CF Card Data *poof!

General Forums Tech
1

Last night my camera just randomly erased the data on my CF card. The camera was giving the error ‘unable to view picture’. I plugged the card into my card reader and the folders still existed, but all the files were gone. Since I was flying back down to Kelowna this morning, I formatted the card with the card reader hoping to snag some pics of the trip south… Now the camera can’t even read or write to the card… Card works on the PC, doens’t work in the camera… Has anyone had a problem like this? I’d hate to throw out the card and later find out my camera is broken.

I dont’ have a second flash card to test…

I doubt I’ll have any luck with this, but are there any Windows applications out there that can attempt to retrieve data off a formatted CF card? :neutral_face:

I wanted to post so high res images of Williston Lake and area for the ‘guess where this is’ game. Williston Lake is the largest reservoir in BC and the 9th largest lake in the world…

More info here: mackenziechamber.bc.ca/williston_lake.htm

2

Format the card in the camera not on the pc my canon doesn’t like it when the card is formatted on the mac… try this let me know if it help’s…

J’

3

Dude, the camera can not read or write to the card. I can’t format it with the camera. Camera uses the same filesystem anyway, it shoul work regardless. It always has.

4

Werid any pins in the camera bent ? Has it been dropped. ? is the card read only when you right click on it in my computer under properties ?

5

Pins are fine, camera wasn’t dropped… it actually did this while i was in ‘play’ mode looking at some snapshots. I can move files to and from the card from the PC.

6

I had a similar problem with one of my cards, never could fix it and ended up throwing the it out, mind you, the card was in my pocket in the washing machine prior to malfunction.Do you share a similar expierience?

7

No. This one has been taken care of. Oddly, my missing 16MB card that originally came with the camera has been through the wash twice and works… wherever it is.

8

Find some one that has a camera that takes the same kinda of memory and see if they can format it on there camera.

9

what filesystem are you formatting it with?

10

FAT… I just formatted it to a FAT32 and back to FAT, and now everything seems to work…wonderfull.

11

I suppose there is no possible way to retrieve data from formatted cards eh?

12

Yup, I’ve done it on numerous occasions – it’s just a FAT file system, so you can use any normal recovery programs.

There are dedicated card recovery software out there too, look in the usual download places. I’ve used a few Mac ones, but dunno about the windows ones.

13

Shouldn’t have touched the card once it died… Oh well, I guess I have since overwritten that data on the card because all the images that are recoverable are super old (last time the card was full).

The freeware ‘Getdataback’ is a great program. If you ever need to recover stuff, try it out.