16GB CF PANIC!

[awinphoto]

When I last purchased a lexar card, I was given a free copy of Lexars Image Rescue... You can use any card on it and mac friendly. It's kinda slow and even can recover images after a reformat (even though some may be kinda screwy, but it can work)...

http://www.lexar.com/products/lexar-image-rescue-4-software?category=429

It's worth a try... at this point anything is better than nothing....

 

[Hathaway]

I had a similar experience wedding photos a few years ago. I used the memory card recovery software at cardrecovery.com and it worked in recovering about 90% of the images. A few were corrupted, but I got most of them.

Good luck, I am sure this is extremely stressful.

 

[TexPhoto]

I use an Application called Photo Rescue. Has worked every time for me.

 

[meinthai]

Hi All

Thanks for the advice both in recovery and backing up systems.

I'm glad to say I took it to my regular camera shop in Bangkok (I'm in thailand) and for about $15 they recovered all the images. a couple were corrupted and they all lost their original file names, but that's a small price to pay. Not sure what software they use, but I got the card back the next day. They said it can happen with cheap card readers if card are ejected improperly.

I promptly brought the best card reader they had in the shop, a Kingston product.

Thanks again all

 

[PeterJ]

I'm glad to say I took it to my regular camera shop in Bangkok (I'm in thailand) and for about $15 they recovered all the images.

A very reasonable price, glad you got it sorted

But, now I am wondering: is there any greater risk of corrupting files when switching between the camera and a card reader? Does anyone know, or have some thoughts on this. I've never had a problem with downloading straight from the camera. Am I just being paranoid?

I work with electronics and my feelings are mixed on this, I'm not sure about CF cards in particular but many connectors I use professionally that look quite robust are only rated for 500 insertion / removals. They're probably using very conservative numbers in their datasheets but still it's not a great number, and CF card pins are tiny, so I'd guess a USB connector is more mechnically robust plus it has a lot less pins to fail.

As for non-mechanical failures your camera could have a bug in the USB stack, hardware or drivers that could cause corruption, but so could a card reader. Personally I download via USB, and if my camera fails can switch to a card reader, but I don't think it's a question with a really clear cut answer and I'm sure plenty of people would argue either way.

 

[victolee]

Well, I think the first and most important thing you should do is STOP taking more photos with the camera and DO NOT write anything back to the CF card. Also a list of good recovery software and guides can be found this site Digital Camera Recovery, Best regards.