Compact Flash Corrupt.. HEEEEELLP

[CHEWY]

after the best exploring day ever, and loads of pics..
i took card out of camera, and put it back in.

the 400D is now saying there's a problem with card.
not sure if the camera was on, when i put it in (i know it's supposed to be off)

i've tried the printer with card reader within, but also says card is gay.

i've just downloaded "Card Recovery" to try.

can anyone suggest anything? i really don't want to lose the pics from my great day out.

[Gridnutter]

That sucks mate, try this, available as a free trial version:

http://www.cardrecovery.com/

I'm sure there will be others on here who have had the same problem and will be able to offer better advice. Best of luck recovering them..

[CHEWY]

Thanks Nutter :)
that's what i've just downloaded.

the card is a 2GB Sandisk Compact Flash.

would formatting it, then using recovery thing do it?
i can't get anything to read it at the moment.

[Vivo]

would formatting it, then using recovery thing do it?
i can't get anything to read it at the moment.

Formatting will remove ALL your data. Hope you haven't done it.

For future reference you should from time to time (I usually do it about once a fortnight) format your card which cleans it up and should make future corruptions unlikely.

[Gridnutter]

IIRC Formatting is a bad idea... I think I'd sit and wait for others who have suffered from similar problems to post up before formatting. I've never suffered from a corrupt card so can't offer anything more constructive, sorry.

^^Vivo got there first^^

[CHEWY]

not done a thing with it yet, except try it in the printer's card reader.
thought i'd wait until i get some expert advice :thumb

is there a service, that i can send card to, and they''ll fix it, or put the images recovered to disk?

[Vivo]

I think you can do that, but I've never done it personally.

I've only ever had one CF card corrupt on me (a Sandisk Extreme III 4GB) but it only had about 4 photos on it and I hadn't formatted it in ages. Formatting makes the card work again, at the expense of your images being lost. That didn't bother me when it happened and I was free to continue to use the card.

[CHEWY]

Thanks Vivo :)

i did format about a month ago.

went to a few places today, and got over 400 pics.
i'll be mega pee'd if i can't retrieve them :(

[Brick_Man]

had this happen, sucks when it does. if the first programme don't work, try another, you'll get most of them back, but it'll take a while.

[Alias]

pop it into a camera shop such as London Camera Exchange, they have the software to sort it. We were able to recover pretty much 99 % of photos when I used to work in one.

[CHEWY]

Thanks both :)

i can't get anything to read the card first.
it says recover files that are accidentally deleted or formatted.

it might need formatting to get it to read you think?

i'll take it to a few camera places, and see what they think :thumb

[Alias]

DONT FORMAT IT.

Take it to a shop first.

although it should serve as a good lesson to only use decent cards, I shoot around a thousand shots a week on sandisk cards, and have never had one fail on me.

[Vivo]

He said it was SanDisk card, but not whether it was one of the standard blue ones or the more expensive faster cards.

It's like most things in life, you get what you pay for. Buy decent cards to protect your images, you've only got to buy them once so it's a good investment.

[linerider]

Corruption is generally nothing to do with the card, it's with the device writing to it suddenly stopping (such as card being ejected, or power going off) while in the middle of a write sequence.

Even if the card isn't recognised by most programs, GetBackData for FAT should recover them.

[Shhhh]

Is it a card of a memory stick? I've got a 2 gig sandisk memory stick and the exact same thing has happened to it. It is pretty rubbish for it. Format it now and like everyone else has stated, bye bye photos.

Take it to a phototography shop, or better still a computer shop. I would take it to a computer shop personally, since photo shops deal with photo related things, and are geared up for that more than they might be for the technology behind it. Good luck.

Good old film :thumb

[CHEWY]

Thanks all for the help and suggestions :)

all sorted now, and got the pics back. :thumb

i looked on the Card, and a hole didn't look right.
it had slight damage to it.
i looked in the camera , and noticed one of the pins was bent...

in a < IIIIIIIII/III > sort of way.

i very carefully bent it upright with a tiny screwdriver and it read the card again. PHEW.

so glad i didn't lose them :)

[Ordnance]

Normally happens when you remove/replace a card with the camera turned on! (Not sure about bent pins however)

Happened to me once, and I took it to Jessops who recovered my pictures and saved them to a CD-ROM

I used to use them or another camera shop when away from home to dump card contents to CD to clear cards for re-use, but now have a laptop I take with me, which also has a USB Mobile Broadband Connection as well.

[Vivo]

Thanks all for the help and suggestions :)

all sorted now, and got the pics back. :thumb

i looked on the Card, and a hole didn't look right.
it had slight damage to it.
i looked in the camera , and noticed one of the pins was bent...

in a < IIIIIIIII/III > sort of way.

i very carefully bent it upright with a tiny screwdriver and it read the card again. PHEW.

so glad i didn't lose them :)

This has happened a couple of times with my portable harddrive. I had to use tweezers to bend the pins back. It's scared me enough for me to attempt to back up 230GB of data onto DVD. :crazy

[Doodlebug]

Try this:

Put the card in the pc

turn it on

it should sort out the card, it will come up with a screen where it recovers data.

I went months with annoying corrupt things on my card that i couldnt delete. I left it in when i turned it on and it fixed it!

[CHEWY]

Thanks all :)

some useful info there if a corrupt card is ever in mine or others possesion.
luckily i noticed the bent pin in the camera before taking it somewhere, and got the pics back before handing over any cash to some shop.

[Joy Division]

Fit Like Chewy,

You could try buying the Sandisk Extreme III card, which comes with a Sandisk recovery disk. Haven't tried it myself but it might be worth a try. At least you'll have another spare card. You're talking about £12 or so from the net. Good luck. Cheers. Joy Division.:thumb