Life Inside an SD Card: Storage Reliability and Recoverability
In Part I of this article, we discussed how microcontrollers are used in all SD cards to hide physical chip defects to create an illusion of contiguous, reliable storage. Today we’ll talk about how reliable (or unreliable) SD cards are when used for storing actual data, and what to do if you have a corrupted one.
Technical Aspects of Recovering Data after a Quick Format
Quick-formatting a disk does not physically erase information stored on the disk, allowing a data recovery tool to recover everything down to the last file. Wrong! The Quick Format command destroys enough information to make the recovery complicated, while making the result unguaranteed. In this technical article we’ll try to shed light on what happens when you format a disk using the Quick Format command; what can be recovered, and what can’t, and why.
Recovering and Repairing Files (Part 3)
Recover or Repair?
So will you need a file recovery tool or a file repair utility? Let’s look at some typical scenarios.
1. Let’s say you have a document named “MyDocument1.doc”. When trying to open that document with Microsoft Word, you receive a message telling you the file is corrupted and prompting whether you’d like to repair the file. When you agree to attempt the repair, the program crashes or throws out an error message.
Read moreRecovering and Repairing Files (Part 2)
File Recovery Limitations
File recovery tools have their limits. If you are recovering small, recently deleted files that are not fragmented, you may never need a file repair tool as such files will usually present no problems.
Recovering and Repairing Files (Part 1)
If you had to recover a bunch of files, chances are one or more of them won’t open correctly. Some files will always come out corrupted or incomplete, no matter how good a recovery tool you were using. In order to be able to view, edit, or otherwise use these files, you will need to repair the files first.
Recovering Files from a Non-Bootable Computer
Dealing with missing information on a daily basis, we often have customers who are stuck with a non-bootable computer. This can easily happen if a system disk drive gets damaged, corrupted or simply wears out. This always comes as a shock to normal computer users, especially if the failed PC is their only computer. Every time we have a call like that, we try to help the customer calm down, explaining them the necessary steps to get their files back. In this article, we’ll tell exactly what to do if you encounter a non-bootable PC and want to fix it at home.
Recovering Partitions on a Corrupted Hard Drive
In our previous articles, we’ve been talking about recovering deleted files, fixing accidental damage and dealing with formatted or inaccessible disks. Today we’re going to handle a situation where the most sensitive part of the hard drive gets damaged; the part that contains information about the disk, its volumes and their configuration.
Recovering FAT/FAT32 (File Allocation Table) Volumes
A file system is used to index and organize files on the disk. Records in the file system point to exact location(s) on the disk containing information that belongs to a certain file. Different file systems organize files differently. This article discusses the recovery of FAT (File Allocation Table) file systems, which includes the original FAT, FAT16 and FAT32.
