Software recovery method for flash media with defective formatting

1. A method for recovering data from flash media, comprising:

accessing the flash media at a low level to access raw flash data stored on the flash media by defining an application program interface (API) comprising a set of pass-through commands to enable a software program to low-level access of the flash media using the set of pass-through commands;

searching the raw flash data for file indicia; and

reading data from the raw flash data based on information in the file indicia, said data comprising a recovered file.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the flash media comprises a SmartMedia compatible device.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the flash media comprises a Sony Memory Stick-compatible device.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising storing the data corresponding to the recovered file in a new file.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising enabling a user to name the new file.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

building a physical-to-logical table mapping physical storage locations to logical storage locations; and

sequentially searching through logical sectors in search of the file indicia based on the physical-to-logical table.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the file indicia comprises a file header, and in response to finding the file header the method includes performing the steps of:

extracting a file size from the file header corresponding to a file;

reading data beginning with the file header or a starting point identified by the file header up to the file size.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining a starting location from which to search the flash media; and sequentially searching through the flash media for file indicia using one of a physical or logical storage sequence.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

defining an API including a plurality of respective sets of pass-through commands, each respective set corresponding to a specific type of flash media;

determining a type of the flash media; and

employing the set of pass-through commands corresponding to the type of flash media determined with the software program to recover the file.

10. A method for recovering data from flash media, comprising:

determining a media type of the flash media;

building a physical-to-logical table mapping physical storage locations to physical storage locations based on the type of flash media;

searching the flash media for a file header corresponding to a selected file type using the physical-to-logical table;

reading data from the raw flash data based on information in the file header;

defining an application program interface (API) comprising a plurality of respective sets of pass-through commands, each respective set to enable a software program to low-level access a particular type of flash media corresponding to that set of pass-through commands; and

building the physical-to-logical table with the software program using the set of pass-through commands corresponding to the media type of the flash media.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein a set of pass-through commands are employed to access a SmartMedia-compatible flash media device.

12. The method of claim 10 , wherein the set of pass-through commands are employed to access a Sony Memory Stick-compatible flash media device.

13. A machine-readable storage media having instructions tangibly stored thereon, which when executed recover data from corrupted flash media by performing operations including:

accessing raw flash data stored on the flash media using a low-level access mechanism by applying an application program interface (API) comprising a set of callable pass-through commands to enable low-level access to the flash media;

searching the raw flash data for file indicia corresponding to a selected file type; and

reading data from the raw flash data based on information in the file indicia, said data comprising a recovered file.

14. The machine-readable storage media of claim 13 , wherein execution of the instructions further perform the operation of providing a user interface by which a user may select specific file types for which to search the flash media to recover corresponding files for.

15. The machine-readable storage media of claim 13 , wherein execution of the instructions further perform the operation of:

building a physical-to-logical table mapping physical storage locations to logical storage locations; and

sequentially searching through logical sectors in search of the file indicia based on the physical-to-logical table.

16. The machine-readable storage media of claim 15 , wherein the physical-to-logical table is built using the pass-through commands.

17. The machine-readable storage media of claim 13 , wherein the file indicia comprises a file header, and in response to finding a file header execution of the instructions further perform the operations of:

extracting a file size from the file header corresponding to a file;

reading data beginning with the file header or a starting point identified by the file header up to the file size to recover the file.

18. The machine-readable storage media of claim 13 , wherein execution of the instructions further perform the operation of:

determining a starting location from which to search the flash media; and sequentially searching through the flash media for file indicia using one of a physical or logical storage sequence.