Recover photos from corrupted micro SD

My daughter received as a gift a children’s camera (ITSHINY or other similar manufacturers) with which she tries her hand at many artistic shots (50 author blurbs). I do not want to do a review of the device, but I do want to tell you about the situation I found myself in when I wanted to download the last photographs I took. In fact, I connected the machine via USB cable to my computer and strangely no disk appeared to download the photos. Panic, I lost all the photos (it wasn’t a problem but some were even nice).

The micro SD seems to have been corrupted and when you connect it to the computer it appears to be empty and the proposal to solve the problem is to format the card.

Situation

1. by connecting the camera to the computer Mass Storage appears on the device display, but no data volume is mounted in Ubuntu. Or a volume is mounted, but its contents are strange and the photos are not visible
2. if you disconnect the cable on the device you can view the photos (there is hope)
3. in the Disks application a 31-32 GB flash drive appears with the name: GENPLUS USB-MSDC DISK - eEGENARPLUL-SSMC, the partition formatting is unknown. Or if mounted it is recognized as FAT32

What to do

1. Calm down, the photos should still be recoverable. But how?
2. Under Disks select the device and partition of interest. Press on the gear icon (More Partitioning Options) and select the option Create Partition Image and then Start Creating. This will create a backup copy of the micro SD and can be used as the basis for photo recovery
3. At the end of image creation make a copy of the image (because you usually get something wrong the first time)
4. Remove the camera, so that you don’t accidentally write to the micro SD
5. Install testdisk with the command:

sudo apt install testdisk

6. Run testdisk using the partition image created:

testdisk Documenti/Immagine_disco_TUO_NOME.img

7. Press ENTER on the Proceed option (only the created image partition should appear, otherwise first select it and then continue)

8. Select the Intel option and press ENTER

9. Select the Advanced option and press ENTER. This works only if the partition is already recognized as FAT32, otherwise you have to run the analysis first.

10. First select the Boot option and then the List option.

11. Here you can navigate the folders and files recognized by testdisk. Navigation is possible with the arrows (see help below). Go to select the necessary folder, in our case we can directly select the DCIM folder and by pressing C you will be asked where you want to save the folder on your system. When you have reached your chosen destination press C to confirm and start copying the data.

12. Congratulations you have recovered the missing photographs!

Partition analysis

1. If you see the screen below in step 9 of the previous chapter, it means that your partition has not yet been recognized a you need to create a boot partition.

2. Open the Analyse menu and choose the only available option Quick Search.

3. After pressing ENTER a few times, several options appear at the bottom including Deep Search and Write. Choose the latter and press ENTER. Then confirm with Y. A message will appear that a reboot is required, confirm by pressing ENTER again.

4. Without having to restart the computer you can go to the Advanced menu and return to step number 9

Conclusion

Micro SD corruption happens when you connect the camera to the computer and disconnect it in a not very clean way (ejecting the device properly). But if it happens then it can be remedied with the guide listed above.