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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?!?

Storage card randomly lost data

Yesterday my girlfriend told me all of a sudden her programs on her storage card stopped working. Well come to find out, it was like everything related to windows on the card was deleted somehow (program files, application data, etc.). She used to have the same card in a flip phone so the folders from that like music and pictures still exist. She hasn't changed anything on her phone, I usually do all that for her, so she wouldn't have done anything in that department.
Anyone heard of this happening before?
Any help would be greatful, I would like to possibly retrieve some files before I reformat the card.
Thanks in advance.

Step one: Buy a SD reader. You can get one on Ebay, Radioshack, etc. Very cheap. 5-25 dollars. I think 25 is even pushing it.
Step two: see if you can retrieve files with reader
Step three: after retrieving said files, format your SD card.

You forgot step four:
don't let girlfriends use technology and don't trust anyone when they say nothing happened
j/k

Very true. She sometimes can be a little thick, but with Windows mobile, who knows what can happen.

I've had the exact same thing happen to me. AT&T Tilt and 6GB Sandisk MicroSD.
File Explorer on the phone shows nothing on the card. Tried reading the card with a card reader on the PC and it also shows the card is blank. However, the Tilt's memory usage program still shows 3GB of memory is used on the card.

gman8966 said:
Anyone heard of this happening before?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same problem here (few times). Even change the SD card. Maybe something in power managment (kaiser tweak?)

Same problem here - lost a TomTom map just randomly - copied map back on, same files, same path.... still using and extra 1gb....
Good stuff...

Cart corrupting on Kaiser is often a problem, you can use a card reader and the soft R-Studio to try get your stuff back...it worked great for me =)
And after formating your card, try to install the Artemis plugin for Card corruption...=)
+++

oui oui said:
Cart corrupting on Kaiser is often a problem, you can use a card reader and the soft R-Studio to try get your stuff back...it worked great for me =)
And after formating your card, try to install the Artemis plugin for Card corruption...=)
+++
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something more about this plugin?
Second time after upgrading to official WM6.1 I lost my data

tom2402 said:
Something more about this plugin?
Second time after upgrading to official WM6.1 I lost my data
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not heard about this plugin either. Interested!

I have had the same issue having lost tom tom maps pictures etc. I have actually installed the artemis card coruption fix as I had that phone b4 this one & it still has happened to me a few times. I am going to format card one last time & the phone from default & see if this occurs again, as I believe it to be caused due to excess heat from the device but that is only a hunch as each time it has occurred the phone has been red hot prior to this.

Tilt corrupt files

I have an ATT Tilt that I'm still running WM 5 on. (Correction: it is actually WM 6) I am having some trouble with some corrupt files showing up on my memory card. I went so far as to buy a new memory card and removed several 3rd party apps that I had installed. Even after this, the files returned on the new card. I cannot access or delete them. I cannot tell which files are being corrupted, I assume they are program and documents that should be otherwise usable. The file names show up as a series of squares, other odd shapes, numbers and letters.
Some of the 3rd party apps I am using are
Total Commander
WMWifiRouter (added after this problem started)
Google Maps and Mobile Apps
Opera Mini
I haven't made any alterations to ROM or anything else.
Any help would be appreciated on how to proceed in clearing this up. One app that I notice is affected is "Notes". I have lost some data that I had saved in that.
Thanks!

How did you get windows mobile 5 on it?

I have the same problem from time to time. There is no real fix that I have found. What I think is happening is, the phone is reading/writing to the memory card, and either it stops (beause you put the phone to sleep, or soft reset it) or some other method. Since the file was never closed/finished correctly, it gets curroped. I strongly recommend backing up your SD card every month or 2. That way, when things do crash, you do not lose all your files.
Last time it crashed. I hard reset the phone, and re-formated the sd card in my PC. It has been 3 months and so far no problems. Maybe you can try that...

Oops my mistake I have WM 6
CE OS 5.c.1622
Sorry

other things to check or try changing include:
1. the brand of the micro sd card
2. any power saving settings that might be getting applied to the micro sd card (in my opinion, power saving settings are notorious for such behavior and my advice is to just disable any power saving settings for the micro sd card/slot)
3. your usage habits regarding closing programs. my recommendation is to CLOSE programs (as opposed to MINIMIZING them to the background) when you are done using them.
4. how/when you remove the card from the device (if you ever do) and/or how you remove the card from your desktop/laptop (if you occasionally use a card reader). on your desktop/laptop, it is advised to "Safely remove hardware" before physically removing the card from the card reader. on your device, it is advised to close all programs that might be accessing files from the card, wait a few seconds, and then remove the card. most people will suggest shutting down the device before removing the card but it is my understanding that the card slots in the kaiser are indeed hot swappable (i've been using it that way for almost 2 years and have never experienced any issues with my 8GB sandisk).
5. getting a card reader is highly recommended, especially if you want to try to recover lost data or to repair the file system on the card. as a bonus, the card reader will also allow nearly 5 to 10 times faster read/write access when transferring files onto/off the card from your desktop/laptop as compared to activesync via usb sync cable.
6. avoid setting your programs to use the card as "cache". example, some people like to set their browsers' cache folders to the storage card. this can also cause file system errors in some rare and remote scenarios.
all these portable devices (phones, digital cameras, mp3 players) use the fragile FAT32 format as their file system but i've always hoped that M$ would some day provide an alternative file system (something like NTFS without its security features perhaps to keep things simple for the pda phone), but alas that day has yet to come!

Try copying all your files to your computer (in case something happens)and run an error check from your PC with a card reader. Right click on the card in Windows Explorer (if you have Windows), choose Properties, then choose the Tools tab, then click Error Check, and run the check.

had the same problem, lost all my programs. I copied a very old back up over to the card . once I had done that the original files reappeared.

Contents of the storage card dissappeared!

Yesterday when I attempted to play some games that were installed on the storage card, the links under Programs/Games no longer worked. Turns out the data on the storage card got wiped out.
The file explorer and Total commander both show only one folder in the storage card. Its called WMDRM. And there is one file in that folder called B1DA8AC498FF588D471330048DEFE8FA02D6350B.hds. Other than that the storage card seems empty.
But the funny thing is, the Memory app under settings shows that 700 MB of data on the storage card is in use. Also, under Windows Explorer, when I try to browse the contents of the phone, I can see ~700 megs of data being used on the storage card (check attached image.)
Can someone explain to me whats going on? Is all my data lost? Is there a way to recover it?
Thanks in advance

Did you get the problem resolved yet
If not just reply and I could help you out

hidden files?
This actually happend to me recently. In my case I somehow, and I still have no idea how, checked the box to hide the files. It drove me nuts for about 20 minutes until I figured it out. as soon as I unchecked the box, everthing reappeared.

This has happened on my sons phone twice.. One time I magically fixed it by copying somethign back that "dissappeared" and once that file was "Back" everything else reappeared as well... Not sure what is going on.. and ideas?

ashoooo said:
Is all my data lost? Is there a way to recover it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try reading the memory cards contents by using the USB reader that came with it. I have a Sandisk 6 GB card that kept on doing this but since retiring that to out of phone duties with its card reader and using my 16 GB Sandisk card in my TyTN II, all is now well. What card is it that you have?
If you search the forum you'll see this is a relatively common problem and people have been able to recover files in this way using specialist file recovery software. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure though so make sure your memory card is fully backed up in future.

Flying Kiwi said:
If you search the forum you'll see this is a relatively common problem and people have been able to recover files in this way using specialist file recovery software./QUOTE]
Which software do you recommend? I've been trawling the search results, but either I'm simply using the wrong search terms, or I simply can't see the wood for the trees. I have a similar issue - my 8Gb card is showing as empty, despite apparently having 2.5Gb in use. And this statistic is reported both on my phone and a colleagues, as well as two different PCs when using a card reader.
Any help would be great.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

R3dF1v3 said:
Flying Kiwi said:
If you search the forum you'll see this is a relatively common problem and people have been able to recover files in this way using specialist file recovery software./QUOTE]
Which software do you recommend? I've been trawling the search results, but either I'm simply using the wrong search terms, or I simply can't see the wood for the trees. I have a similar issue - my 8Gb card is showing as empty, despite apparently having 2.5Gb in use. And this statistic is reported both on my phone and a colleagues, as well as two different PCs when using a card reader.
Any help would be great.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*Bump*
Any ideas, anyone?
Thanks.
Thanks, guys.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

rola_electronics, thanks for the offer.
Everybody, thanks for your replies, guys.
When right clicking on the card, and selecting properties, it only showed like 5 files, but 700 megs in use. I had to reformat my card. Hard reset my phone (but that was because my phone was starting to get sluggish) reinstall everything.
But after a couple of weeks, it happened again (2 days ago.) I was playing Astraware sudoku, when the battery died. On recharging and rebooting, the card was fuxor3d again. Had to delete everything on it, and reinstall stuff again.
As for the suggestion of copying a new file and deleting it again for contents to reappear, I noticed that when I copied a file and deleted it, a ton of temporary files appeared on it. I deleted them manally later.
Kiwi, my card is Sandisk 6GB microSD.

rola_electronics, thanks for the offer.
Everybody, thanks for your replies, guys.
When right clicking on the card, and selecting properties, it only showed like 5 files, but 700 megs in use. I had to reformat my card. Hard reset my phone (but that was because my phone was starting to get sluggish) reinstall everything.
But after a couple of weeks, it happened again (2 days ago.) I was playing Astraware sudoku, when the battery died. On recharging and rebooting, the card was fuxor3d again. Had to delete everything on it, and reinstall stuff again.
As for the suggestion of copying a new file and deleting it again for contents to reappear, I noticed that when I copied a file and deleted it, a ton of temporary files appeared on it. I deleted them manally later.
Kiwi, my card is Sandisk 6GB microSD.

I'm not sure what ROMs you are using, but I know there have been issues with some that have the SD Power Management enabed. There are threads kicking around about it. You can disable it with Advanced Config.
Good luck

I'm using ATT stock, minus the bloatware (with the soft reset just before config trick)

your card -could- so to speak, dying. Do you have another one handy? Try using it for a while if you do and see what happens.

FWIW my ROM was the same as the one I'm still using (HTC standard throughout) and I've made no configuration changes associated with the microSD card other than swapping the 6 GB Sandisk with a 16 GB Sandisk. I've not used advanced config or similar and it's a plain 'as from the factory' setup. I strongly suspect this is associated with the card or at least a compatibility issue between the card and phone. Although power related issues may contribute to the likelyhood of problems in some cases, that wasn't the case with me.
When I did loose the card contents, I wasn't able to recover them using any software (I've read here that others had some luck however - though I don't recall what software they used). I had all my crucial files backed up and just low level erased the card in its USB reader using the HDD Wipe tool from the HDD Guru website (Sandisks own utility to perform these functions was not free - unlike every other HDD manufacturer I know of that does provide free HDD utility software to work with its drives, hence why I found the HDD Guru tool). I then formatted the card in Windows and restored my files from backup using Win XP Professionals native drive backup program. It was good as new (but did the same thing about 3 times in total before I became fed up with it and swapped out the card). I would suggest that those considering the purchase of a card to use with the TyTN II be wary of (at least some) Sandisk 6 GB microSDHC cards.

Thanks for your responses, Kiwi and kaiserII101.
Kiwi, what app do you recommend to backup the SD card?
If it gets corrupted again, can I just reformat it, and restore the backed up files (file copy)?

ashoooo said:
Kiwi, what app do you recommend to backup the SD card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As mentioned in my post above I just used the native backup and restore app built into Windows XP and used the card reader so the card showed as a drive and backed up everything. I'm using Win 7 now but haven't checked out all its similar options yet. The answer to your second question is yes (from within the app). Have a read of the Windows help relating to the backup/restore program. Not sure what it's called under Vista but I suspect something similar will be there built into the software. Otherwise you can simply copy all the files and folders across to a dedicated folder on your PC and if you prefer, just zip them up into a backup archive using something like Winzip.

Thank you Kiwi. The Win 7 app is also called "Backup and Restore".
So, if simple file copy suffices, I guess I'm just going to do that. Thanks for your help again.

I'd go for the backup - restore option
ashoooo said:
The Win 7 app is also called "Backup and Restore".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I put that into my Win 7 search box and found it but haven't used it yet - it looks like it does the same sort of thing the Win XP app did though so that will do it fine and it'll be much easier than having to copy files over and zipping them up manually.
So, if simple file copy suffices, I guess I'm just going to do that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It'll depend what kinds of files you have and if they're not all straightforward things like mp3s, avi files or jpgs etc then you may run into problems if file attributes are changed by copying them directly. I think your best bet is to play it safe and use the backup - restore utility and just backup the whole card. It's usually easier and results in less space being used on the backup media because the files are automatically compressed (depending on configuration choices).

MicroSD Car Messed Up

My SD card has started acting up on me. Recently, a ton of folders with gibberish symbol names showed up. I can't delete these folders in either my phone or my PC. These folders have nothing in them. I can't transfer files to or from it. While in my computer, the card window will occasionally freeze and tell me the thing has stopped responding. I have made sure the lock switch is open on the adapter. I'd like to flash a new ROM but the card won't even open in my PC. Says I need to format it before I can use it, but no method (freeware, Explorer, CMD) will work. I get thrown messages about how it won't work or whatever. In fact, I was trying diskmgmt.msc while typing this earlier but I got a BSOD memory dump. First time I've had one on this PC. Anyway, anyone know what I can do? I just want it to work, I paid a lot for this card. I have a feeling it's because I let the device format it, but I dunno. IF it helps, I'm running Win7 x64. Thanks.

Like you said, your MicroSD is probably done for. You might try to format it using your PC. But it probably won't work.
Some manufacturers offer lifetime warranty on flash memory so you might be able to swap it for a new one since this obviously isn't your fault. I've done so with at least two memory cards before (but then again I'm from Europe so it might be different for me).

I'm on my second MicroSD card, after I started getting warnings that certain files couldn't be accessed.
Actually, the second one (both are 8gb: first was a SanDisk, 2nd is a Kingston) gave me a warning yesterday.
Never has this problem with other phones... I don't know if the MicroSD format is prone to this sort of thing, or it is an interaction with the X1 - but it doesn't inspire confidence.
I think I will do a weekly copy of all files from the card onto my PC.