jeff49

On return from our Scotland vacation, one of my six 256K compact flash cards could not be read by my camera, my computer, or by any of the photo shops I took it to. Unfortunately, it was the one card that contained pictures we had taken of the queen, but more importantly were the pictures of my wife's chance meeting with Sean Connery. She was devastated to think that all the photos we took at the opening of the new parliament were gone.

I did a google search for "compact flash recovery" and found several software programs that promise to recover lost picture files, even on cards that have been erased or formatted. I downloaded one of the programs and it worked flawlessly. I was able to recover every picture and even some that I had purposely erased were still viewable.

If you think you have a dead card or if you have erased or formatted a card by mistake, don't despair until you have tried one of the recovery software programs. Your travel photos may not be lost after all.

Jolie

Yes! This happened to me once. When I was in Europe, I viewed the pictures on my camera, so I know they were there. Then I brought them home to print at one of Costco's machines, and all the photos were gone. I still don't know where the problem occurred - with the card itself, with my camera, from the airport x-ray, from the Costco machine, or other cause. It had all my Murren, Lucerne, Brienz pictures on the card. I was devastated. But all the other cards were fine.

ira

Ji jeff,

Mind telling us which one you used?

jeff49

Ira

I chose PhotoRescue because they offer a demo version that you can try for free to see if it works. After seeing that the demo version worked, I purchased the full version. ($29)

tpatricco

Wow! This happened to me with a 256 meg card, and I lost all the pics from my cousin's wedding. It wasn't the end of the world, but I sure was disappointed. Tried to recover but didn't know about programs for this on the net. Please cite the source in case it happens again! In the meantime, I've reformatted the card.

Thanks! Trish

jeff49

Trish,
If you have reformatted the card and haven't filled it up with pictures again, you still may be able to recover some of the original pictures. The site to download the free demo is:
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

tpatricco

Thanks Jeff...it's worth a try!

alohatoall

I cannot reommend Scott Tallyn at http://www.tallyns.com/ highly enough! They can recover the impossible -- but one hint. If these photos are really important, contact them FIRST and don't mess with the card yourself, since you can make a bad situation worse.

Neil_Oz

jeff49, many thanks for that post. I just got back from China to find that a series of photos had vanished - seemingly the first 20-30 shots taken on that 256K card. I'll see if PhotoRescue has an answer to that, assuming that it handles xD cards.

surfingmomma

Wow--we thought we must have done something "wrong" with our 256K flashcard. We saw the pics we had taken in Sicily on the viewer--but, when we got home, maybe 20 pics were missing.
There is one pic that is totally "black", and we think that is where the missing pics are.
Thank you all for the valuable information about recovering these pics.
does anyone think the problem could be with airport x-rays of the camera/card???
thanks
surfingmomma

machin

Having the same problem, what a timely thread. Thanks all.

nancy

jeff49: Thx for the info. I'm in the processing of deciding on a digital camera and hadn't even thought about picture failure. I saved this info just in case.

Jolie

After reading this thread, I started searching for what could have gone wrong with my camera. This one article tries to explain what could have happened:

http://www.nyip.com/tips/flashcards0604.php

carrolldf

I thought this had happened to me on my recent trip to Paris. I had a 512MB xD card which I had previously used. I took my laptop and a card reader with me. I tried the card reader (which was new) with my 256MB card (which was also new). But I didn't try the new card reader with the 512MB card. Since I considered the 256MB card the back up, I used the 512MB card my first day in Paris, taking a couple hundred pics. When I tried to download that night, the card could not be read.

Luckily, when I took the card to a photo shop nearby the next morning, they were able to read it and put the pics on CD. But I didn't know until I got home whether the problem was with the card or simply the combination of card/reader so I was afraid to use the 512MB card for the rest of the trip.

If you take your own computer and card reader with you, be sure to check each and every card with that combination before you go.

(And the 512MB card works just fine with my other card reader after I got home. It just won't work with the new one which I purchased because it's smaller and less bulker, therefore better suited for travel. Too bad it doesn't work with all my cards.)

Presocia

Jolie -- Thanks for the article link. Very informational, and I have bookmarked it to send to others.

carrolldf

Jolie -- that article is one of the best links I've been given in a long time. Thanks.

palette

I had "lost" nearly 200 photos from a recent trip to Croatia. Couldn't understand what the probelm was; they were all showing in the camera just hours before I tried to download to my home computer; I still don't understand what happened, and it scares me for future use. Some photos were on a new card, not previously used, but another bunch were on a card I had used many times prior to this trip. Thanks for the links which I haven't had time to read just yet.

My troubles were with 256 and 32 mg SmartMedia cards. After some internet research, I found the following FREE program which recovered all but one of my photos. It is not only free but idiot proof (there was no technical info I had to fill in).

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

I hope some of our really technical photographers here can step in and give us non-professional some clues as to why this is happening. I doubt it is x-ray damage because the cards had good and lost photos on the same card. I haven't written to my camera manufacturer yet, but plan to do so.

Aleta

Here is one non-technical hint on these cards, or how Ilearned the hard way.
We had an early digital camera and cards were expensive. A well-meaning friend offered to loan us an extra card. Then 5 days of great pics suddently disappeared. Later, I discovered that these cards formatted themselves to your equipment, and our manual stated a card used elsewhere should be reformatted in this camera before being used.
Now if I had only known of the recovery available as stated here...

Jolie

I just wanted to thank Jeff49 for this thread. After reading about it here, I tried one of the recovery programs and my Switzerland pictures that were "lost" over a year ago were ALL recoverable. I'm just glad I didn't throw the card away in disgust, which was the way I felt at the time. Thanks.

mmr41

For everyone's information, if you accidentally erase the card before using it again the recovery process is the same.

This is a lesson learned from having done it, not once, but TWICE!!!!!