Need help with SD card, have weird file appearing

tonyheaney

I have a Mini SD Card 32 G (I have 2 in face)b the second one has suddenly started developing files out of no where. the files are labeled as follows:

µ┬╜¿╬─~1
µOMIC
µERENITY
µTARTR~1
µUDIOB~1

There are folders and when i go in to them i get nothing, when i try to copy real files on to the desktop all i get is an empty file.

please help me

allthedoyles

Looks like temporary files to me - I would delete them - This ~ is the symbol normally seen .

When you exit folder , they should dissappear . - may have to do with your PC memory

tonyheaney

The sd card was being used in my Samsung galaxy tab 2 tablet. I have had the SD card a month now and this is the first time ive seen them. I deleted them and they came back a second time. also i could not access the card using my tablet.

Torqay

Format the card (FAT32), test its integrity with Check Flash.

PyeContinental

allthedoyles wrote: »

Looks like temporary files to me

There is a convention of using the tilde symbol at the beginning of some files to indicate that they are temporary files, but in this case that's not what they are.

Read on for a longer explanation, but the short answer is that I suspect that the memory card is not formatted properly or its filesystem has been corrupted. Try formatting the card in the tablet or camera (or whatever device you want to use it in). If that doesn't work, make sure that it supports cards of 32GB in size. If it doesn't you'll have to get a smaller memory card.

Warning: formatting the card means erasing everything on it, so don't do this if you are actually trying to retrieve files or photos from it.

Technical explanation: There was a restriction in the old FAT16 file system (which comes from MS DOS in the 1980s) where file names could only be 8 letters long, after which you could optionally have a full stop and a three letter file name extenstion (such as .txt or .doc or .exe etc). Windows 95 introduced the possibility of longer filenames, and for backwards compatibility, these longer filenames when displayed in DOS would be shortened to 6 characters plus the tilde plus a number (in case there were two or more filenames with the same first 6 letters).

So, what the filenames above tell me is that they were created under a more modern (Windows 95 or later) filesystem, but are being displayed by a device that either only understands FAT16 or thinks it is reading from a device that is formatted with the FAT16 filesystem.

You'll also see that all the filenames start with the µ character (Greek letter mu). This comes from the way files were deleted under the FAT 16 file system. In fact, files were never actually deleted at all. The only thing that was deleted was the first letter of the name of the file in the File Allocation Table (ie: the table of contents of the storage device), and was replaced with a special character, µ.

The µ character indicated to the operating system that the file was no longer needed and that whatever space it took up on the disk could be reused when necessary (for saving other files). This meant that the file data could actually still be there on the disk, but that the operating system just didn't display it in the list of files any more. After a while though, the spaces that a deleted file used on the disk would no longer hold all the data associated with it, and attempts to copy a deleted file (or "undelete" it) would usually return junk or empty files.

Whatever device you are using might not be programmed to follow the same convention (it might not be fully compatible with FAT16). As I said above though, it could just be that the contents of the memory card have become corrupted.

If you have no photos or files on the memory card that you are trying to retrieve (if you have nothing to lose from the card) then make sure your device supports the type and size of card and try formatting it in the device you want to use it in.

tonyheaney

thanks for the help a lot to take in. I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 " and according to the website it supports up to 32gb (http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_tab_2_7_0_p3100-4543.php)

I now no longer get the above mentioned files and instead i have this: mtptemp

It will no longer work in my Samsung Galaxy Tab as the Tablet says the SD card is damaged but it will work in my Samsung Galaxy S3 (so far any way) also this lost.dir folder has popped up since i got the device and it annoys me.

any insites?

PyeContinental

Can you say whether you have anything on the SD card that you are trying to retrieve?
Have you formatted the card since you last posted?
If so, do you get a choice as to what filesystem to format the card with?
What else apart from the tablet have you put the card into?

Googling mtptemp seems to indicate that the Samsung creates a temp file when copying and renames it to the correct filename when finished. If it doesn't finish properly, then it never gets renamed. Are you trying to copy a large file, such as a HD movie to the card? If you are, then this is the reason. Even if the card is formatted with FAT32, you can't copy anything larger than a 4GB file to it.

tonyheaney

there were files but i coulnt delete them so i did a full reformat,
yes,
yes,
Nothing else, but now i have swapped the card with my Samsung S3 and it works and visa versa,

cheers