Card needs formatting?

[canny]

Hoping someone might have an answer.
I have a friend who has taken some photos and when she came to download she is getting the message 'Card needs formatting'. she has tried with the card direct and also running through her camera. Is there a way of getting at the photos, if she formats she will loose them.
Out of interest when should you format a card? Should it be done everytime you want to clear photos?

[Jason Green]

Hi Canny,

To me it sounds like the card has been corrupted. There are various card-recovery programs online, most give you a trial. I would suggest you connect the card to a card reader to prevent the camera doing anything like automatically formatting it, then try and get the software to find it. If it can't, carefully try it through the camera but don't, as you say, format it! The program should then search and find the photos, but it will not recover them until you pay for it online. Once you've paid it'll give you a code that you type in to unlock it. Then it'll recover them to your hard-drive.

Does your computer have a card reader built-in? I'm just wondering, my PDA has corrupted a card in the past and when I've connected it to the PC it's told me the card needs formatting. Obviously I removed the card during data delivery and it corrupted it for me. The pop-up on the screen said something about repairing it and I ended up with a folder on the card called FOUND.000. The folder contained about 7,000 files named neumerically FILE0001.CHK to FILE7000.CHK. Double clicking each one loaded it as a picture or text file depending, it was then just a case of renaming them, and the file extension.

If these files are really important, you may prefer to consider professional data recovery - PC World do it.

Good luck, and before taking ANY further action wait to see what others suggest.

Take care,

Jason

[Jim Ford]

I've used this:

Digital image recovery - ZAR usage demo

It's quite effective and the image recovery version is free.

Jim

[canny]

Thanks very much to both of you, I have passed your comments on to my friend. If it were me I think I would go to PC World as you suggest Jason.

[Jason Green]

...pleasure, Canny

[Ed Tyler]

Hi There,

Unfortunately I can't offer any advice on the recovery side, never had to do it but I'm sure there will soon come a day when it is required.

As for formatting, once your problems have been resolved format the card everytime you want to completely delete all the photos on it.

I use a Canon 40D and had a few problems with the card not being recognised by the camera after deleting its contents. I was advised on another forum to format the card in stead of deleting the photos. Since doing this I haven't had any more problems.

Hope this is ouf use.

Ed