SD card pic recovery - help - not the usual

TheBigCheese · 25 Mar 2009 at 22:39

Hi guys

I've got an SD card that I need to recover the pictures from BUT...

It's not the usual answer I'm afraid...I've already tried three programs for recovering the photos and all have failed because the card can't be seen by Windows...when it's sat in the card reader it just says to "insert a removeable disk in the drive".

Anyone any ideas how I can get the card to be read at all?

TheBigCheese · 25 Mar 2009 at 22:55

Nope, it's a standard 1GB card

But I didn't know about that, so thanks for the tip!

TheBigCheese · 26 Mar 2009 at 18:57

Thanks very much for the posts and suggestions guys, I'll give them a go this evening.

I can't say I fancy the idea of formatting it again, especially as it's not my card! :eek:

Fingers crossed on the software!

TheBigCheese · 26 Mar 2009 at 19:19

Curses curses curses

Well I've tried all those programs to no avail unfortunately...ZAR in particular looks like a very good indepth program but none of them can see the card because Windows can't see the card.

I've just looked at Windows disk management and it's showing nothing there either...drive just appears empty

Any ideas?

TheBigCheese · 28 Mar 2009 at 15:13

Many thanks for all the help and advice guys, this is the situation so far...

Tried the card in all the software recommended as well as three other pieces of recovery software...no joy. Not surprising really as Windows can't see it.

I have tried the card in a camcorder that accepts SD cards to take stills and it just comes up with "card error" so it knows it's there, and also that there is a problem with it...this is progress, it's the first device that's picked it up!
(I tested the card on two card readers as well to make sure it wasn't the reader at fault).

The camcorder will format the card...this leaves me with an interesting dilemma...

Is Meatballs idea of formatting it a stroke of unbridled genius?
Or will formatting it completely kill any chance of getting anything back...I'm fairly sure that formatting won't overwrite much, just make the card reuseable again...and theoretically I should be able to recover the images then.

Or...should the card be sent to one of those fancy but eye wateringly expensive data recovery places such as Ontrack.

Dilemma!

TheBigCheese · 28 Mar 2009 at 16:02

I think formatting is going to be the only options, I'd just like to clarify on format options...looking at what Microsoft say:

"When you choose to run a regular format on a volume, files are removed from the volume that you are formatting and the hard disk is scanned for bad sectors. The scan for bad sectors is responsible for the majority of the time that it takes to format a volume.

If you choose the Quick format option, format removes files from the partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that your hard disk is not damaged."

Source - http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302686

When it says "files are removed from the volume", it just means marking them for deletion doesn't it...?