Great trip now my digital photo card is corrupted! Help!
 

Photo shop in town tried to copy photos to CD and could not. Apparently the photo memory stick is corrupted??? Sony says they can help me over the computer to try to get the photos or I can send Memory Stick to SONY or Drivesavers.com. This would not be cheap. Travel Photo friends what would you do? Do you have experience with trying to get photos off of a corrupt memory stick? Can I ruin my chances if we try over the internet?

Try PC inspector from Convar

http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/PC_...inspector.html

I've used it a couple of times on CF and SD cards.

I didn't mean to finish there !

The above URL gives a link to an old, but still excellent file recovery program.

One that I find even better, but that is not free, is DataDoctor pen drive recovery at:
http://www.datadoctor.in/data-recove...-software.html

Thanks! I am just sick about it. My son-in-law says he has data recovery software but I don't know what it is. I will check with him. Do you think I can ruin the memory card if I try his software first??

What often happens when these pen drives become corrupted, is that the "File allocation table" becomes damaged, and the drive cannot list what files it has stored on it.

The software will normally look at the pen drive sector by sector and copy off any files it finds into a separate directory on a PC.

This shouldn't damage the drive in any way (Unlike recovering data from a damaged hard drive where the mechanical act of recovery can destroy even more data).

Willit,
Thanks for the advice. I am not tech savy in any way. I think maybe the photo processing shop damaged the memory stick but who knows? I will give my son-in-law the information you gave me and hope for the best. The PROFESSIONALS at drive savers want over $300.00 to try to retrive the photos...but they are worth a lot of $$ to me in travel memories as I am sure you as a traveler know...

Several years ago my memory card became corrupted and one of my daughter's computer savvy friends got a file recovery program (not very expensive) and was able to retrieve all but one or two of the pictures. Then I just reformatted the card. It is certainly worth a try since, if you don't, you won't have any pics.
Good luck.
Judy

Something similar happened to me last year. I reformatted the memory stick and deleted all 480 photos of Italy.

I am assuming your camera is a Sony, not the memory stick. Who is the manufacturer of your memory stick?

When I returned home with my corrupted M.S., I called the manufacturer: Kingston Technology in California. I spoke with a technician who was very understanding and this is what followed:
Kingston Technology sent me a special envelope via Fed Ex to put my M.S. in and send back to them.

I received a phone call from Kingston that the M.S. was delivered and I would hear from them within 5 day, which I did - 95% of my photos were recovered. The technician put the photos on a CD and sent it to me via Fed Ex. He also kept my photos on his computer for 30 days to be absolutely certain I was able to develop them.

All of this was free of charge. I still can't believe I was so lucky.

Why don't you call the manufacturer of the memory stick a.s.a.p.?

Thanks to all for the encouragement. The camera is SONY My Memory Stick says SONY so I guess it is a SONY product??? I will let you all know how it turns out...

SUCCESS!!! We were finally able to retrive the photos from the memory card!! Thanks for all the suggestions.

Congratulations!

Congrats! We had a similar problem last summer with the SD card for our entire UK trip. Fortunately, the second time I went to (of all places) CVS drugstore, the photo sales rep was able to get about 95% of the photos onto CD, so I know what a relief that is!

I'm glad you were able to retrieve your pictures. Thanks for letting us know.
Judy

This has always been my worst nightmare. My husband always laughs at me that I insist on using smaller sd cards so that all my photos are not lost if I had a corrupted card. It's great to know that there are retrieval techniques available if I have a problem.
But I think I'll still use my 512 cards just in case.

Good luck,
Slàn agus Beannachtai

So glad that you were able to retrive your pictures AJ...

I also take several memory cards with me on vacation (the smaller cards are getting harder to find). I switch them out so that if one is lost, camera is stolen or memory card corupt I would not lose every picture.

Re: re-formatting a memory card. I am happy to know that I am not the only oe to do such a "stupid" thing--although I really don't know how what I did to re-format. I had about 350 pics of my recent Sicily trip which are gone. Does Kingston accept any memory card. Mine is a 512 SD card.

I am fortunate, tho, that a friend was with me and took similar pictures. But I would like to have mine as, in some instances, we went separate ways. Any more advice would be appreciated. Ciao!!mhm

mercy,

I will never forget that moment sitting on the Spanish Steps in Rome...trying to turn-off the histogram and I reformatted the memory stick.

I would doubt that Kingston Technology would attempt to recover data from some other company's product. But you never know. I think they have a toll-free number.

While you definitely don't want to reformat a card when you're having problem getting files off it, you <b>should make a habit</b> of reformatting your memory cards regularly using THAT PARTICULAR CAMERA after you've finished downloading all pictures to your computer and/or whenever you insert a memory card to be used in your camera.

It really helps to cut down on potential problems.

Unfortunately, I do not have a computer with slots for memory cards. My next computer will have them--for sure. So, the various data recovery systems will not work for me. I will try the local camera store where I purchased the camera and will try the Kingston 800 number--just in case. I had heard &quot;horror&quot; stories of this type of thing happening--but didn't think it wuld happen to me. Never again will I &quot;put all my eggs in one SD card!!&quot; ciao!! mhm

Your computer doesn't need to have the memory card slots built in. You can buy a USB card reader and it'll work the same, including for recovering files.