HELP! cant read SDHC card :(

[marmagi]

Hello,

I took around 200 pics with my canon S90 using a sandisk SDHC extreme III 8GB card, I never had problems before, I took and played pics in the cam with no problems.

Suddendly, I got error reading card !

I took the card into a XP PC card reader and the card is not recognized at all by the PC, I used two different card readers and it doesnt work ! If I use another card its read it works !

what can the problem be? any software that can help me recognize the card in order to recover the pics?

In the worst case can you recommend me any data recovery center that can do the job of recovering the pics but without spending a fortune ! there are approx 200 pics, and I have seen prices for recovering data of around 200 to 400 US$ !!! way tooo much !

Did it ever happened to any of you? how did you solve it? any data recovery center that you recommend me?

thanks

Mario

 

[CT Sean]

Sandisk extreme cards usually come with data recovery software (at least mine did).

you can also:

Try importing with the camera attached to the PC
Try cleaning the SD card terminals

 

[fab50diver]

Photo rescue is a good recovery program. Try it! I have used it before with great results.
One question though...do you delete photos from your card while in the camera? That is the quickest way I know to corrupt at card. Always download all the pics, back them up with another source then format the card in the camera before using again.

 

[bvanant]

Photo rescue is a good recovery program. Try it! I have used it before with great results.
One question though...do you delete photos from your card while in the camera? That is the quickest way I know to corrupt at card. Always download all the pics, back them up with another source then format the card in the camera before using again.

HUH? Deleting pictures from a card causes card failures? That can not be correct. Every UW photographer I know deletes pics from his/her cards all the time and the camera engineers make sure that this is a "safe" process. How do you know that it was the delete function that corrupted the card? Does this happen with all your cards? If so time to send the camera back to Canon since this is not right.
Bill

 

[Gilligan]

Go to the PhotoRescue website and purchase and download the program. Install it in your computer and it will most likely retrieve your photos.
I have used it with success.

It's one of those programs you don't buy until you need it

 

[fab50diver]

It has happened to me before. I took a class from a professional photographer who was the first to caution about deleting photos in camera. The ONLY time I have had a card corrupt was when I deleted photos in the camera. You may do it for years with no issues or, like me, have an almost new card and camera and have that issue. It happened once and never again, likely because I stopped doing that. I didn't trust the card so I didn't use it again.
There are a number of other photography websites that also caution against deleting photos in camera....just my two cents.

 

[bleeb]

HUH? Deleting pictures from a card causes card failures? That can not be correct. Every UW photographer I know deletes pics from his/her cards all the time and the camera engineers make sure that this is a "safe" process. How do you know that it was the delete function that corrupted the card? Does this happen with all your cards? If so time to send the camera back to Canon since this is not right.

Actually, it does indeed happen. It's not that common, but I suspect more people have run into issues than are aware of it. The errors created aren't damage to the card's hardware, but corruption of the data stored on it.

A memory card is just like the hard disk of a computer. The camera creates a file each time you take a picture, and can delete it on demand. And just like a computer, every now and then the software screws up.

People have occasionally noticed the storage capacity of a card seems to drop over time. Often the decrease is small enough that it's unlikely to be noticed. This can be an example of corruption of the card's file system, for which the simplest solution is generally to reformat the card. However, the same types of errors can manifest as lost or inaccessible images.

 

[bvanant]

Actually, it does indeed happen. It's not that common, but I suspect more people have run into issues than are aware of it. The errors created aren't damage to the card's hardware, but corruption of the data stored on it.

A memory card is just like the hard disk of a computer. The camera creates a file each time you take a picture, and can delete it on demand. And just like a computer, every now and then the software screws up.

People have occasionally noticed the storage capacity of a card seems to drop over time. Often the decrease is small enough that it's unlikely to be noticed. This can be an example of corruption of the card's file system, for which the simplest solution is generally to reformat the card. However, the same types of errors can manifest as lost or inaccessible images.

I believe that I understand how photos get deleted in-camera and what you are really doing is deleting the link to the picture not the picture data itself which is why you can recover photos after deleting them. If it were a hard delete i.e. writing 0 to all bits where the photo was I could understand. As for cards changing over time, I always thought that was due to a build-up of physical defects in the NAND Flash (cosmic rays etc) that actually led to defects in the semiconductor itself. Reformat the card doesn't typically change that. Most chips have some sort of mapping of defects at the time of manufacturing but after some time the number of defects increases. In any case I am still not convinced that deleting photos in camera leads to card defects with any kind of reasonable likelihood and if it did how would you know. Is there an experiment that you could do that showed that deletion scrambled some other photos because that is what you are saying, right?

Bill