From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11



This post is relevant to win10 and 11 .


In comp.mobile.android, on Sun, 16 Aug 2026 01:14:50 +0100, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 2026-08-15, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2026-08-15 16:23, micky wrote:

In comp.mobile.android, on Sat, 15 Aug 2026 09:34:36 +0100, Nuno Silva
<nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Properties has all along said the SD card has no errors, but when I try
to repair it anyhow, it says it can't.

Now, I can display the top level directory items, but when using an
after-market file manager, PowerDEsk, I try to open any of the
directories one level down, the file manager repositions at "PC" or some >>> high place unrelated to the SD card. When I use the MS file manager,
this doesn't happen unless I try to open DCIM, which is where the photos >>> are, but it happens that way when I try to open DCIM. (Inside that is
Camera, and that has the photos. It used to open but now doesn't even
though I never tried to write to it. I only read, and it copied 38+4%
of the files.)

I will look into ddrescue that you mention, but I'm not optimistic.

ddrescue does no repair. It simply copies a disk or partition to
another place, even if it finds errors when reading it.

Yes, but it is tailored for media with errors or reading difficulties,
and will let you know if there *are* errors.

For instance, the other day I tried to recover deleted photos on a
card. First I cloned the card with 'dd', then I recovered the photos
with PhotoRec (Linux), working on the image, instead of the card.

Yeah, just for undeletion in a healthy medium, ddrescue isn't necessary, >although one might feel tempted just to get its progress display.

From my notes:

SystemRescueCd http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/

PhotoRec recovers files from deleted memory cards (from cameras). 12 April 2009
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
f3 http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/ recovers/analyses USB sticks.

Just for a follow-up. Use of windows 10 (because that box has a
full-size SD card reader in the front and the win11 only has a tiny slot
in the side hard to get to since my breakfast table is covered with
junk), use of win10 to copy the files was erratic, to put it mildly.

Would win11 work better for this troublesome copying?

I usually use PowerDesk but the only free copy is quite old now. I
thought when I right clicked and did Properties, it would use the same Properties program that MS File Explorer used, but the MS version has
too more tabs!!!! Hardware and one other. Maybe something about
PowerDesk means it can't implement those two tabs, can't relay the
information?

Anyhow, as I said, with Powerdesk I would go to the SD card, go to DCIM,
go to Camera, and then open all the photos and videos, and then it would reposition at This PC. So I tried the MS file explorer.

Same thing, but after 5 times, the sixth time it didn't. One time
stopped at the same 4% but continued a couple minutes later (a previous
and a later time I waited for an hour and it just stayed at 4%.

One time it made it to 50%. I would just copy what's left, but more
likely to freeze the window or reposition at This PC if I try to list
them. More failures, reboot windows, more failures.

One time only it said Cannot copy filename, and offered to skip it, but
like a fool I clicked on Retry. And it just froze, never offered to
skip it again.

All when I think I have 3 other copies of all these pictures.

So I decide to format, and it refuses to do a non-quick format. I do a
quick format and then it is wiling to do a non-quick format, which it
does at the appropriate slow pace.


But I think I'd be a fool to rely on this SD card, right? I know
formating is supposed to find all the bad spots, and list their
locations so they are not used, but would you guys use this SD card for anything important?
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sun, 8/16/2026 11:52 AM, micky wrote:

But I think I'd be a fool to rely on this SD card, right? I know
formating is supposed to find all the bad spots, and list their
locations so they are not used, but would you guys use this SD card for anything important?

You have to know how a device works under the hood, to be
using trash-bunny techniques on it. Is it direct mapped, and
you can burn spots into it, or, is it "wear leveled static&dynamic".

https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/ex7dvo/quick_reminder_that_sd_cards_with_wearleveling/

A lot of trash-bunny techniques, result in writes to a device.
It it is already on its way out, and in a spiral-of-death,
the activities might actually be accelerating the end of
the device.

As for the article, we've been baited before by all this talk
of wear leveling, and the game continues. It's hard to say
whether any quality TLC flash devices exist, as that's what
these pieces of shit will be made of. I looked at my computer
store listing, and you can't buy an 8GB MLC based one any more,
they're going to all be TLC or QLC. And they won't
actually tell you what kind of flash is in an SD.
"Buying new is not necessarily buying better"
Some of the older SD cards, are going to last longer.
Just because of the flash type.

This makes a good hobby though, and is slightly ahead of
stamp collecting. And as that Reddit thread shows, it has the
same amount of drama, for sure (the "talking with engineering" schtick
the tech support carried out). Companies and their tech support,
it's highly likely they don't even make the product themselves,
and it arrives in big burlap bags and they put their brand
sticker on it.

Summary: If you device isn't healthy... don't use it.

Paul

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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In comp.mobile.android, on Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:13:58 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 8/16/2026 11:52 AM, micky wrote:

But I think I'd be a fool to rely on this SD card, right? I know
formating is supposed to find all the bad spots, and list their
locations so they are not used, but would you guys use this SD card for
anything important?

You have to know how a device works under the hood, to be
using trash-bunny techniques on it. Is it direct mapped, and
you can burn spots into it, or, is it "wear leveled static&dynamic".

https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/ex7dvo/quick_reminder_that_sd_cards_with_wearleveling/

A lot of trash-bunny techniques, result in writes to a device.
It it is already on its way out, and in a spiral-of-death,
the activities might actually be accelerating the end of
the device.

As for the article, we've been baited before by all this talk
of wear leveling, and the game continues. It's hard to say
whether any quality TLC flash devices exist, as that's what
these pieces of shit will be made of. I looked at my computer
store listing, and you can't buy an 8GB MLC based one any more,
they're going to all be TLC or QLC. And they won't
actually tell you what kind of flash is in an SD.
"Buying new is not necessarily buying better"
Some of the older SD cards, are going to last longer.
Just because of the flash type.

This makes a good hobby though, and is slightly ahead of
stamp collecting. And as that Reddit thread shows, it has the
same amount of drama, for sure (the "talking with engineering" schtick
the tech support carried out). Companies and their tech support,
it's highly likely they don't even make the product themselves,
and it arrives in big burlap bags and they put their brand
sticker on it.

Summary: If you device isn't healthy... don't use it.

I didn't understand most of what you wrote, but I bought a new SD card.
4x as big, too.

Months ago you gave a suggestion in the android group, to turn off
gestures so that my phone woldn't light up when putting it in my pocket.
I'm positive I had done that but I checked and it wasn't set that way,
so I set it and was waiting for results to tell you if it worked or not.
At firs it seemed to say yes, but later results were a little mixed. And
of course now the phone is dead, so it will never be known for sure.

Even though I figured Xiaomi fixed the problem in the 7 years since the
last phone, it was still a factor in my being ready to buy a different
brand.

The last phone's screen turned on when I didn't want it to, and turned
off when it was plugged into the car charger, even when I was looking at
a map and wanted it on all the time. It did not turn off when I was
folling the map's directions, but that was not enough. I installed a
couple apps that said it would keep the screen on, one that went by app
(and I set it for all the map apps) but it didnt' work either. :-)
Hard to write for so many different implementations.

If the new phone fixes one of these, it will be an improvement. If both
of them, it will be miraculous.

Paul

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