HELP PLEASE : IPAQ 4150 has wiped the SD card !!!!

[dibbs26]

I backup my ipaq and also excel files to a SD card installed in the pda. I went to it this morning and it said that a backup was not successful and their was a corrupted file. Once I cleared this message I accessed the card and it was totally empty. I think I have now lost all the files saved to this card..........can anybody help please ?
Many Thanks :cry:

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Sorry to hear that, it's an unfortunately a common problem. Whatever you do, don't touch the card at all until you have a chance to go through this thread (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39583).

[dibbs26]

Thanks for the reply. I am a bit useless when it comes to sorting stuff like this, I have gone through the thread you gave me to look at a was wondering what would be the best thing to do, which program will help ?
Thanks :D

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Basically, you have to look for a data recovery program, preferably one that isn't just targeted at pictures (plus a card reader as all these programs are desktop based). GetDataBack (http://www.runtime.org/) for FAT is one such program, I use Active@ File Recovery (http://www.file-recovery.net/) myself. You can use WinXP's chkdsk, but it returns recovered files in *.chk format, which means you have to manually rename them.

[dibbs26]

Which program would I use to get back Excel spreadsheet files, thats all there was on the card really, and where is best to get it from ?
thanks :D

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Either of those two programs I mentioned will do what you want. Alternatively, if you can identify the files by size, chkdsk can do the same thing (but as I say, you'll have to identify and rename manually). Good luck!