I have had a few phones in over the past couple of months that I received an error when I went to image the MicroSD behind a write blocker. It tells me I need to format the card before it can be used. The card was ejected from a phone that was powered off in both instances. None of the software (encase, FTK, or IEF) obviously recognized the file structure because it had not been formatted and was corrupted.
Any suggestions or am I just missing something?
It tells me I need to format the card before it can be used.
'It'? If Windows tries to mount the card, and can't identify it as formatted, that's more or less what it will say. But then … why should that matter?
The card was ejected from a phone that was powered off in both instances. None of the software (encase, FTK, or IEF) obviously recognized the file structure because it had not been formatted and was corrupted.
Don't understand. Imaging software should just see a series of sectors, and go on to image those. Trying to identify a file structure is not part of doing low-level images, so I don't understand where that comes from.
You may need to provide more details.
I sounds to me that the card may have gone bad. Check to see if it's showing any actual capacity in computer management > drive management.
The error message 'Please format card' I always think is very reassuring. It means that the card is likely to be corrupted, rather than physically dead.
You should be able to mount the card as a physical device and then image it.
If it started as a FAT32, or even exFAT card, then data recovery programs should find your data.
If not, do some data carving to get an idea of what was on the card.
Please format the card can also come up in bad or under powered USB ports or sometimes I've even had it happen with a bad WB device.
When the card has damaged (non-writable) areas for FAT, that is when you get continuously the "please format" error.
The USB host and a bad card reader can be detected easily with trial-and-error using another known to be good micro SD card.
Warning if you really got bad hardware there, you might ruin the known to be good card as well!
I get the error to format. When I image with FTK everything shows up as unallocated. I cannot get anything else to recognize it.
Thanks for all of the suggestions