Question : Problem: Lost Data on SD Card

Ok, I've got a problem that has stumped me. It's not the end of the world, but I figured it would be worth asking to see if I could get to the bottom of this.

A buddy has a Samsung video camera that has the option to record movie clips to an SD card. He recorded some video to the card and the put the card in his computer to pull the video off. When he put the card in the pc, he could see and view all the clips. He uploaded one movie clip to his hard drive and then took the card out of the card reader. He put the card back in the video camera and it now shows the card to be empty of video.

I've got the card now and when I put it in my card reader it also shows it to be empty except for the DCIM, MISC, and MSAMSUNG folders, all of which are empty. It is a 2 gb card and Windows shows it to have a 1.86 gb capacity, which I know is normal. HOWEVER, when I right-click and go to the properties of the card, Windows says that it has 619 mb of used space and 1.26 gb of free space. Something is still on that card but seems to be un-retrievable.

I ran 3 recovery programs on the card, Restoration, PC Inspector Smart Recovery and Zero Assumption Digital Recovery, all of which found nothing on the card. Again, Windows shows there are 619 mb of "something" on the card, which would make sense because he told me he thought he had about 600 mb of video clips on the card before it disappeared.

Any thoughts or advice on this? I'm not willing to buy any software because #1 it's not even my videos, #2 it's not the end of the world at all to him, he just asked me to look at it for him and see what I could do.

Thanks!

Answer : Problem: Lost Data on SD Card

Well I've officially decided it's a lost cause. Less often is data unretrievable on flash memory compared to hard disks but this just seems to be one of those times.

Neither poster had the "fix" but I don't believe it's their fault since the SD card seems to be dying. Both will be awarded equal points. Thanks for your help and efforts.