windbag
Joined: 20 Aug 2009
UK | | My short guide to cloning & recovering your memory card, plus utilities for capacity validation & write speed benchmarking
Cloning your SD(HC) or other data card:
Raw Copy by Roadkil - freeware - score 10/10 - http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=22
Recovering Your Photos & Movies (assessed from using a card in a Canon Powershot SX1)
PhotoRec (over) by CG Security – score 10/10 - http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
(if you have a Sandisk card & only photos – also consider RescuePro on Sandisk cards)
Renaming recovered files
Namewiz by SoftByte Labs - 30 day trialware ($30 after) - score 8/10 (*) (comprehensive but not free) - http://www.softbytelabs.com/us/nw/index.html
Validating capacity of memory cards:
h2testw by Herald Bögeholz/ SOSFakeFlash - score 9/10 (robust but long duration)
http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/h2testw-14-gold-standard-in-detecting-usb-counterfeit-drives/
Speed testing memory cards (including write speeds)
Disk Speed by Roadkill – freeware – 10/10 - http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=13
CrystalDiskMark – Crystal Dew World – freeware – 10/10 http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html
Drive Speed Checker – nagware – 9/10 – http://www.exibitionsoftware.com/products/drivespeedchecker/details.asp
All three programs use differing methods to test the write (& read) speeds for a card (or drive). The important one for a video camera (the most stringent test) is the highest block size or “continuous†speed reported. This should tally with the SDHC class (class 6=6MB/s).
Contrary to some posts, I believe the write speed is important as it could form the rate-determining step for how long after a photo or video-clip being taken the camera remains “unavailable†while writing the data from the camera buffer. Of course, this can also be determined by the camera limiting the write speed, in which case the speed class is irrelevant. But you still want to know if you got what you paid for!
Keywords: SDHC SD card clone duplicate recover corrupt directory byte-by-byte copy raw
Test SD specs SDHC specification Benchmark
How do I clone an SD card? How do I recover an SD card?
(*) suggestions for a viable freeware alternative would be welcome in reply to this post
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