II placed XD card in reader slot on my Compaq computer as always and reader light did appear. Normally my XP computer would kickoff program to download the images but nothing happened. I took card out and inserted again, but again no results.

I then attempted to pull pictures up in camera and screen gives errro "No Card Data". Cannot take new pictures either.

Any suggestion on what happened, what can be done to retrieve photos and revive the card. This card is pretty new and has not seen a lot of useage so I hate to trash it.

David

Welcome to the Forums.

Chances are, it's only a corrupted FAT (File Allocation Table).

Don't try to write to the card in any manner, or you risk further corruption. You'll want to use a utility that's only reading from it (not trying to "fix" anything on it).

There are many utilities that can read files from corrupted media, as long as the card is not totally "dead".

Try Digital Image Recovery (it's free). You can download it using this link:

http://www.foto-erhardt.de/foto-forum/download.php?id=2

See if your card is being recognized under "My Computer". If so, make note of the drive letter for it and run the Digital Image Recovery Program.

You then select English as the languge (when it starts it will ask), andselectthe source drive letter your want it to read from (the drive letter for your card).

You then browse for a folder for it to copy recovered images to on your hard disk drive and press the start button (just leave everything else at the defaults).

It's simple to use.

Here is another product designed to recover images (not free, but they have a demo version you can try to see if it works).

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

FAT corruption can occur for a variety of reasons, but the likely cause is an incomplete write operation to the media.

If your card is not showing up as a removable drive with a drive letter assigned under "My Computer", then you may have to try something else (let us know if you see it there or not and if the programs can find the files).

After you recover your images, I'd suggest formatting the memory card using the camera's menus (not via your PC).

Also, be careful how you are transferring your images. Sometimes, corrupted media occurs when users "Cut and Paste" from the media. This copies the image files, then deletes them. A delete is a write to the media, and can corrupt it if the write does not complete properly.

Depending on the device drivers, the operating system (XP, etc.) may be caching writes to external media (and this cache process can result in buffers not being flushed before you remove the camera or card reader if you don't use the "safely remove hardware" icon when it's not setup for "fast removal").

I'd suggest only using the camera menus to perform deletes (or any other write operation to the media).

Personally, I always format my media using a camera's menus before every use. This insures that I always start out with a fresh File Allocation Table, and that the memory card format is exactly how the camera expects it to be. Besides, formatting via the camera menus is usually faster than deleting the individual images anyway.

Thanks for the information. I will attempt one of these recovery methods. I appreciate your assistance. :-)

If you can't see the card as a removable drive under "My Computer", and if neither utility can see the files (even using the available "Physical Model" in Photorescue), you'll need to try ariskier approach (i.e., trying to format the card prior to using a utiilty to recover the images).

If this is the case, you'll need to take some precautions (making sure a recovery package will work on your media that way by doing some tests first, and making *sure* to select the right file system type of FAT, since Windows defaults to one that's different than your camera uses by default).

Let us know how far you get.

I was finally about to work on my media card last night. I downloaded the Digital Recovery software and ran it. It did pull about 8 pics off the card, but only two were useable. Once completed I did format the card in the camera and erased everything contained. Looks like everything is operation now.

Thanks so much for your assistance!

David

You might try running the recovery programs against the card one more time, in case the OS wasn't seeing the entire card.

Some cameras will destory the data after a format of the card in camera, and some won't.

Formatting with Windows (provided you change the File System type to FAT if it was that way originally), usually doesn't make the images unrecoverable.

You may want to try more than one program, too.

Were there more than 8 images on the card?

The FAT could have been corrupted in a way that it was overwriting pieces of images, too.


Or, did you mean that only 2 were usable for some other reason versus corruption?

There were more than 8 images on the card, but not sure exactly how many. Maybe around 20. Of the images that did appear, only two were not corrupted. I did not make any changes to the recovery program at the time I ran it other than English. I think it was set to image. I was in and out of the room taking care of two little ones so some of this I did not pay attention to and was not aware I needed to make any adjustments to the program. I will run again tonight.

The camera is a Fuji 5100. When I formated, I okayed to remove all images. I think when to the program to erase (separate from format) and erased again. I then attempted to see any images and it showed 0 available.

There were about 6 - 8 images I would have liked to recover, but no big deal that they did not come up. Only ones that could not be recreated were 4 of a beautiful sunrise.

Thanks again.

Try the commercial product I mentioned earlier, too.

They've got a demo you can try before you buy it to see if it finds your photos (but give the free Digital Image Recovery another try, too).

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

But, depending on your camera, and in camera format may erase the data (some will, some won't).

JimC
Thanks for the information in this dialogue. I toouninitialised my XD card, so tried the Digital Image Recovery software that you recommended. It managed to recover all of my images (although the last jpeg says it is 261Mb!)

Any suggestion for that?

It's probably corrupted in some manner and missing the end of file marker at the end of the jpeg image.

You may want to try another product and see if you have any better luck (files do sometimes get corrupted, and one software package may do a better job at piecing images together compared to another).

If the last image (261mb) loads into an editor (irfanview, etc.) and displays OK, then you can probably just save it again (use a new filename with "save as" as not to overwrite the original) and it will be a more typical size (based on the amount of compression if saving in jpeg).