SD card shat itself. Any hope??

[EmyB]

I am absolutely devastated. We were at the end of a few days in the Whitsundays. It contains priceless shots of my son.

Was happily taking photos, turned the camera off and then about half an hour later turned it on again to "Card cannot be accessed. Format the card using the camera" message!

Now the SD card is not recognised in my camera, laptop, or other people's devices I've tried. I tried running some software recovery programs but the problem is the card cannot even be "seen" by the computer so it can't be worked on.

There are some local companies that charge between 250-650 dollars for a hardware recovery (which I presume this situation is). That is a LOT of money! And I am not even convinced they'll be able to recover photos anyway....

Any thoughts or similar situations??

[3bayjunkie]

this happend to my mother-in-laws CF card which she has had for about 4 or 5 years and had never formatted it before. Well she had to end up formatting it and it worked after that but she lost all her photos. I wouldn't format it just yet, incase someone has some sort of trick. but she couldn't get it recognized on anything either so you might be out of luck.

[Nicole]

There is hope. Don't format it yet. Read through any of these for suggestions:

Recover Images from a Damaged SD card
Oh no! Recover deleted photos?

[Bruce A]

I found this by Googling sd card recovery

How to Perform SD Card Data Recovery

There may be other useful links.

[EmyB]

Thanks very much for the replies guys but these are all "software" fixes. As I said, the computer can't even see the SD card so these type of programs just aren't working for me. I'll try the ZAR one anyway though.

Thanks 3bayjunkie. I'll try everything (even the blardy expensive professionals - who apparently physically dissect your card to get to the memory hardware and transfer it to a special machine or something). As a last resort I think I WILL try formatting the card (so the computer can "read" it) and THEN try to recover the files. That will truly be a last resort though.

[Niresangwa]

Originally Posted by EmyB

Thanks very much for the replies guys but these are all "software" fixes. As I said, the computer can't even see the SD card so these type of programs just aren't working for me. I'll try the ZAR one anyway though.

Thanks 3bayjunkie. I'll try everything (even the blardy expensive professionals - who apparently physically dissect your card to get to the memory hardware and transfer it to a special machine or something). As a last resort I think I WILL try formatting the card (so the computer can "read" it) and THEN try to recover the files. That will truly be a last resort though.

Have you tried connecting your camera via the USB cable? This happened to me, and I was able to access the card through this method.

[EmyB]

Yep, ZAR doesn't work either because it can't find the files on my card.

Bugger.

[EmyB]

Originally Posted by Niresangwa

Have you tried connecting your camera via the USB cable? This happened to me, and I was able to access the card through this method.

Yes I have but thanks for the suggestion. I've tried looking for the card through the camera (USB), in two different laptop's card readers, in a hard drive recorder, and in a DVD player's SD slot!!

I think I'm going to have to cough up for a "hardware" fix which can be 350-650 dollars! I don't think I can justify that. Waaaah, so upset.

[3bayjunkie]

well just so you know. if you format the card you won't get any files from it.

[Aegea]

The only suggestion I can make is to examine and clean the contacts on the SD card itself. If it's not a bad contact it sounds like the problem is internal to the card, since none of the devices can see it at all.