Lost Digital Pix: Found!
Hi Fred: Thought this might be useful.
On a recent holiday I was reviewing pictures on the camera when I suddenly had a whole screen full of question marks, indicating corrupt data, together with a message 'Error reading CF card'. I turned off the camera, reseated the card several times and turned the camera back on. All appeared to be OK at first sight, but then I realised that approximately 40 pictures had gone missing.
On returning home, I plugged the camera into the PC and downloaded the pictures that were visible, but still could not access the missing ones. I tried putting the card (Crucial 128Mb Compact Flash) into a card reader hoping to access it with some file recovery software, but could not access the card due to an 'I/O device error'. I then tried putting it back in the camera, hoping to access it there as an external drive - but no joy there either.
I emailed Crucial for suggestions - no help there except for the offer to replace the card under the lifetime warranty.
So what to do? The only way that I could access the card was via the camera, but this would not allow access to the corrupted pictures.
Finally, with nothing to lose, I reasoned that if I formatted the card in the camera then I might then be able to access it in the card reader using file recovery software. It worked! Using PC Inspector (free from http://www.convar.com) I was able to recover all except two of the lost pictures. Best wishes Peter Edwards, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
Glad it worked for you Peter. Indeed, it's worth remembering that most digital camera memories are treated as virtual hard drives (OK: flash drives) using the utterly normal FAT file system. While some tools are especially configured for digging photos out of the digital wreckage of a scrambled drive, almost *any* normal file recovery tool at least has a shot at recovering lost pictures from camera memory.
See:
http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-06-07.htm#5
http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-05-31.htm#5
http://tinyurl.com/mmc6u
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Other
Permalink
