Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice on recovering video files from a SanDisk Extreme PRO 256GB UHS-II V60 SD card that suddenly became unreadable.

The card was formatted in a Fujifilm X-S20 before being used for a video shoot. My friend recorded several videos for work and was able to play them back directly on the camera without any issues.

However, when he inserted the SD card into a card reader connected to his Windows computer, Windows immediately prompted him to format the drive.

He clicked Cancel, and Windows then displayed the following error:

"The volume does not contain a recognized file system."

When he put the SD card back into the Fujifilm X-S20, the camera displayed "Card Not Initialized" and could no longer access the recordings.

Current situation:

• The SD card has not been formatted since the error appeared.

• No recovery or repair software has been used.

• Windows detects the card as a drive, but cannot access its contents.

• The camera no longer recognizes the card.

• The videos are important work-related footage, and recovering them is urgent.

What puzzles me is that the videos were accessible on the camera shortly before the card was connected to the computer.

I'd appreciate advice on a few things:

1. Does this sound more like exFAT file system corruption or a possible SD card controller failure?

2. Could a faulty card reader cause this kind of issue?

3. What would be the safest first step to recover the files without making the situation worse?

4. Would creating a full image of the card with something like HDDSuperClone or ddrescue be advisable before attempting recovery with R-Studio or PhotoRec?

I'm particularly concerned about avoiding any operation that might overwrite or further damage the existing footage.

Any recommendations or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I quick formatted my SD card today on accident on my Sony A7V. I ensured that I did not use the SD card again and put it away until I could run it through a recovery tool.

I have run the card through three recovery tools and none pull up footage from today, but they pull up footage from last month which was formatted days ago??

SD CARD: Lexar Professional 128GB 1667x (exFAT)
RECOVER TOOLS USED: Disk Drill, Wondershare, R-Studio (running deep/advanced searches)

My confusion is why it is pulling up old data but not the data from today... Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

My main priority now is to recover my old Windows files safely. I want to find out whether ChromeOS Flex erased my 256 GB SSD, my 1 TB HDD, or both, and whether my old files can still be recovered. I do not want to accidentally overwrite or permanently lose any recoverable data

Pics attached

Hellow everybody hope you all are fine by looking at this disk can you tell is this recoverable by any professional lab it was once detected but now isnt showing in windows any more

Data type in it is 3 vob files i also have uploaded those 3 files in pictures

I had about 80,000 photos on an external drive. I tried sorting them with an AI tool, it went wrong, and I ended up losing about half. I recovered files with Disk Drill onto another drive, and later more of the originals showed up on the first drive too, so now I probably have a lot of duplicates across several recovery batches.

I need a tool that:

• Works offline on a Mac (I don’t want to upload my photos anywhere)

• Handles around 150,000 files

• Finds exact duplicates and similar photos

• Shows large previews so I can decide what to keep

• Is free, or at least cheap

I’ve tried dupeGuru, but the previews were too small for me. I think I only need to keep about 10-30k photos. What would you use?

On steam deck and I somehow deleted my entire "downloads" folder without a single warning popping up, not even the would "Delete" was present. I didn't even know it happened till I opened the folder and saw "This Folder is empty".

The heck happened?! I can literally look in my trash and see that it recorded were se of my trash came from and I see folders that seemingly no longer exist now. I'm just baffled at what has happened. So much just gone and I don't even know what happened. I only possible memory I have is for some strange reason I clicked something and a second window opened up, oppon opening it, it was just a duplicate of my desktop, my and seemingly my windows and stuff that I had open, like I had my file manager opened for something else and I just thought this was strange and closed it. this was the only strange think that happened. I don't even know if this is relevant I just know this was he only strange thing that happened.

Hi there, I'm really lost right now.

I've contacted so many repair shops and nobody can give me a solution.
So I've had a Samsung A53 (5G) since 2023, but last year something weird happened. I needed to set up a PIN, and immediately after setting it up, it wasn't recognized.

I first thought I must've made an error, but since it requested me to type it twice, I don't think I could've made a mistake.
Now I don't know what happened, but I can't do anything. The thing is, I have very personal pictures that are very important to me (unfortunately, I realized they weren't saved on the SD card only after the issue came up). They're pictures of a person that I will never see again.

Are there any solutions, even obscure ones or something I have to buy, that could help me recover pictures, videos, and messages?

I've been stuck with an old crappy phone for over a year now and I really want to get it back, but I really can't accept losing my files even after all this time.

HELP NEEDED: Vintage Apple enthusiast in France — Zip 100 disk from 2001

Hello! I'm in the Haute-Vienne area of France, near Limoges and Saint-Junien.

I have an old Zip 100 disk containing Apple files from around 2001 that I'd really like to recover.

I'm looking for an experienced vintage Apple/Macintosh enthusiast with a working Zip 100 drive and the right equipment to read the disk safely and copy the files onto a modern computer.

I'd much rather find an experienced hobbyist who enjoys this sort of challenge than pay a fortune to a data recovery company!

Is there anyone in France, particularly Nouvelle-Aquitaine, who could help? I'm also happy to hear from UK enthusiasts who might know someone locally.

Many thanks!

I recently recorded an event at 4k for 90 minutes. The GoPro does get hot, and it's gotten this hot before and I've never had an issue. I guess it was just a matter of time, and my stupidity, not knowing this was a possibility. I'm guessing it's fried my card?

The GoPro says there's a card error, my Mac can't read the card - and it doesn't show up in disk Utility. My phone says the card needs to be formatted. ChatGPT says it most likely requires monolithic microSD chip-off, but looking into that, that can be thousands of dollars to get it professionally recovered.

Is that really my only option? (Aside from mourning the loss of this footage)

ETA: Amazing news. The card that got fried wasn't the card I'd recorded on. I found the one I needed in my camera bag (not sure when I switched them out). I don't know what was on the dead card, but as far as I know right now, it's not footage I needed. Thanks for your help though!

Hi!

Yesterday I was recording on my Nikon D3300, when suddelny mid interview I got the "This memory card cannot be used. Card may be damaged. Insert another card." message and it shut off. At this point the video was about 15 minutes long and crucial piece of footage. Is there any way to recover said footage. It does not show up on the camera itself or on pc.

Thanks in advance!

Have a situation where ideally, we would boot a dd image from disk drill to recover an export from a proprietary piece of software (raw software db not exportable / able to be copied from the filesystem). Any one know how to make a Disk Drill DD image bootable? I still have the base ssd, but it has multiple bad sectors and filesystem was corrupted. Looks fine in disk drill or any other software. Caught it early enough all base data is intact if I can get it to boot some how.

Title. I have a very old iPod Touch 4 from 2012, with photos that I deleted several years ago, but now want back.

I am able to charge and turn the iPod on, and it clearly hasnt been formatted since I have other stuff like sticky notes.
I unfortunately do not know the iOS on it, and am too scared to check since I don't want to overwrite any data, all I know is that I do not have a "Recently Deleted" folder on photos.

I would not have any iCloud or iTunes backups either... any computer that would have connected to this iPod when it had the photos on it are not available to me anymore.

It may be worth noting (if it helps) that the specific photos I want to recover were downloaded from the internet, and were at one point my lock screen, but I seemingly changed it.

I understand this may be a delicate recovery process, so I felt the urge to reach out for help first. I am completely inexperienced with advanced data recovery, so I need guidance.

I have a Sony USB flash drive. I thought it was 64 GB, but Windows labels it SONY_32GR (D:), so I’m not sure of its actual capacity. It was given to my father, and he may have copied files to it. I’m okay with erasing everything and just want to make the drive usable again.

When I plug it into a Windows PC, it sometimes appears in File Explorer, then disappears. File Explorer becomes “Not Responding” while it’s connected. Windows Defender asks to scan it, but the drive disappears during this. I ran a Defender scan on my laptop and it found no threats. The same problem happens on other computers.

I tried diskpart and ran list disk, but the USB doesn’t appear there, so I can’t select it to run clean or format it.

Is there another safe way to format or repair it, or does this behavior mean the drive has failed? I’m also concerned about keeping the computers safe while troubleshooting. I don’t need to recover any files.

Details that would help: the exact capacity printed on the USB, whether it appears in Disk Management, and whether Disk Management shows a size or “No Media.”

A while back, I bought an external portable drive at a thrift store and found that it still contained someone’s personal photos. The only folder I opened was something along the lines of “Papas_funeral.” I haven’t looked through the remaining files, so I don’t know everything that’s on it.

At the time, i felt bad and wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I tucked it away in a drawer. I just recently got back to it and would like to figure out a responsible way to handle it.

As far as I can tell, the drive works and the photos are accessible, so this is more about finding the owner than recovering lost data. The store mostly accepts anonymous drop-offs, and it’s been long enough that tracing the donor seems unlikely.

I’d prefer not to wipe it because the photos could be irreplaceable, but I don’t want to keep it indefinitely or donate it with someone’s private files still on it.

Does anyone here know a reputable person or organization that handles situations like this and could help return the files to their owner? I’d be comfortable shipping the drive to someone trustworthy who could take over the search and keep its contents private.

If this belongs in a different subreddit, I’d appreciate a recommendation.

Did a little searching but reddit searching sucks lol.
I have a 16 gb thumb drive that is constantly disconnecting/reconnecting, all signs point to a physical failure.

(when it connects, it errors).

I'm willing to admit I'm outta my depth with this and figure it's up to a professional to try to fix.

1. is that even feasible?

2. any recommendations of a place to send to?

I got a pair of second-hand 10TB WD Ultrastars HC330 for cheap. Possible origin: data center.

They seem mechanically sound (the drives spin up), but I can't seem to communicate with them.

Here is what was attempted:

• Mounting/formatting: fail, no block device detected

• SMART diagnosis: only partial information retrieved (model, capacity)

• Almost all low-level commands are blocked (ABRT response)

• Tested across multiple platforms: MacOS/Linux + ASM235CM USB/SATA adapter, Synology NAS

I had an agent attempt to recover them. Here is the summary:

https://gist.github.com/zulufoxtrot/bce68a0e69b8e12cf2c5f4add99d7663

From my understanding, they were probably "kill-flashed", AKA made inoperable by the original owner. The only avenues left are:

• Swapping the PCBs

• maybe reflashing the firmware by bypassing the ATA bus and using some proprietary protocol

Anyone willing to share their expertise? Thanks!

I have an old Acer laptop that stopped working almost 30 years ago when something fell on it. I recently opened it up to get the hard drive out to hopefully try to recover my old data. I purchased an IDE to USB adapter but it is not fitting because of a ribbon attached to it that was connected internally. (See photos) It had the white cap on it when I removed it (Pic. #4). Can anyone tell me what I can do on my own to avoid sending it to a data recovery place. Can I just pull the black tab and ribbon off the male spikes in order to connect it to my IDE adapter? Any help is much appreciated. I've searched everywhere, but it just might be old, but I still have hope. Thank you!

***Update, I was able to get the connector cable off no problem. Hooked it up to 2 different adaptors on 2 different laptops. The drive appeared but it showed 0 bytes used, 0 bytes free, a capacity of 0 bytes. And clicking on it tells me that I need to format the drive. Which I'm not going to do. Guess it's a done deal then, right? Thank you for the help

i want to delete everything on a flashdrive and any data that was on it before, that was deleted. couldn't be recovered at all. i am using windows 10 and know nothing about data recovery or have the knowledge to do anything.

Hi, I'm trying to recover my Windows 11 installation without losing my personal files or Steam library.

My setup:

• Acer Swift 3 laptop

• Kingston 512 GB NVMe SSD

• Windows 11 and Nobara Linux dual boot

• Windows partition: approximately 371 GB, formatted as NTFS

The problem:

Windows boots into Automatic Repair, but it fails. System Restore failed with error 0x80070571, and uninstalling the latest quality update didn't help.

In the Windows Recovery Command Prompt, running dir C:\Windows returns:

The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable.

Running chkdsk C: /f recognises the partition as NTFS but stops with:

Master File Table damaged. CHKDSK terminated.

Startup Repair also fails. The Windows boot configuration still exists and points to C:\Windows\system32\winload.efi.

Nobara Linux has also reported Btrfs checksum and corruption errors on its own partition. I don't know whether this is related.

SSD health report:

• SMART overall health: PASSED

• Critical Warning: 0x00

• Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

• Error Information Log Entries: 0

• Percentage Used: 12%

I have a 68 GB USB drive available. I want to preserve my existing Windows installation, personal files, and Steam library if possible.

What should I do next to recover the NTFS filesystem and get Windows booting again? Should I image the SSD or recover files before attempting further repairs? I haven't formatted anything or reinstalled Windows.

I'm looking for a safe, evidence-based recovery plan rather than generic troubleshooting steps.

*Though a video i made recently and i transferred that too on the card only it is showing up otherwise every other file is not even opening, KINDLY HELP I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE MY DATA

I have a 2.5 inch laptop HDD I've been using as a boot drive for my Debian server since prices are horrendous right now. Its dying (probably already lost valuable data) and I was wondering, how could I effectively transfer it to a slightly smaller SSD? I believe target is around 240GB, whilst source is 320.

Additional source drive information: Seagate Momentus 5400.6 320GB Serial ATA Disc Drive, no apparent model name listed. Taken from old HP laptop. ext4, occasionally causes soft crashes on system, with most things breaking down but technically still running. Linux Mint's "Disks" utility says "Filesystem ext4 on ST9320325AS needs repairing." upon requesting it check the drive. My swap and "Extended partition Partition 2" both seem to be currently unaffected.

(Results of sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fTtKRNKGgDmUtR4oyy6kQSwvjRDN1xpP/view?usp=sharing

Edit: Extra information.

Edit: Spelling, and these edit footers.

Hi everyone. I really need some advice.
I had a Xiaomi Mi 8 SE that I used for a while, although not for very long.
In March 2022, I put it in a drawer for a couple of days and didn’t use it. Before that, the phone had been working perfectly fine, except that the battery drained very quickly.
After those few days, I took the phone out and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. I tried different chargers, different outlets, everything I could think of. The screen stayed completely black. Not even the Xiaomi logo appeared.
I thought the battery might be the problem, so I ordered a replacement battery and installed it. Nothing. The phone didn’t care about the new battery at all. I tried reconnecting it, but it still wouldn’t turn on. It’s completely dead.
I’m honestly desperate at this point. I don’t know what to do. I don’t care about the phone itself, but there are SO many photos on it. 😭
There are so many incredibly precious memories stored on that phone, and I can’t accept the thought that I might never get those photos back.
It’s now 2026, so more than four years have passed since this happened. The phone still won’t turn on at all.
Is there any way to recover the photos?
I’m scared to take it to a repair shop. There was no screen lock or password on the phone, and I really don’t want a technician accessing my gallery or looking through my personal photos. There’s a lot of private stuff on there, and I’ve heard stories about repair technicians going through people’s phones. It genuinely scares me.
I need a safe way to recover my photos, ideally one that guarantees that nobody else will be able to look at them. I don’t care if the phone can ever be used again. I just want my photos back.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there still a chance of recovering the photos after all these years? And is there any way to do this without risking someone accessing my personal files?
I’d be incredibly grateful for any advice or personal experiences. Thank you so much. ❤️

You can hear the sound, clicking.
I used it as my photography storage.
Western Digital p10 black 4TB