing is visibel except the single small file.
Any ideas on how I might be able to get it back? Really want to get my data back....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may have scrambled your files.
Put it into a USB card reader and try to access it on your PC - if it looks the same there, try looking at it with a good file undeleter like Fix-It Utilities or Norton, see if you can recover anything.
I just had a laptop hard drive fail on my last week, so I feel your pain. Fortunately I had fairly recent backups so I didn't lose too much.
Makes me think of someone's tagline I saw once:
"There are 2 kinds of people in this world, those with a backup plan in place, and those that have not yet had a catastrophic disk failure"
Good luck!

Search this site for SD CARD2
Most likely the issue is cause by the infamous Win CE bug.
If I have not posted the solution here, do a google search in the Web, you'll find detailed instructions.
[Edit] Your data is there, so don't do anything foolish, or else you'll have to reinstall everything. The SD CARD2 issue is very simple to resolve.

Thanks guys. Had a look as SD CARD2 threads and they did not seem to relate to me. Ran Pocket Mechanic and its Scandisk feature on the Card and it reported loads of "lost clusters". I then ran it again with "Automatically fix errors" and "discard lost clusters" and it merrily removed them all. So now my 738mb of data has gone. Rats. Oh well I will just start again a fresh and hope it does nto happen again.

i feel your pain. it's happened to me quite a few times on my XDA II, and once recently on my Kaiser when i damaged the mini-usb port (entirely my fault) and it started writing corrupted data onto the card when copying files over through activesync
I've since taken to keeping copies of my card data in addition to backups of my device. i usually carry 2 cards with me, one backup and one "current"; and i also keep backups of my SD cards on my PC, just in case.

Strangely, After a few hours most of the data on the card spontaneously returned. One minute it was empty and the next it had all the folders and files back again. Albeit with a lot of lost clusters and a heap of files reported as 32kb. Was able to recover a lot of the stuff and have got another 2GB card to use in the mean time.
Is there much point in reformatting the card? From experience, does anyone know if formatting might "fix" whatever caused it to lose clusters and go bad? Am considering sending it back for a warranty claim but how can I ascertain if it is actaully faulty once I reformat it.

Reformat or replace?
logger said:
Strangely, After a few hours most of the data on the card spontaneously returned. One minute it was empty and the next it had all the folders and files back again. Albeit with a lot of lost clusters and a heap of files reported as 32kb. Was able to recover a lot of the stuff and have got another 2GB card to use in the mean time.
Is there much point in reformatting the card? From experience, does anyone know if formatting might "fix" whatever caused it to lose clusters and go bad? Am considering sending it back for a warranty claim but how can I ascertain if it is actaully faulty once I reformat it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had USB flash memory seem to be faulty, especially when trying to transfer large amounts of data for a backup - then rebooted and re-inserted and had readable data. I would try reformatting, and then back up often and watch it like a hawk. Or, if it wasn't too expensive, just discard. Or, try to get a replacement - I did get an SD card replaced once at N/C because it wouldn't read in anything I tried it in, and I complained and was heard.

I bought a replacement 2GB panasonic microSD in Japan a couple of days back. (Always find the memory quality excellent there.) Their eyes were out on stalks when they saw my 6GB card. Must not be wideley available there yet. Anyway I plan to use the 2gb for the time being to rule out hardware and software causes. Have reformatted the suspect 6gb card. Will soon start using it again with everything backed up to the max and hopefully the problem will not return. I have been flashing a few different ROMs. Because of this I am becoming ever more reliant on the Storage Card for system recovery. So cant afford to have a dodgy one.

Hi, folks.
I use a HTC cruise with WM6.1 from Bepe. This morning, all files from my 8GB miniSD card just vanisehd!!! I removed the card from the phone and tried to access the files in windows with a sd card reader, but no file was seen. Although, there was only 3,5GB free!!! The files weren't there, but they kept occupying space. I used this software to recover the files. Awesome! They were all there, except for the ones stored in root. Also,I had to rename all root folders, the subfolders were OK. I just had to filter files marked as "good" and then copied them to my HD. The phone is working as usual, but I can't explain why exactly this happened? Would it be a vicious virus? A joke from Micro$oft? Any ideas?!?

Peculiar folder on storage card

Thanks in advance for any help.
Something created a folder on the storage card in my Tilt called "(" . It appears to be empty. I am unable to delete it. I even tried taking the card out of the Tilt and putting it in a card reader. XP also sees the folder, but I can't delete it. If I use iSilo and navigate to the storage card, the folder list blinks that folder, that is, it appears ... disappears ... appears ... etc.
Any help getting rid of the folder would be greatly appreciated.

Sounds annoying, have you tried a registry editor? I think you are worrying too much about it though if it has nothing in it.

It is annoying ...
as in the iSilo example I cited. If I'm in the root of the storage card in iSilo, I have to time the tap perfectly to select a folder because literally the "(" folder appears and disappears and every folder below it changes position.
I assumed I might need to use my registry editor, but I'm not sure where to look.

try formatting the SD card

Lol, i asnwered this on the ATT forums. Look there and hopefully it will help you

Yeah, I had that problem with a folder randomly showing up with a bunch of special characters for the name, which windows doesn't like and you can't do anything with. (On my old 2125 I had one show up that was empty, but the phone kept thinking it was like 2 GB full, but it was only a 1GB card!! weird!) Anyway, to get rid of it I had to pull the card out of the phone and put it into a card reader on my PC, then I pulled all of the data other than the erroneous folder off the card and saved it temporarily to the PC, and then I reformatted the card. Put all the stuff back on, and put it back into my phone. It was a pain, but it worked.

The problem is due to storage card corruption/file corruption. I see this on a somewhat regular basis (~1500 users). I believe it is caused when the device goes into standby while writing to the storage card. I thought Win Mobile 6 handled this better than Win Mobile 5 but maybe not.
It is best to reformat the storage card if this happens.

All Storage Card Files Gone!

I've been using a 6G ScanDisk card for the last 6 months, without any problems. I needed to move some files from the Tilt's internal memory to the Card, and to my surprise there was only a folder named "FilesToBeDeleted" on the Card. I DID NOT CREATE THIS FOLDER! Oh, and by the way the folder was empty!
Checking the storage of the card from the Memory Setting of the PPC, shows about 3 G in use, which is about what I had on it.
Can anyone shed any light on what could have happened? I can re-format the Card....but is it going to loose data again? Is this something that has happened to others?
Thanks for any help,

mlpoland said:
I've been using a 6G ScanDisk card for the last 6 months, without any problems. I needed to move some files from the Tilt's internal memory to the Card, and to my surprise there was only a folder named "FilesToBeDeleted" on the Card. I DID NOT CREATE THIS FOLDER! Oh, and by the way the folder was empty!
Checking the storage of the card from the Memory Setting of the PPC, shows about 3 G in use, which is about what I had on it.
Can anyone shed any light on what could have happened? I can re-format the Card....but is it going to loose data again? Is this something that has happened to others?
Thanks for any help,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have read that this has happened to some people .. not me yet (fingers crossed) don't know what causes this. You could try a recovery software and see if you can get the stuff back.

Can you or anyone suggest a recovery software? Checking the MicroSD on my laptop shows 2.88 GB being used, (and of course 2.78 GB Free) so the data should be there. I have also saved additional data to the card and it works fine.
Just wondering...is there some kind of virus out there that would do this? For all the data to be "hidden" and a new folder to be created....the card just didn't create a folder by itself....

WM a card killer
The same thing happened to my 4GB SD card in Blue Angel (twice ). It seems to me that WM kills allocation table while writing to the card. I tried lots of different soft to recover my card and finally PC Inspector File Recovery did the job. I used card reader and this soft on PC to recover most of my files but the folder and filenames were sometimes messed up. When using PCI FR do not mark to many files to recover/save at the one time because it crashes.
Don't save anything on your card before recovering !
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1
Hope my Kaiser is not going to do this to me

rafgerm said:
The same thing happened to my 4GB SD card in Blue Angel (twice ). It seems to me that WM kills allocation table while writing to the card. I tried lots of different soft to recover my card and finally PC Inspector File Recovery did the job. I used card reader and this soft on PC to recover most of my files but the folder and filenames were sometimes messed up. When using PCI FR do not mark to many files to recover/save at the one time because it crashes.
Don't save anything on your card before recovering !
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1
Hope my Kaiser is not going to do this to me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, I used that program too. Recovered "missing files" problems on my previous hw6515 and twice on my TytnII 8GB micro SDdisk.

I've always had that "FilesToBeDeleted" folder too, it's normally hidden and when I delete it it comes back. Nothing special, just some folder the system wants there for some reason apparently, just like the other couple of hidden ones like WMDRM. If you didn't see it before and it now appeared it might have been hidden and the same thing that corrupt the FAT unhid it for some reason.
If you can see 2.88GB used on the PC, are you sure you have also have forced hidden files to display? Your data might be there but just hidden for some reason.
I have also saved additional data to the card and it works fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NEVER EVER do that to a media with a problem you might need to recover data from. This might just have ruined your last chance. On the opposite, when possible like on SD cards the first thing you'll want to do is set it as read-only.
When files are deleted, only their reference in the file table are, but the data itself is still present on the media, which allows recovery. But the locations the data is saved on are now marked as free, and anything you'll write on the card now can overwrite it, causing definitive loss.

Thanks a ton!!! The PC Inspector program worked great!! I was able to recover my files Next step, I guess, is to format the card and use it untill it decides to wipe my files out again. Of course my failth is the card will never be the same, and I'll keep a back up of the card also.....actually I was foolishly keeping the back-up for my Tilt on the card...can't trust that method anymore!
Thanks again for all the advise and information. As with all problems, you can always treat them as "learning opportunities", or...... throw the d*** thing out a window!!!!!

Same problem here, just ran into it last night and it's driving me nuts. Is there a way to recover/format the card from within the kaiser? Unfortunately the card reader I have has a max size limitation of 2gb and the card I'm using is 4gb - lame. Any suggestions? Thanks.

sammy-e said:
Unfortunately the card reader I have has a max size limitation of 2gb and the card I'm using is 4gb - lame. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Borrow, lend, or steal another card reader.

When I purchased this MicroCard, from ScanDisk, it came with a SD adapter plus a USB Card reader. I threw the USB Card reader in my desk thinking that I would not need this. I found out, by accident, that this USB card reader was the only way I could read the card on a PC. Built in card readers on both my home desk top and laptop would not access the card....
Just passing on this little bit of information, because it never occured to me that I had to use that USB Card reader!

This happened to my girlfriend's phone too. One day some of her programs just didn't work and most everything was gone on her card. Never fixed it, just reformatted card. Scary though.

Yeah, I tried recovering the data using TestDisk, saw some recommendations for it from others with the same problem, but wasn't able to get anywhere with it unfortunately. So in the end all I could do was format it and start over. Ahhh, backups... if I'd only made one.

I think this is a WM issue. Since other devices have the same problem.
here is a quote from another thread
Dutchman said:
I have the same issue with my tytn2.
Sometimes when i play some mp3s from my SD card and the device goes to standby or the program is closed my SD card is suddenly empty.
Removing the SD card and put it back in usually fixes it, sometimes a softreset also works.
So i believe this is a WM issue
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
see http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=376050

I had the problem that my SD Card was empty after activating Power Managment for it, disabled it and now it works for half a year perfectly

mlpoland said:
I've been using a 6G ScanDisk card for the last 6 months, without any problems. I needed to move some files from the Tilt's internal memory to the Card, and to my surprise there was only a folder named "FilesToBeDeleted" on the Card. I DID NOT CREATE THIS FOLDER! Oh, and by the way the folder was empty!
Checking the storage of the card from the Memory Setting of the PPC, shows about 3 G in use, which is about what I had on it.
Can anyone shed any light on what could have happened? I can re-format the Card....but is it going to loose data again? Is this something that has happened to others?
Thanks for any help,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IT'S A COMPUTER, I always carry a spare card, simple, job done. more time for girls/beer/pizza.

scilor said:
I had the problem that my SD Card was empty after activating Power Managment for it, disabled it and now it works for half a year perfectly
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any hints on how to disable this? I did a quick search and found mention of it but nothing detailing how to control it. Thanks.

scilor said:
I had the problem that my SD Card was empty after activating Power Managment for it, disabled it and now it works for half a year perfectly
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I disabled it w/ kaiser tweak. Still i have the issue

Has anyone had the issue while pretty much not ever using Windows Media Player mobile? I was playing DRM'd audio files, is that possibly a common theme?

Could it be Moving PIE Cache?
Happened to me too. 8GB card. Just getting back up and running...wish I had read this last night. I put a bunch of stuff back on the card. Oops. Oh well. I think the common thread may be:
moving your PIE Cache to the SD Card.
Anyone else with this problem also move PIE Cache? Used Memmaid 2.0 to change it.

different in my case, I haven't changed any of the cache settings for PIE.

my tilt keeps eating files on the sd card

my tilt keeps eating files on my sd card which hasent botered me much untill today it ate my tomtom maps and im over 200 miles from home so I don't know how im going to get home on thursday what could be causing this?

Could be a bad or dying card. I had one that behaved similarly -- got a new one that so far has been rock-solid

Newegg has some pretty cheap cards, I got a 2 gig for only 4 dollars, free shipping.

burtcom said:
Could be a bad or dying card. I had one that behaved similarly -- got a new one that so far has been rock-solid
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd say the same..
OP you got more chance that your card is corrupted than that your device has an appertite for data

that's what I thought when it 1st started but this card is only a cople weeks old. usually it just eats my wisbar themes or the folders there in this is the 1st time its ate anything oter than that.

Are you sure the files are totally gone? I had this happen a few weeks ago, where my ENTIRE SD card's contents were missing, and then out of the blue, they reappear unchanged. It happened again yesterday, and then, back to normal. Maybe an external reader could see if the files were there or not. Or try a data recovery program if they were deleted, there are a ton of free ones on the web. I think there was an alright one called something like Recuva. Good luck finding your files.
Dave

Disappearing files is not normal. Run a checkdisk.

I've had this happen to mine, as well. The files were there, but the file system had to me manipulated in order to get them to appear again. It would say on my computer that 5.38 GB of my 8 GB card were used, but no files were present. The only way it they would show up again was if I tried to recopy the files from my computer on a card reader. It would ask if I would like to overwrite the files, then they would reappear. I narrowed it down to an unknown error that kept happening after the Tilt would write a new file to the card. A hard reset is the only way I found to fix the problem. Since I did my most recent hard reset and formatted the Micro SD card and reinstalled everything, it works like a charm. Don't bother with AT&T. They are convinced it's a problem with the card. When I called, it was the first time that they had dealt with the issue. I even ended up talking to a rep from HTC, and they had never dealt with the issue. I, too, had TomTom Navigator, and lost maps. I have a SanDisk 8 GB MicroSD HC card. Maybe one or both of those components plays a factor in the error. I hate to say that you have to reset it to fix anything, but so far, it's the only thing that's worked. Back up your data. I carry a MicroSD card reader with me on my keychain with a card with duplicate data on it, just in case I am ever 200 miles from home without my GPS maps. I pop it in and worry about the issue when I get home.

I've to say you are not the only one person has this problem. My Tilt eat up SD contents all the time, especially when it try to write some contents to the card but the Tilt just switched-off during the writing. (I have some SW that pull data periodically from the Internet. Sometimes takes longer than the auto-off timer).
The only solution I have now is to make a backup mSD card on my notebook, and if anything suspecious happend to the card, I first run a chkdsk with notebook, or if the problem is beyond repair (like whole Tomtom missing), I just re-format the card then copy everything back.
Anyway, just chkdsk the card on PC periodically, my experience shows those small errors in begin will accomulate and finally eat up all files on the card.
And oh, yes, it's not necessarily a card problem. I have several mSD cards from various vendor with verious spec (speed, size) all shows the same problem.
Not perfect solution, but it serves me well. (Better than stuck 200miles from home...)

Maybe you should feed your phone more often so that it doesn't have those crazy urges to feast on your presious sd card files.

Memory Card issue....help?!?!

all of a sudden, my memory card is showing that its full. i know i hadnt filled all 8gb, considering that only a few days or so ago, i had only used 2.5 gigs or so....i used this program mTreeSize that i got from here, and it shows the same, that there's only 2.5 gigs used, but then under the Drives tab, it shows that the card is full......anyone experience this and know what the problem might be?

Hi
Just happened to me. I don't know exactly how it happened but it might have something to do with an app writing to my storage card as the battery died. In my case Mars Weather Panel was the culprit.
Files were written to the storage card with special characters in the names.
ie. little squares, periods, slashes etc..
I only noticed it when I tried to copy everything off the card so I could reformat it.
One strange thing was that if I plugged the phone into the pc via usb and used activesync -> explore to copy files from the card it didn't indicate a problem but when I put the card into a card reader the copy failed. After investigation I found the files with special chars. These files caused the directories to appear empty when viewing with resco exp etc.. so you can not delete them from the phone unless perhaps you know what directory contains them and you delete the directory but just a guess there.
So in the end to be safe I copied all the files to my pc except ones with corrupted file names, formated the card and copied back the files to the newly formatted card.
**This was done with the card out of the phone in a card reader.**