Help me recover a video file on an SD card
February 28, 2014 12:16 PM   Subscribe

I have an SD card that should have a video file on it. But, I can't see the file. It might be corrupted. Are there any free tools that I can use to recover this file?

This SD card was given to me by a friend and is an important video worth the effort to recover. Several problems: they think that after recording they removed the card without turning off the camera, so it's possibly corrupted. Another is that the card is formatted FAT32 and the video file is possibly around 9 GB. But that seems kinda weird, I'd think that the camera wouldn't allow a video file that large on FAT32. I'm not sure what kind of camera was used to shoot the video. The card is Sandisk SDHC 32GB.

The card says that 9.4 GB is used and 20.3 GB is free.

I open the card and it has a folder named "private" (properties tell me that the size of the folder is 128kb). In that folder is another folder "AVCHD" which has a few empty folders and two files: "INDEX.BDM" AND "MOVIEOBJ.BDM" (1kb each)

Any ideas how I can get the video file off of there? Any free tools I can grab online to help with this?
Thanks a lot for your help!
posted by Craig to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Have you tried putting the card back into the camera and seeing if it can detect the video?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:19 PM on February 28, 2014


Response by poster: Good idea! I don't have access to the camera and I think it was shot by a friend of a friend so I don't know how feasible that will be. But, I'll recommend that if nothing else works out. I'm hoping we can recover from the card itself.
posted by Craig at 12:26 PM on February 28, 2014


Is there a folder under AVCHD called "STREAM"? The raw video files are typically stored there. If not, you might need to try something like DiskInternal's recovery software although people might be able to suggest better/freer alternatives.
posted by thegears at 12:33 PM on February 28, 2014


Best answer: I've been successful every time with PhotoRec. If you're OK with typing a few commands and then carefully following instructions when it comes to menu selections, it should be pretty straightforward.
posted by bcwinters at 12:35 PM on February 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: I used PhotoRec and it recovered everything! Thank you so much bcwinters and everyone that answered I really appreciate your help.
posted by Craig at 2:19 PM on February 28, 2014


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