I just bought from eBay a Kingston 32GB microSDHC that was advertised as defective. The seller said that there could be formatting problems or with transfer of large files.

Unfortunately, when I got it, it was a total mess.

• My Nikon camera doesn't read it at all (OK, maybe it doesn't support 32GB)
• My Linux laptop doesn't mount it: can't read superblock
• The same laptop refuses to mkfs.msdos because it failed whilst writing reserved sector
• The same laptop, under Windows, doesn't read nor format the card
• HTC HD2 mounts the MMC, allows me to write via USB, but is unable to open the just written files

OK, folks, now you would say I would have to go through Paypal complaint... that's not that easy. I consciously bought a half-price card that was known to show some defects, and Paypal complaints take time.

Obviously, I can't accept somebody sold me a completely use-less computer decoration. So I'll keep it as last option.

My question is

Do you know a way, under either Linux or Windows, to thoroughly scan, test and possibly repair memory cards, even if I have to lose some percentage of space because of bad sectors?

If I can keep at least half of the card intact it would certainly be fine. I used to do broken sector marking with hard disks in the past.

I almost forgot:

MONSTR:/home/djechelon # fsck /dev/mmcblk0p1 
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
dosfsck 3.0.9, 31 Jan 2010, FAT32, LFN
Read 512 bytes at 0:Input/output error