How to recover and fix a corrupt memory card.

[trelaflip]

I'm not sure if this has been covered before but I think it's well worth posting again and these instructions should be noted.

First of all I was thinking "it would never happen to me" it did. The nightmare of a corrupt memory card. Three hours of time and 400 photos all gone. I spent a good couple hours just researching on a free and easy way to recover my data.

First of all. How it happened? One of the pins got bent in my memory card reader and some how sent some kind of short to the card. Card was no longer readable through windows nor on my camera.

Since the pin of the reader was broken I had to buy a new card reader. Obviously one that was more then $10.

I then used a free program called ZAR (http://www.z-a-recovery.com/index.html) Its free for photo recovery but for data files on hard drives you have to pay. Any way 4 hours later it recovered all my photos and photos that I had deleted a couple days back. It did a pretty nice job.

Only thing is it didn't keep the photos in CR2 format. It put everything into TIF. I'm not sure if it just a setting but not to a big of a deal for me. I'm happy I got them back.

Memory card was still unreadable on my camera though.

I loaded up good old dos on my xp.
Goto Start -> run -> type in cmd

On a vista machine find
Start -> All programs -> Accessories -> rigth click on command prompt -> click on run as administrator

once in dos i ran the command chkdsk/f
for example: chkdsk/f j:
j may be d, g, h, e, l etc What ever letter windows gives your drive for your memory card.

see http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true for more information on chkdsk

anyway after the chkdsk my memory card was fixed I can now read it in windows and its working again on my camera.

I'm pretty sure someone else will run into the same issue so hopefully you will see this and it will save you some time.

[Moe]

Originally Posted by trelaflip

I then used a free program called ZAR (http://www.z-a-recovery.com/index.html) Its free for photo recovery but for data files on hard drives you have to pay. Any way 4 hours later it recovered all my photos and photos that I had deleted a couple days back. It did a pretty nice job.

You mentioned that it recovered photos you had deleted. I have a memory card that I deleted photos off before I had the chance to save. (thought I did save!) Do you think this would help me recover my photos? The card is not corrupt and I haven't used it since I deleted the files.

[trelaflip]

I would for sure give ZAR a try. It could bring back all those photos or at least some.

[jhpope]

Check out a totally free program called PhotoRec. It was created to recover pictures from hard drives and flash cards. It does a great job at that, and any file for that matter. I used it for a computer science project and it was terrific. The only downside I found was that the recovered files are named based on their position in the memory, not its previous name.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

[Nicole]

Another free photo recovery program (Windows only) that I came across earlier: Art Plus Photo Recovery

From Downloads.com

Free Art Plus Digital Photo Recovery tool can help you recover lost images from corrupted or accidentally formatted digital camera memory cards. Program works with all types of memory cards. It's able to recover images from formatted cards. Reads corrupted cards (even if they're not recognized by Windows).

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Nicole

Another free photo recovery program (Windows only) that I came across earlier: Art Plus Photo Recovery

Got back from the botanic gardens today and towards the end found out that my P&S had a corrupt card problem. Thankfully all my pictures were with my Nikon, but a friend was borrowing my P&S. Tried the program, and it actually worked pretty well. My computer wouldn't read the card, this one read the card and recovered even some old files. There were some files that couldn't be opened, but at least it's a start that it could open the card when it otherwise wouldn't work.

[Sime™]

Just on this front (I had a disaster yesterday and had to restore my entire library from backup) R4ALL (recovery for all) is a great pro tool for get ting stuff back... I dunno if they make it anymore, but I have a copy.... (I bought it!) that...ah..look... pm me...

[psykon99]

I just experienced my first corrupt card today. It was rather irritating because I had just taken many many family pics w/ some family members that will likely never travel to this area again - and this memory card is less than two weeks old. I had just read the above postings last night, so it seemed appropriate timing.

I immediately went to Wal-Mart and bought a card reader (my laptop does not have one) and two new 1GB memory cards (since my one 2GB card was corrupted and I figured I'd send it back). With the memory cards came free software from Lexar that I could download called Image Rescue.

I got home and installed everything. The Image Rescue software painlessly recovered almost every single photo I took AND using the format tool, I was able to recover the card as well. It even tests and verifies cards - and mine passed after the format. Now it takes and stores pics fine and I don't think I'll bother to send it back.

I highly recommend the Image Rescue software from Lexar! Here's a sample of what was recovered:

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by jhpope

Check out a totally free program called PhotoRec. It was created to recover pictures from hard drives and flash cards. It does a great job at that, and any file for that matter. I used it for a computer science project and it was terrific. The only downside I found was that the recovered files are named based on their position in the memory, not its previous name.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Anybody have any other suggestions for Mac? I can't get this one to work.

[prrs4me]

Several of my san disk cf cards came with recovery software as a bonus. Thankfully I haven't had to use it yet but I understand it works great. It's called RescuePro and it says it recovers any memory card format.
Oh and it works with Mac.