Help! SD Memory card files are now hidden...

[ToddJ]

I have been trying out a great program called Profimail and was trying to reinstall it on my sd card. When i did that I tried to transfer the mail that was already on my pda to the storage card. It tried to transfer for several minutes and then it locked up. Now after that everything that was on my 1gb sd card looked like it was gone. However, when i put the card in my sd card reader, it says that I have the same amount of data already on my card so it seems that it is hidden and I can't access it. How can i fix this (without reformatting the card.) Also, I noticed it is a FAT storage card and another one I have that still works says FAT32..is that part of the problem?

[applejosh]

I'm guessing there's some sort of corruption on the SD card. I'd try copying everything off of the card to your hard drive (and see if you get errors - just because things show up doesn't mean they can actually be copied by Windows or whatever desktop OS you have). If you get errors on the copy procedure, then there is some file/FAT corruption on the card. Copy all you can before continuing, because running chkdsk or scandisk can possibly cause some data loss, although those files are usually gone by that point anyway.

Then I'd run a chkdsk on the card to see if there are indeed some sort of errors in the FAT. If there are errors, you might see if chkdsk can fix them (if you're running XP, then it's chkdsk /f) or you could reformat and restore from what you copied to your hard drive.

I've had some PPC programs trash the SD card (AvantGo used to do that, as when I had PIE cache saved on the SD card). The FAT gets corrupted, and unless you have a good recovery program, you could lose data. chkdsk is not what I would consider a good recovery program, but it can fix some problems rather easily. But I still say make backups (and more backups) before trying to fix anything with chkdsk.

If your device can read FAT32, then it shouldn't matter if the card is formatted FAT or FAT32. (I keep my cards at FAT just for compatibility's sake across my devices.)

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Before you do anything, read this thread:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39583