Recovering files from a corrupt memory card

Yesterday was a busy and frustrating day. Well, most of it.

The memory card of my mobile phone suddenly decided to go bust. I searched the entire web for programs which would allow me to recover data from my memory card. Unfortunately most of them were Windows ones and none of them worked with wine (the demo versions that is, because the full versions of those softwares cost a bomb!).

So there I was stuck with my corrupt memory card. I had loads of important data on it so losing all those meant losing quite a lot of data. Fortunately help was right at hand! I came across some very useful posts (www.goinggnu.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/recover-deleted-files-from-memory-card and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery) which made things easy.

What I did was as follows:

1. I made an image of the memory card on my PC. How? By typing the following in the Terminal:

dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=memory_card.img bs=512

"memory_card.img" was saved under my /home folder. sda is the device name of the memory card, it might not be the same for you. To check what the assigned name of the memory card is, I opened System Monitor (available under System > Administration > System Monitor) and then clicked on the tab called File Systems. Also, please note, this 'creating image' process can take some time. It took the program around 20 mins to scan a 1GB RS-MMC memory card.

2. Next, I installed Testdisk

sudo apt-get install testdisk

3. Next I used Photorec, a free data recovery tool to scan the image of the memory card

sudo photorec memory_card.img

memory_card is of course the name you have used to save the image on your hard drive.

I simply followed the instructions of Photorec and the lost files were back, saved under the /home folder. Phew! I cannot explain how relieved i was! Open source saved the day!

Install Kubuntu

Many prefer Kubuntu to Ubuntu because of the stunning interface.

This is perhaps the most user-friendly tutorial on how to install Kubuntu afresh on your PC. To get Kubuntu, click here (as with all Cannonical releases, its totally free!) and burn the downloaded .iso file to a CD (you could also burn it to a DVD).

One more thing, the installation instructions here are for Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala release), currently the latest version.

Step 1: BIOS Changes - Make sure your first boot device is set to your CD/DVD ROM. Save your settings and exit BIOS.

Step 2: When you boot, this is the first screen you will get:



Step 3: Select your language and then select the "Install Kubuntu" option and press enter.



Step 4: The following images are in sequence. You will have to enter your details as per your preferences.





Select your region:



Select your keyboard layout (best keep it to the default one as shown here if you're not sure).



If you want to install Kubuntu on your hard drive as the only OS, then click on the first option "Erase and use the entire disk" as shown here. (If you want to set partitions, click on the specify partitions and set your partition size and specification) Its better to select the first option as shown here if you're not sure.



Enter your name and username, password etc. If you dont want Kubuntu to ask you for passwords everytime you boot, select the "Log in automatically"



Click on Install and get your cup of coffee coz its gonna take quite some time! :)



The installation bar which you will have to tolerate for around 10-15 mins. Did you get that coffee?



After the installation is over/the bar reaches 100%, you will get this image on your screen. As directed simply remove the CD from the tray and press Enter.



Kubuntu will now reboot and greet you with its amazing interface!



Thats it!