Accidentally Formateted, Want To Get Files Back

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Clip | Sansa® Clip+
1

To save you from a long, drawn out story, about two days my Sansa Clip – a.k.a my pride, joy, and love of my life – took spin in the washer while I was going through a bout of neglect.

I freaked, pitched it into a bowl of rice before I could scream anymore and let it sit there for awhile before throwing it in the charger. It chargered, I took it out with a bit of hope and it died. It got thrown back in the rice, I repeated the process an hour later, failed, and waited another day and a half to throw it into a computer–failed, failed, and failed.

Last night I was really angry and really worried, because I can easily get another MP3 player, but getting the music back would be a very difficult challenge. I started “raging” and ended up clicking format on the menu screen, somehow getting the stupid idea that would help.

It didn’t, of course, and I had a soaked, empty MP3 player.

I’m too much of an optimist to think that my little MP3 player is gone for good, so I’m going to let it soak in rice for awhile, in the mean time, I need a Christmas miracle in order to get my music back.

So, is the clip like a flash drive or a computer? Could I just pop in a good ol’ file restore program or get everything back, or, do I need to send it over to the nearest GeekSquad and force them to get my stuff?

Help, please? Desperate, yeees.

NUTSHELL:

Sansa Clip went in washer, went in rice, got charged for five seconds, died after being pulled off the plug, I pushed the format button, accidently got rid of all my files (1379 songs and 2 podcasts) and now I want 'em back.

Thanks, happy holidays, and all the jazz.

2

You could try one of the many “undelete” utilities out there, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.

BTW, you should leave it in the dry rice for several days  (maybe even a week or longer) before you try to do anything else with it. You haven’t given it sufficient time to dry out.

Message Edited by gwk1967 on 12-24-2009 09:29 PM

3

Because of the wear leveling algorithm used to maximize the flash memory life, you will need a utility specificaly designed for flash memory recovery.

In the future, always have a backup copy of your music!

Bob  :wink:

4

I agree, just why anyone would want 1300 tracks at once I’ll never know. I always copy my FLAC tracks from PC to my sansclip so if the worst happened I always have the masters, most of which are backed up to DVD (200+). In any case I change the tracks almost daily, because I only have live show recordings.

5

You don’t have copies of your music on your pc? I have the original CDs, the mp3 files on my pc, and backup copies of the mp3 files that I burned on DVD-R disks. I suggest that people keep a copy of their music on the pc, and copy that to the player. I also suggest that people back up their mp3 files to DVD disks even if they have all the original CDs of the music, as ripping hundreds of CDs again would be extremely tedious.

6

A file recovery utility that get’s high reviews; freeware.  I haven’t used it, but the publisher says that it works on flash drives.

http://download.cnet.com/Pandora-Recovery/3000-2094\_4-10694796.html?tag=mncol

7

Ha-ha, I knew that wherever a problem was, people would be comin’ in questioning why I didn’t have back-ups.

That doesn’t matter, just answer the question guys. I plan on saving everything when I get it back, I have a flash-drive just for that purpose, but in the meantime… yeah, files off the damned MP3 player would be nice. 

8

Um, see the post directly above yours.  Yep, the Clip is a flash drive player.