Wizcode Giveaway! Win a free storage tool!!
I was so impressed with how the Wizcode team rallied around their product during my recent review tests (and tweaked it), I asked them to offer some free copies of the 3 great new utilities. You can check out my review/tests here. If you want to get these storage media repair tools, this might be your chance. The products are free to download of course (30-day trial), but I'll be giving away a license (for one of these utilities) to 3 lucky posters (actually, now 10...see below) who comment here. So, tell me how you manage storage card issues on your WinMo device, and you might win one of these excellent tools!
Rules: Winners are chosen at random. You must comment on this post (or related posts), and within the scope of the topic in a relevant manner (spamlike, one-word or off-topic posts will be deleted, of course). I reserve the right to determine what is considered relevant and will make final judgements concerning comments. Inapproriate content will be removed. Contest will end on Monday, Jun 15th, 2009. Winners will be notified in a follow-up post with instructions on claiming their prizes.
Note: the vendor has graciously agreed to give out 10 full licenses to our readers, so if you haven't posted yet, better get to it!!!...the contest ends soon! Also, check out this interesting article on Wizcode's web site debunking some myths about defragmentation as well as methods for cleaning up storage media. It's a bit technical, but still a good read...
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Yeah, it adds one more
Yeah, it adds one more advantage to having a device that supports external storage, eh? It really did fix or clean everything I threw at it, except for the "Widow Maker" SD card I described using in the post, but at least I was able to find out what was wrong. I used to try to format that card and could never figure out why it kept causing file problems or running out of space. By consulting the debug log of the ScanDisk product, we now know...see below. Also, the vendor would like to give away more than 3 copies, so spread the word... :) Contest ends Monday, Jun 15 2009...thanks for the comments, everyone!
"Thanks for the log file! There seems to be a physical error with the storage card - according to the log file ScanDisk was unable to update the sector which was marked as bad. Perhaps it was marked bad because it was indeed faulty? If you can please run a bad sector scan that will report any sectors with issues. This is slow but at least will give you an idea if there were bad sectors on the card or not... Sorry for the bad news..."
[note @ 2009-06-10 22:48:21]: Marking cluster 3850 as EOC...
[err! @ 2009-06-10 22:48:21]: Error code: 0x1f, description: A device attached to the system is not functioning.
[err! @ 2009-06-10 22:48:21]: DISK_IOCTL_WRITE failed writting to sectors 374 through 374. SG_REQ.sr_status=31...
[err! @ 2009-06-10 22:48:21]: Failed writting sector FAT sector 374, aborting...
[warn @ 2009-06-10 22:48:21]: Failed to mark cluster 3850 as EOC
[err! @ 2009-06-10 22:48:21]: Unable to update the directory entry of '\SD_VIDEO\PRL001\MOL005.ASF'.
[dbug @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: CFATHelper::FlushFATCache()...
[err! @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: Error code: 0x1f, description: A device attached to the system is not functioning.
[err! @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: DISK_IOCTL_WRITE failed writting to sectors 253 through 253. SG_REQ.sr_status=31...
[err! @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: Failed writting sector FAT sector 253, aborting...
[warn @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: Warning, sector 253 was not flushed!
[note @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: 0 sectors flushed
[dbug @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: CFATHelper::FlushFATCache()
[dbug @ 2009-06-10 22:48:22]: ScanDisk::FixCorruptedChains()
Anton Tomov
Very nice software, I hope
Very nice software, I hope it work better than Pocket Mechanics. Last time I tried to fix a SD on my Axim it just corrupted everything. I'll keep it in mind to future tests (and emergencies).
ericksonik... You might have
ericksonik... You might have noted in my testing that I mentioned this--that PM often caused more problems than fixed. The vendor admitted that a critical bug was previously found and fixed in PM. The ScanDisk, Defragment, Undelete products are new stand-alone software that do not use the same code. The vendor has published a very good article (see link at the end of the post above) about the particulars of resolving storage card problems. They make a very good case for not using the methods recommended by myself and Werner (backup to PC, re-format, and copy-back, etc). I have been extensively testing this software for several weeks now, and on some of my most critical data storage. It has not corrupted anything. As you see in my early tests, in some cases it didn't work, but the vendor quickly patched those issues and they were fixed on re-test. I can honestly say that the tools do what they say, and seem safe. I would still recommend making backups of your storage cards, however.