Help (Pls Help) Photos in SD Card went missing suddenly, all is left are the .arc & .tec files in cache

[Winnie Au]

With the alert of Blank SD card (SD card black or has unsupported file system), all my photos under the camera (/sdcard/DCIM/Camera) in my sd card in samsung note mobile phone suddenly went missing and what is left are the .tec &.arc files in the /sdcard/DCIM/Camera/Cache

Please assist.


I tried to recover the photos by other recovery programmes but invalid.
How do I recover photos from external sd card when the drive is not being detected by the programme.

I have never done any backup before but would learn to do so now if i can get the photos back.

Thanks all.

Winnie

 

[dustwun77]

Hello Winnie Au. Welcome aboard!

Have you tried looking for them with the sd card connected straight to a pc with an adapter?

I hope you find them!

 

[Winnie Au]

Hello Winnie Au. Welcome aboard!

Have you tried looking for them with the sd card connected straight to a pc with an adapter?

I hope you find them!

Hi Dustwun77,

I have tried connecting to PC via (i) mirco sd card reader and (ii) inserting the sd card to another mobile phone. Apart from the pop-up box in asking me to format the sd card before using, the sd card cannot be detected.

I have checked on the driver of the adapter. It is working properly and the driver is updated.

Even if I can open the drive that is mapped to the adpater, it shows 0 items in the sd card. But when I right clicked on properties of the drive itself, it shows that the space in the drive is the fully utilised.

As such, none for the recovery programme which I installed works for my sd card cannot be detected.

Please assist.

Winnie

 

[dustwun77]

That doesn't sound good. Let me see if i can find some help for you. It is starting to sound like your sd card is corrupt or something.

Don't give up yet!

Edit: I have sent out an sos of sorts, see who shows up. It is Sunday though. Hang tight!

 

[Winnie Au]

That doesn't sound good. Let me see if i can find some help for you. It is starting to sound like your sd card is corrupt or something.

Don't give up yet!

Edit: I have sent out an sos of sorts, see who shows up. It is Sunday though. Hang tight!

Yup, this is what my friends are telling me but the photos are too precious to me that I will NOT give up without putting a fight...

As I am reading up on the .arc and .tec files, just wondering if there is any way to restore/reinstate to the status of the mobile phone before the sd card suddenly went bonkers?

I have 491 files in my cache with 3 of them .arc files and the rest .tec files.

If the sd card is really corrupted, is there any way to reover via the phone?
(ie, auto save MS Word document allow us to do a "save as", and the file is working fine thereafter)

I have installed ***** Data recovery software, wondershare photo recovery and card recovery pro. None of the above work as the sd card cannot be detected.

 

[sdrawkcab25]

.tec files are just the thumbnails(low quality, low resolution) of the pictures that are missing. It may not be worth the effort to recover them.

Have you tried any of these programs to find the originals:
http://lifehacker.com/5237503/five-best-free-data-recovery-tools

 

[jake111]

If you have box, cloud, or Google drive you should still have them.

 

[argedion]

put external sdcard in a card reader and try to run Photorec to recover your lost photos. Warning this is a powerful program. As far as backup for now on learn to use the cloud and a regular backup regime. You can start here:http://androidforums.com/faqs/697582-backup-routine-us-all.html

If you require any assistance in learning to backup things just send me a pm and i'll help out the best I can.

 

[tdodd]

From the PC make sure that you enable hidden files to be listed in File Explorer. I am guessing that the files are there, but hidden, which is why recovery software does not recover them.

 

[Winnie Au]

From the PC make sure that you enable hidden files to be listed in File Explorer. I am guessing that the files are there, but hidden, which is why recovery software does not recover them.

Hi Tdodd,
Thanks for the advice but the USB drive that contain my SD card, could not be detected regardless of me changing mobile phones or adapters to connect to PC.

I need a recovery software that does not need to detect the physical card first.

 

[dustwun77]

Doesn't look like you have made any progress on that, I am sorry to hear.

Looking online myself, I found this post from someone who seems knowledgeable. SD card not detected in PC, Camera. Need to recover photos in it - Sd Card - Storage

It is beginning to look to me like his last suggestion is the best, if the pics are precious to you.

Please let us know how it turns out.

 

[argedion]

I need a recovery software that does not need to detect the physical card first.

the get Photorec it does not rely on windows viewing the disk or not. It is your best bet of any kind of recovery. Just make sure you don't keep accessing the disk with all the other garbage out there every time you write to the disk the recovery process becomes harder.

 

[pastafarian]

This should work providing your pc can recognize the card (give it a drive letter).

I've had success with this, using a pc-

Open up command prompt (start->run->cmd.exe) and type
chkdsk /X /F <SD card drive letter>
My SD card reader is X:\ drive, so I would use the following command:
chkdsk /X /F X:

After recovering the files, I suggest you copy them to the pc, put the sd card in your phone and format it using the phones format tool. Then if you desire, transfer the files back either via the card reader or by usb cable. Good luck!