How can I recover the files in LOST.DIR on my SD card, and what are they?

Question

I've always had a LOST.DIR folder on my external SD card, which until now has been empty. Today my phone complained that my SD card was damaged and wouldn't mount it, so I pulled it out and looked at it on my computer. There's now a 70237 file inside LOST.DIR which is 128 MB. It starts with something like "ë<MSWIN4.1", seemingly to indicate that it's a dump of a Windows 98 FAT boot sector (which makes no sense).

What did Android dump here and and why? (I think I may have disconnected my phone from my PC yesterday without ejecting the drives first, so that might be the "why", though it was from Windows XP and not Windows 98.) Is there a simple way to recover the information in this file?

@Sathya Nope, just Windows. – Matthew Read Oct 14 '11 at 04:33 — Matthew Read, Oct 14 '11 at 04:33

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 13:47

5

According to this Super User answer, LOST.DIR is the folder mac disk repair looks for as part of it's repair process.

LOST.DIR is something mac disk repair looks for and will ask about as part of it's repair process. If it's related at all to the standard lost+found, then it's a special file that holds all the corrupted or orphaned files found during a file system check.

Something is checking your drive and finding a problem it wants to make note of in LOST.DIR. I think this sort of thing is more likely to happen with Macs on non-HFS drives.

Android also creates this directory as part of it's filesystem check and puts files there which Android believes are corrupt.

edited Jun 10 '20 at 13:47

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answered Oct 14 '11 at 04:26

Sathyajith Bhat

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Any ideas about recovery? It seems to be a mix of stuff and not a single file. – Matthew Read Oct 14 '11 at 04:37
@MatthewRead you mentioned there was a single file? Do you have any files on your phone that you think are missing? From what I know, there's isn't a single automated way to recover them. Perhaps you can usefile to check for what type of file it is – Sathyajith Bhat Oct 14 '11 at 04:44
I haven't noticed anything missing, but then I haven't used my phone much since I noticed this. It's not an executable but file seems like it would be handy elsewhere. – Matthew Read Oct 14 '11 at 05:29
@MatthewRead The Windows port is a bit crippled, the Linux version is pretty powerful – Sathyajith Bhat Oct 14 '11 at 05:50

How can I recover the files in LOST.DIR on my SD card, and what are they?

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