Of the nearly 100 people who subscribed for the beta testing less than 5 posted any feedback.

Anton,

When I use the new scandisk feature on my 8Gb microdeive and 8Gb Sandisk SDHC microsd
card I get Broken directory entry errors which the latest Pocket Mechanic Professional
does not report with its own scandisk feature.

Gerald

Gerald Lankamp - 04 January 2009 09:21 AM

Anton,

When I use the new scandisk feature on my 8Gb microdeive and 8Gb Sandisk SDHC microsd
card I get Broken directory entry errors which the latest Pocket Mechanic Professional
does not report with its own scandisk feature.

Gerald

Hey Gerald,
Well this is expected, as WDRM ScanDisk is a new and updated ScanDisk. In other words ScanDisk from Pocket Mechanic is v1 while ScanDisk from WDRM is v2. There are many improvements and features that are (still) not available in Pocket Mechanic. For instance Pocket Mechanic is not able to fix FAT mismatch errors, does not detect directory entry issues (and that’s one of the most common cause of lost files on storage cards), does not detect directory relation issues (another serious problem if running the WinCE built-in defragmenter which is full of bugs and is still used by a number of applications claiming to be able to defragment storage cards).

ScanDisk v2 will become an integral part of the upcoming Pocket Mechanic v3.

Jamal Harris - 04 January 2009 09:28 AM

I placed 55 .jpg images (15MB) on a Sandisk Extreme III SDHC 4GB card.  Then deleted them using Resco Explorer.  I then used the undeleted module to recover all 55 images without difficulty. 

I would however like the ability to choose where the files are restored to, e.g.  internal memory or a secondary storage card CF Card.

My next test will be to see how well the undelete module recovers files that have been wiped!

Sorry nobody can recover wiped files even Wizcode Data Recovery Mobile As for your suggestion on recovering files to another card/main memory - this can be done. It is in fact much harder to recover the files on the same card. We will bring this feature shortly.

Thanks!

Anton

Jamal Harris - 04 January 2009 10:25 AM

Ok I just ran another test.  (I first formated the card to make sure it clean)  I placed the same 55 jpg’s totaling 15MB’s on the card then deleted them using the file explorer on my Vista Home Premium SP1 netbook.  I then placed a 560MB movie AVI on to the card the undelete module was unable to find the deleted files which means that the 560MB file has completely over-written the 15MB’s of previously deleted files. 

But for the sake of thoroughness I will attempt to recover the files using Card Studio v1.2 Build 12222 by Ppclink. 

Ppclink’s file recovery wasn’t able to recover the file either.

Now I will attempt to recover the files using Sandisk’s Rescupro (this software is included with all extreme III and IV memory cards). 

Yes I do realize that it’s not fair to compare a data recovery progrom (Wizcodes Undelete Program) designed to operate on the significantly less powerful Windows Mobile platform, with the desktop data recovery program made by the cards manufacturer no-less but I am curious.

In fact the module will find the file names but it does internal checks to see if the clusters aren’t already occupied by other files which is your case. Indeed if another file overwrites the clusters there is nothing that can be done to recover the data (besides listing the names of the deleted files but this is not real data recovery so they are simply ignored).

In fact Undelete will only work correctly if:

1) File contents have not been overwritten with other files
2) The file cluster chain was not fragmented (another good reason to keep your cards defragmented)

We will probably add a defragmenter to WDRM as well.

Jamal Harris - 04 January 2009 10:35 AM

Ok now I am terrified!  The Sandisk recovery program found 5259 files on my SDHC 4GB Extreme III card this is after formating card at least three times.  These include mp3’s, photographs (I used to use this card in my camera) and GOD know’s what else. 

Now I am really looking foward to Wizcode’s unformat module.

P.S.  Don’t ever give your memory card away EVER!

You are right, Unformat will find those files as well. Unformat works quite differently from Undelete - while Undelete relies on the file system to enumerate and recover deleted files Unformat scans the entire card for known file patterns (currently it recognizes 100+ file formats) and is able to recover the files. That’s why it is called Unformat, it works even after a card has been formatted

We are going to enable the Unformat module in the next few days I hope

Cheers!

Anton

daak - 05 January 2009 12:12 AM

daak, I will email you with a debug build that will produce a log file. Which version do you need, is it the WM6 one? I am assuming Undelete does not see the card as well, right?

Anton

Anton you are right te Undelete function does not see my s/d card iv 6.1 on my HTC Touch Pro

thanks and looking forward to recieving the debug build

Thanks

daak

PSS: oh i forgot i tryed Sprite Backup on my unit and it also claimed i must have removed the sim card
, i reinstalled the soft but same result -
i use SPB as well > no trouble with that claim and iv trialed resco backup and it also had no problem so only sprite gave the result of no s/d card in the unit.
iv not received any other problems to anything else on my unit ,  with this claim.

daak we fixed the issue with the missing storage card in v1.02. What’s the version you are running?

Anton

Magellan - 05 January 2009 09:22 AM

Ok, I installed version 1.02 today on my iPaq 4350 (WM2003) with no problems.  I ran Scandisk with the option to automatically fix checked.  I figured what the heck, this isn’t my main PDA so I can afford to live dangerously.  Now, none of the programs on my SD card are available.  I can see the file folders for everything, but they are all empty when using the built in file explorer, or via ActiveSync.  The weird part is, when I take out my SD card and use a card reader, all of the files are there.

Magellan,
Do you remember what the errors reported were? Can I email you with a debug build that will generate a log file? Please email me!

Anton

thejbfamily - 05 January 2009 10:35 AM

I downloaded the WM5 version and installed it today.  I ran Scandisk on both my SD & CF Cards, appeared to work fine.  It found errors on my SD card and corrected them.

I deleted a file on both my CF & SD cards, and used the undelete module, it worked fine.  I also deleted a folder and undeleted that fine.  I put a folder inside of that one (so basically it was \SD Card\Folder1\Folder2), put files in both folders and deleted them.  using undelete I was able to undelete both Folder1 & Folder2 and the files that they contained.

THis appears to be the easiest Beta testing that I’ve ever done, since it appears to be working flawlessly…

Hi thejbfamily,
Thanks for your report - glad everything is working fine!

Anton

WDRM Beta 1.0.3 is available.

This version can detect and fix more directory entry inconsistency issues.

Magellan - 07 January 2009 06:22 AM

I am getting a new error with version 1.0.3.  Scandisk starts fine and gets to the point of checking the FAT tables.  It now says “FAT tables do not match”, and stops scanning at that point.  This just started happening after installing version 1.0.3.

This error means the two FAT copies are out of sync. This has nothing to do with the latest version, this code is also present in the previous ones. This is an indication of a very serious error. You can choose WDRM to fix the issue but I recommend backing up your data before that.

Hi Magellan,
I am not sure what is wrong - v1.0.3 is changed in only one aspect - more errors are now detected and fixed. I will start posting the debug versions of the beta as well because without a log file I cannot tell you what happened. We tested the new ScanDisk internally with simulated errors on different cards and it fixed everything, not a single issue. I hope if there is a problem with the logic that we will be able to find it quickly.

Anton

Magellan - 07 January 2009 07:43 AM

I have another twist to Scandisk.  If I select “yes” to fix the broken directory errors, and check “Apply to all”, that is when my card gets messed up, and the SD card shows only empty directories and the links are broken.  If I only fix the broken directory errors one at a time (I only do a few this way to test since there are so many), then after the soft reset I get the FAT error again, but the card still shows my files and the links work fine.

So either way I fix the errors, something gets messed up.

mkss55442 - 07 January 2009 09:41 AM

Hi Anton,

I’m having the same problem as Magellan with 1.0.3. ScanDisk fixed a very large number of directory errors on my CF card. I did a soft reset after the errors were fixed. Then ran ScanDisk again and have critical error with the FAT Tables. I then tried to let ScanDisk fix them automatically but it still stops when it finds the FAT error. Looks like I have to reformat the card again.

Can you see if you can fix the display that shows which card you want to scan or undelete from? One time it will have my SD card as the first entry and the next time it will have my CF card on top. I’ve also seen it different between ScanDisk and Undelete.

Thanks,
Mark

Hi Mark,
Did you soft reset the device after the module finished? Looks like the cache was not flushed after the file system was modified.

Go to Settings > ScanDisk and check the option for fixing the FAT tables, it is disabled by default.

The card order is based on the order in which they were loaded (their device drivers actually). But the list can be sorted alphabetically so that will be done in the next release.

Anton

Jamal Harris - 07 January 2009 11:20 AM

Beta build 3 seems to find a lot of errors that build 2 couldn’t find.  Then it started deleting thousands of “lost clusters”.  Good thing I backup my memory cards.

Jamal,
What type of errors? It is normal for ScanDisk to detect lost clusters if there were any lost clusters on the card. They can be saved to files - you can configure then in the Settings menu. Next release will have enabled debugging (log file), this will make the files bigger and the application slower but at least we will get a clue on whether there were problems and what caused them.

Anton