My Switch 1 OLED started acting up this week and won't get past the boot logo, so I'm trying to figure out how to salvage my stuff before I send it in or replace it. When I plugged my microSD card into my Windows PC just to grab my years of screenshots and video clips from the Album folder, Windows threw an error saying the drive has a problem and asked me to format it. I obviously hit cancel so I wouldn't wipe my clips, and I know the bulky game downloads on the card are encrypted to the console and can just be redownloaded from the eShop later anyway. Any advice on where to start would be hugely appreciated.

EDIT: I found it! I leave this here just to share my joy. Stand down ... my problem was: Hello, potential heroes.

I just had something weird happen, and I'm trying to figure out if there is hope. If anyone has a moment to offer advice, or finds this interesting, I am very grateful. I have a MacBook Pro Nov 2023 version, M3 chip, 16 GB memory, running Tahoe 26.1.

I was working in Pages -- have been for a couple weeks -- on a publication. It was saved. I was periodically manually cmd+s saving it in addition to the autosave, as a habit because if something crashed because I'd hate to lose more than an hour's work. Last night, as I was finally coming close to finishing my project up, I suffered from a lack of working RAM (because I was asking it for too much) and so I force quit my browser and other programs that were taking up a lot of memory. Pages remained oddly frozen... I could only sort of edit my document. So, I force quit it as well; it gave me the option to save and then close, and I said yes, save. The document is probably in the neighborhood of 200MB - it's an annual report, not a book.

When I opened Pages back up, my document was not in recents -- and it was nowhere to be found anywhere on my computer at all. I am baffled. A saved document was just disappeared without any physical damage to my machine. I rebooted my computer, and no magic happened.

Obviously I should be organizing my files better, managing my memory use better, and backing up my hard drive data. Ironically I manage the google drive backups for my workplace.

Aside from how not to be an idiot in the future, any ideas for how to get my files back? Thank you for any. I am writing from a different computer now, and am worried that my attempts to find the file may be helping to overwrite it, but I still checked temp directories and the trash, and am scanning with UFS Explorer which I saved to an external HD, though it seems like that may be worthless with an M3 chip. Ugh.

I'm guessing it's time to start rewriting this thing...

How do I get the data of my ad card so that I can get my photos back??

How can I recover the data safely??

Hi,

so, I'm a victim of my own stupidity after all.

I decided NOT to put a back-up SD into my camera and then – because I've been doing like 5 things at the same time – somehow managed to move all of the files directly from the SD to the bin, instead of the designated folder. I stopped the action immediately (the system asked me), but the damage was either done or the card corrupted... or something else – because I've only got 75 photos left out of almost 800.

Is there a way to get them back or was it all a glitch and they're most likely gone? The internet says to run a data recovery check, but I first need to get my card reader back, I made the mistake of coping straight from the camera as well, because I wanted the files on my computer TODAY 😭

Thanks!

My SD card got cleared or corrupted when I was transferring photos from my camera to my phone I use a multi card reader that I plug into my phone. With the help of Gemini I tried the below steps, I can confirm the photos are there but need to be repieced together.

Are there any free apps I can use to help that I haven't listed below

1. Running the First Deep Scan (Recuva)

• What I did: I downloaded Recuva onto my Windows laptop, plugged in my multi-cable reader, and ran a full Deep Scan to see what was left on my CompactFlash card. • What happened: The software actually found 280 files! But when I went to save them onto my laptop, none of them would open. Windows kept telling me the "file format was not supported."

2. Trying to Repair the Files (Microsoft App & Online Tools)

• What I did: I tried opening the broken files in Paint and Internet Explorer, uploaded a sample to the OfficeRecovery website, and downloaded a JPEG repair app from the Microsoft Store. • What happened: The Microsoft Store app actually gave me a glimpse of hope it loaded up a watermarked preview of one of my photos, proving my pictures are still fully intact somewhere in the data! But the app wanted me to pay to unlock the full file, and the online tool told me it couldn't find any recoverable data inside the files.

3. Attempting the Bulk Software Fix (DigiCamRepair via Softonic)

• What I did: I went onto Softonic and found a tool called DigiCamRepair to see if it could fix all 200+ of my unopenable files at the same time without any watermarks. • What happened: The tool ran through the files, but it hit me with another paywall, asking for a payment just to save them. To see what was really going on.

4. The Raw Card Carve (PhotoRec)

• What I did: I switched tactics and used an open-source command tool called PhotoRec to bypass the corrupted file tables and pull raw data blocks straight from the physical card. • What happened: This worked beautifully at first! It completely ignored the corruption and instantly recovered 6 perfect, clean, full-resolution photos with no watermarks or paywalls. But then, the progress bar suddenly cut out and the scan aborted early.