bulldogbozo

This weekend while out of town, my camera suddenly started saying that it could not read my memory card. I had two options, format or power off. I always selected power off. Get home and now my card reader for my laptop says that nothing is on my memory card. Anything i can do to recover the pictures i have on it or am I just out of luck? Thanks for any advice.

Jay A

Two possible problems:
1) your camera may have been adjusted to take RAW images.
If so you need to install an image converter on your lap-top to convert RAW into JPEG. There are many free programs to do that on the internet.

2) The card may have been reversed in the camera slot or not completly engaged. If that were the case no images would be recorded on it.

Good tip: Every time you insert the card into the camera take a test shot and review it before you continue!

__________________
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NaplesImage

Can you see images on the card when it is in the camera? If so, you may be able to download them if you have a cable for the camera. If the camera says there are no images, you are SOL.

Another tip- always re-format the card after you have downloaded images. This cleans up any glitches that may have occurred while recording.

bulldogbozo

card was in the correct way. was working fine for a day or two of the trip then all of a sudden quit working. can't see pictures on the camera or using a card reader.

Jay A

Try another card and take a test shot and see if it displays on the camera.
If not it's the camera that has a problem.

__________________
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farmerboy

Rule number one, dont panic. Had a similar issue with an Olympus point and shoot and a xd memory card three years ago. There is free software that can recover the information on the card, its called Zero Assumption Recovery hope this helps and good luck.

bulldogbozo

farmerboy--exact same set up i have. i'll try to find the software and see if it helps. thanks.

Arfamo

Situations like this happen quite a lot...

The good news though is that you can very often recover deleted pictures from a camera memory card or USB Memory stick (or a PC). However, to increase the chances of being able to recover pictures after they have been deleted you must not save any new photos, files or data to it.

When you delete pictures (or any files) from a camera, memory card or USB memory device the data itself isn’t deleted, just the file system pointers that says where the data for those files is located. The area where the deleted picture data was stored is also now marked as free space so it is available to the system for any new files to be written there instead.

If and when that happens, then it is too late to recover your deleted pictures so it is very, very important that new pictures or files aren’t saved to the memory card in the meantime.
One of the easiest ways to see if your deleted pictures can be recovered is to try some photo recovery software.

One tip is to try a demo version of a commercial product that will scan the memory card for deleted pictures and show you exactly what pictures can be recovered.

At least that will show you if you can recover the deleted pictures or if it’s too late already. You can find more useful information on how to recover deleted memory card photos here

Good luck

Eyeball

Very good info -- thanks for posting it.



Sandisk includes recover software with their flash memory products (flash drives, memory sticks, CF and SD memory ...). It only works with functioning cards, e.g. cards where the user deleted files/pictures and now wants them back.

Non-functioning cards are a diff story and may require sending the card in to recover any data. Here is an idea of the cost of recovering digital medium:

http://lc-tech.com/services/recoveryservices.html

I would start by sticking the card in a card reader attached to my computer and looking, NOT writing, just look to see if the file system appears to be intact. If it is, then try downloading a demo or recovery s/w. If the file system looks corrupt you may need to decide if the images you want to recover are worth the prices listed on that website.

Good luck with your card recovery. Please let us know how it all works out for you.