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[Q] Please help data recovery on HD7 - desperate!

2 days ago my son was born and I used my HTC HD7 to take all pictures and videos of him and my wife, these were the most amazing and precious moments of my life and I captured them all on my phone.
My wife and I both have identical HD7 phones, last night I took my phone home and charged a spare battery for her, today I took this to hospital and we both turned our phones off and waited until the "goodbye" sreen had vanished, and then swapped the batterys over in the phones so she had the fully charged battery and I had the low/quarter full battery. When she switched on her phone, everything was fine, but when I switched on mine I saw some screen flash up saying something about "pressing the volume buttons to erase your phone" I paniced at this point and did a stupid thing and took out the battery again. After I put it back in it booted up and gave me the "seup windows phone" screen. At this point I switched my phone off and havent swiched it back on since.
Is there any hope of recoverying the pictures and videos? Apps, contactacts etc I dont care about, but these are the most important moments of my life I want to recover. I have no idea what happened, but at the moment I am very upset.
I am an IT technician myself, and in the past it has been all stored on the memory card, but there is no way to remove the memory card on this phone. I am willing to destroy the phone to preserve this data if needed, Is there any way I could remove the memory card? I could try some data recovery software if this is the case.
Please help, the might be a simple way to sort this I haven't been able to find. I have now been up 36 hours as my wife has had a lot of complications and lost a lot of blood last night and ended up having a transfusion. Sorry to be so personal, but I am really desperate to save these photos.

you might have accidentally held the volume button when you turned on the device, and that triggered that factory reset feature.
I have done this accidentally with my trophy as well when i was running late for work, but instead of removing the battery, i held down the power button and tried again, but when it turned on it didnt show me a setup one where you type in your windows live id, instead my one was an image of a windows phone suggesting to connect to a laptop via USB cable, again i didnt panic and turned off the screen and held down the volume button and the power button and i did trigger the factory reset in purpose, once i was at the factory reset screen, pressing any other button (camera key, and sleep/wake/power key) apart from the volume keys disables the reset feature and will continue to boot to wp7.
I dont know if Im helping, but thats how I resolved my situation.

How to remove memory card
Hi Herr_ando,
Firstly Congratulations on becoming a father
Secondly do not worry all is not lost, if you cannot get the handset to boot normally you can remove the memory card (without voiding the warranty too) A lot of people figured this out when they had fist purchased the HD7 and have since used the following video clip to help them upgrade the memory card size:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EcGUX3NwnQ
I have done this myself but had trouble when reading the memory card via a dongle (this is due to the differing format used by WP7) the way i got round this was either by putting the memory card into an old N97 nokia phone and using the pc software to remove the pictures from it or to use a flash drive recovery app found via google.
Hope this helps,
Creamy

It doesn't sound like you actually performed a factory reset so it's probably fine... but if you want to be safe, pull out the SD card like the previous post says. It might make you factory reset after putting it back in, but if you already save your pics and videos, who cares, right?

thesecondsfade said:
It doesn't sound like you actually performed a factory reset so it's probably fine... but if you want to be safe, pull out the SD card like the previous post says. It might make you factory reset after putting it back in, but if you already save your pics and videos, who cares, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's okay to take out the SD card and put it back as long as the phone isn't turned on in the meantime and nothing is written to the SD card.
So it's okay if you use the SD card to recover photos and put it back in, as long as the phone stays off in this time.
@herr_ando: Congratulations on becoming a father!

Hi guys, thanks for the congratulations.
I tried removing the memory card and plugged it into a card reader, no joy reading this card, in fact it wouldnt even detect. I also tried putting it into my Toshiba Camileo, which I know deffo supports SDHC cards of this size, was unable to see it at all.
Also tried it in a new laptop, with a micro > full size adaptor, no joy, and a blackberry 8520 with mass storage enabled still cant read this card, when I choose disable mass storage it tells me the memory card isn't formatted.
I know Windowsphone7 files on the memory card isn't supposed to be accessable outside the OS but this makes data recovery impossible for me.
If this was a PC HDD or standard SD card I could run some data recovery software, and try to recover these files even if the card has been formatted. but I have no idea how to do this for this card... any ideas?

herr_ando said:
Hi guys, thanks for the congratulations.
I tried removing the memory card and plugged it into a card reader, no joy reading this card, in fact it wouldnt even detect. I also tried putting it into my Toshiba Camileo, which I know deffo supports SDHC cards of this size, was unable to see it at all.
Also tried it in a new laptop, with a micro > full size adaptor, no joy, and a blackberry 8520 with mass storage enabled still cant read this card, when I choose disable mass storage it tells me the memory card isn't formatted.
I know Windowsphone7 files on the memory card isn't supposed to be accessable outside the OS but this makes data recovery impossible for me.
If this was a PC HDD or standard SD card I could run some data recovery software, and try to recover these files even if the card has been formatted. but I have no idea how to do this for this card... any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sadly, you need a Nokia cell as stated above, to read the card. Their OS is the only one that supports the partition format & password protection. I have 2 SD Cards that won't work on anything other than a Nokia cell because of this. They came out of a Nokia MusicXpress & Nuron my room mate had.

Hi mate
So you reckon if I buy a Nokia 5230 or similar I should be able to read this card? I should be able to pick one of these up for £35 or so, well worth it to get these photos back.
I have no experiance of nokia phones since the old days of my 3310. Do i need to use nokia software or does this present itself as a removable hdd in windows?
Many thanks.

herr_ando said:
Hi mate
So you reckon if I buy a Nokia 5230 or similar I should be able to read this card? I should be able to pick one of these up for £35 or so, well worth it to get these photos back.
I have no experiance of nokia phones since the old days of my 3310. Do i need to use nokia software or does this present itself as a removable hdd in windows?
Many thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Creamy stated the n97. I'm not family with all this as I never done it, but there's a lot of threads regarding this. People using Nokia phones to unlock & reformat SD card so they'll work for other devices. As to what devices this work on, I'm not sure, but as long as the card hasn't been erased yet, it's possible that a Nokia phone will be able to read the card & transfer files to your pc. You can look through the forum for more information from people with experience. My experience only deals with trying to get these 2 SD cards working with other devices & will result in for formatting the cards.
NOTE: Also, I do believe you need the nokia desktop software install to transfer file, but am not sure. Another thing, if you do find the sd card is empty, maybe reformatting it in the nokia phone, you'll be able to directly put the sd card in your pc & use your partition recovery tools on it.

Best Digital Media Recovery Software
Hi,
Congratulations on becoming a father!
If the memory card is not recognized in the PC or it is impossible to access the data on it, the controller on the card is damaged. There is only one way to get the data back, digital media recovery and directly access their raw data with a programable digital media recovery tool. Have a look at: RecoverDataTools DigitalMediaRecoveryTool

[Q] SD card exFat format

Hi all,
I have a 64Gig micro SD card that I formatted to exFat on my Win7 PC.
My question is, Why do I have to repair the card everytime I return it to my Win7 PC card reader to move music or videos to and from it?
Fortunately I don't loose any data but it seems like the MS exFat and the Asus exFat are not totally compatible?
Will the constant repairing limit my cards life span or worse maybe permanently damage it?

mc_365 said:
Hi all,
I have a 64Gig micro SD card that I formatted to exFat on my Win7 PC.
My question is, Why do I have to repair the card everytime I return it to my Win7 PC card reader to move music or videos to and from it?
Fortunately I don't loose any data but it seems like the MS exFat and the Asus exFat are not totally compatible?
Will the constant repairing limit my cards life span or worse maybe permanently damage it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you ejecting the card from the 700 safely or just yanking it out?

Windows Vista/7 scream 'repair' about pretty much every data storage that has been connected to another device. You can actually just click 'continue without scanning'. It will simply proceed to load the device. (Another one of the wonderful features of Windows 7. God I miss XP.)

ShadowLea said:
Windows Vista/7 scream 'repair' about pretty much every data storage that has been connected to another device. You can actually just click 'continue without scanning'. It will simply proceed to load the device. (Another one of the wonderful features of Windows 7. God I miss XP.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1, but it can actually mount it R/O if you don't allow it to scan..

pinn___________ said:
Are you ejecting the card from the 700 safely or just yanking it out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I guess that is a possibility, just thought exFAT was made for removable storage and finished writing to the media when the file transfer was done?
d14b0ll0s said:
+1, but it can actually mount it R/O if you don't allow it to scan..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly what happens.
I'll try ejecting it from the T700, maybe android/linux mount the removable storage differently then windows and I just became accustomed to not ejecting anymore.
Funny though, it never has happened with FAT32, but my video backups are >4Gigs.

Hasn't happened to me yet on my Infinity, but happens relentlessly on my BIONIC. I even formatted the microSDCard in Windows on my computer, and it still does it. I suppose it is because of the file handling in Android, it usually starts only after I've deleted a file in any file manager in Android. And I do a lot of housekeeping on my phone, in terms of junk / old file deletions.
Could it be the same thing here?
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Infinity Running Tapatalk.

[Q] microSD

Hello, I had Transformer about a year now. I have installed CyanogenMod 10 (JB 4.1) but the problem i have as my microSD card that I just bought will not get recognised in Transformer. I have "Samsung 32gb Class 10". It works fine if I put it thought the adaptor to the docking station and get recognised straight away. I tryed to format it to FAT32 and then insert it in the microSD slot but still same, it just does not wont to know it. I Kingston 16gb Class 2 and its absolutely the same problem. Can it be that the microSD slot it knacked since I've bought it? Please help someone.
P.S Mount SD card comes up in the Settings > Storage but after i press it in couple of minutes table says "Unfortunately, Setting has stopped"

Romashka87 said:
Hello, I had Transformer about a year now. I have installed CyanogenMod 10 (JB 4.1) but the problem i have as my microSD card that I just bought will not get recognised in Transformer. I have "Samsung 32gb Class 10". It works fine if I put it thought the adaptor to the docking station and get recognised straight away. I tryed to format it to FAT32 and then insert it in the microSD slot but still same, it just does not wont to know it. I Kingston 16gb Class 2 and its absolutely the same problem. Can it be that the microSD slot it knacked since I've bought it? Please help someone.
P.S Mount SD card comes up in the Settings > Storage but after i press it in couple of minutes table says "Unfortunately, Setting has stopped"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that you must be right. Your sd card slot must have problem.
But before any coclusion you have to see some things. What rom do you have? Did you try it with a different clean install (after making a nandroid backup for not loosing everything)?
I have kingston 16gb class 4 and I have no problem. (FAT32)
Finally I couldn't be surprised if sd card slot is mulfumctioning from beginning cause mine has problem with internal mic from beginning.

i am on CyanogenMod 10

Romashka87 said:
i am on CyanogenMod 10
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
#1 Ensure that the contacts for the SD card are clean.
#2 Give the slot a quick blow out with some compressed air or such. NO VACUUM CLEANERS.
#3 After doing the above steps, put in the card, then power down. wait about 3 minutes, and power it back up into normal boot. These should get the device to see it and accept it. Other wise you may have gone and goofed up the locking mechanism inside that is not allowing the contacts to seat correctly. This can be resolved by a tear down and rebuild with a good service tech.

MasterDecker said:
#1 Ensure that the contacts for the SD card are clean.
#2 Give the slot a quick blow out with some compressed air or such. NO VACUUM CLEANERS.
#3 After doing the above steps, put in the card, then power down. wait about 3 minutes, and power it back up into normal boot. These should get the device to see it and accept it. Other wise you may have gone and goofed up the locking mechanism inside that is not allowing the contacts to seat correctly. This can be resolved by a tear down and rebuild with a good service tech.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am electrical engineer, if i had a manual how to dissemble it i could do it my self and buy a spare microSD connection/slot from ebay.

Romashka87 said:
I am electrical engineer, if i had a manual how to dissemble it i could do it my self and buy a spare microSD connection/slot from ebay.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's a nice YT link to a tear down that should help you along with tearing it down. It's rather simple to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG9gEYRALtU

MasterDecker said:
Here's a nice YT link to a tear down that should help you along with tearing it down. It's rather simple to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG9gEYRALtU
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you, ill have a look what is wrong inside and report back

Right, Scratch all that about disassembling it. I restored to Stock ROM.
I go to Settings > Storage and there is:
SD CARD
Mount external storage device
I press on it and its saying "Preparing external device..." but Setting freezes, after i try to copy anything on the microSD card it says "Insufficient storage". So i dont know what to do.

Romashka87 said:
Right, Scratch all that about disassembling it. I restored to Stock ROM.
I go to Settings > Storage and there is:
SD CARD
Mount external storage device
I press on it and its saying "Preparing external device..." but Setting freezes, after i try to copy anything on the microSD card it says "Insufficient storage". So i dont know what to do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Plug it into the computer and see what files are there. May just need to clear out some things. BUT I am beginning to be more inclined to say that there is an issue within the card itself. If the tab can see it it should be able to mount it. If it is saying that there is not enough space, either format it via the computer and re try or take it back and tell them that it is a bad card.

MasterDecker said:
Plug it into the computer and see what files are there. May just need to clear out some things. BUT I am beginning to be more inclined to say that there is an issue within the card itself. If the tab can see it it should be able to mount it. If it is saying that there is not enough space, either format it via the computer and re try or take it back and tell them that it is a bad card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is nothing on the card, it is Formated in FAT32 and i tryed NTFS, Its a 3rd card and i dont think i am that unlucky it works in the phone, camera, pc, in tablet via docking station.

Romashka87 said:
There is nothing on the card, it is Formated in FAT32 and i tryed NTFS, Its a 3rd card and i dont think i am that unlucky it works in the phone, camera, pc, in tablet via docking station.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NTFS won't work. I'm sure you are aware of that. Format it from your phone, THEN put it back in the tablet. If it is still the case, then you have ruled out the card being the issue, and are back to that it could be dust / dirt / debris in the port, OR that you have a faulty port.

I revert to the stock Asus ICS ROM from there website. Reformated microSD card to FAT32 with Long formating. Wiped all data from Tablet. Insertet a card and it might show straight away or not show at all or after pressing Mount External Storage, Setting will freeze and message with Wait or Close will pop up. If the microSD mounted and the SD card sigh apper in the bottom of the screen near clock i can get in to the card and creat folders, but if i try to copy something in it, it says Insuffician Storage. So i dont think it something with the card or a port, because it can detect the card accasionly and get in to it. So is there any way to do something with the main software part, not the android it self with something that android installed to or there is nothing that android get installed to? Thank you

Cannot format/use 16GB MicroSD card, capacity shows up as 30.6 MB.

Hello!
I am an owner of a 16GB MicroSD card, which I bought from a famous Greek store back in April 2012. Today I want to use this SD to my old X10 Mini phone. I put it and saw it worked, but when I removed it from the X10 Mini and put it back in my CM 9 HTC Explorer it wasn't recognised.
I inserted it to a SAMSUNG MicroSD Adapter and then to my PC and told me that "You need to format the disk in drive H: before you can use it". The capacity of my SD also showed up as 30.6 MB instead of 14.72GB. I tried recovery software such as EaseUS and Recuva, but none of them even recognised the SD. I tried formating the SD with several tools (Windows wizards, Low Level HDD Formatter, SD Formatter even using CWM) but everything failed.
Is there any way I can make my SD card usable again?

UPDATE : Also tried with HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool but it didn't work.

vipergio said:
UPDATE : Also tried with HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool but it didn't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say the card is dead.
-Mike

mcapozzi said:
I would say the card is dead.
-Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah, I think that if it was dead it would not be recognized from my PC at all.

Not true exactly, there are different failure types for SD cards:
Typical failure modes, listed in no particular order, are
Bad spot on the card (might be recoverable, maybe).
Bad spot causing the card to lock up. I.e. once you accessed that bad spot, all read attempts fail till a power cycle.
Device firmware problem causing the device to report zero capacity. This essentially renders the device inaccessible to any software.
So saying that just because it gets a drive letter that it is somehow ok is not really true.
The HP USB utility is the go-to software for fixing thumb drives with bad partition tables. You can also run "diskpart" (on windows) or gparted (on linux) to see if that is what is causing the size misrepresentation.
-Mike

mcapozzi said:
Not true exactly, there are different failure types for SD cards:
Typical failure modes, listed in no particular order, are
Bad spot on the card (might be recoverable, maybe).
Bad spot causing the card to lock up. I.e. once you accessed that bad spot, all read attempts fail till a power cycle.
Device firmware problem causing the device to report zero capacity. This essentially renders the device inaccessible to any software.
So saying that just because it gets a drive letter that it is somehow ok is not really true.
The HP USB utility is the go-to software for fixing thumb drives with bad partition tables. You can also run "diskpart" (on windows) or gparted (on linux) to see if that is what is causing the size misrepresentation.
-Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your answer mate!

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

try using a "low level format" tool..
use google.

hosamn said:
try using a "low level format" tool..
use google.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I told you in my OP, I tried Low Lever HDD Formater, but this failed aswell.

issues after installing CROMi-X 5.4 deodex

When I installed cromi-x everything was working perfectly but the next day my 32gb micro sd that I've been using on it since the tablet first came out stopped working for some reason, it was not getting detected anymore but if I go to settings > storage I can see "MicroSD" and the only option there is mount external storage which does absolutely nothing every time I click on it and that option with "MicroSD" disappears whenever I remove the micro sd card.
And ever since then my tablet has been waking up with like a 1 second delay, but if I remove my micro sd card it wakes up with normal speed/no delay.
First time doing this kind of stuff so not sure what's wrong...

Momioka said:
When I installed cromi-x everything was working perfectly but the next day my 32gb micro sd that I've been using on it since the tablet first came out stopped working for some reason, it was not getting detected anymore but if I go to settings > storage I can see "MicroSD" and the only option there is mount external storage which does absolutely nothing every time I click on it and that option with "MicroSD" disappears whenever I remove the micro sd card.
And ever since then my tablet has been waking up with like a 1 second delay, but if I remove my micro sd card it wakes up with normal speed/no delay.
First time doing this kind of stuff so not sure what's wrong...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like the sdcard is causing the issues. Worth reformatting it?

sbdags said:
Sounds like the sdcard is causing the issues. Worth reformatting it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yea, for some reason I cannot get this micro sd card to work on any pc/phone/tablet anymore, it detects it but there's nothing there for me to get into the storage let alone try to format it. I tried a different micro sd card and it works perfectly on the tablet and my sd card reader... not sure how my first micro sd broke or something after installing cromi-x, i did literally nothing to it besides putting the files in to install cromi-x

Momioka said:
yea, for some reason I cannot get this micro sd card to work on any pc/phone/tablet anymore, it detects it but there's nothing there for me to get into the storage let alone try to format it. I tried a different micro sd card and it works perfectly on the tablet and my sd card reader... not sure how my first micro sd broke or something after installing cromi-x, i did literally nothing to it besides putting the files in to install cromi-x
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well CROMi-X doesn't do anything to the card, so I don't see how my ROM could break it. Sounds like something corrupted or maybe the card has died. What brand is it?
There are other low level tools you can use that maybe able to rescue it but if windows can't see it you may not be able to use them.

sbdags said:
...
There are other low level tools you can use that maybe able to rescue it but if windows can't see it you may not be able to use them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you drop some names? I have a big capacity card that has refused to act its age for some time now. I've tried H2testW and the thing reported the correct storage but slowed down considerably after writing half its capacity.

You can try Gparted. You would have to burn the image to a CD or create a bootable stick and run it from there. Make sure your BIOS is set for booting from a bootable disc or USB drive before it boots Windows.

berndblb said:
You can try Gparted. You would have to burn the image to a CD or create a bootable stick and run it from there. Make sure your BIOS is set for booting from a bootable disc or USB drive before it boots Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have Gparted installed in Linux. Don't cut it. Does it low-level format? Seems pretty quick for such a chore.

graphdarnell said:
Can you drop some names? I have a big capacity card that has refused to act its age for some time now. I've tried H2testW and the thing reported the correct storage but slowed down considerably after writing half its capacity.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
And a paid for one
http://corrupted-sd-card-recovery-pro.software.informer.com/

sbdags said:
http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
And a paid for one
http://corrupted-sd-card-recovery-pro.software.informer.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried formatter 4. Took the whole day to erase 64GB. The program found no errors. Repartitioned it again with Gparted. Still encountered data loss. Guess the card has expired. But thanks again for the tips.

What brand/size was your card?
I had a similar experience with a cheapo 16GB card a few years ago.
Thanks,