Must rescue files from bad CF card.

Weisel · March 6, 2011

:help

Hello fellow DSLR users.

I shot an engagament session last night, and today I was copying the photos to my hard drive, and only got 10 of them, then things went bad.

I have a Kingston 8 GB CF card. I shot in RAW, as usual. There are probably about 300 photos in there, which I desperately need!!

Here's what happened: I decided to use my card reader today, although usually I just connect PC to camera. I was downloading photos, and notcied it was going very slow. I canceled the download, ejected the card/reader, then placed the CF card into my 5D. It says card needs to be formatted. (don't ya just hate that)

I popped it back into my card reader, and same thing. It says needs formatting. Somewhere, something has gone wrong.

I've heard PhotoRescue.com is good, and I called them, but of course they are closed today.

Anyone have any good software rescue to recommend to me? Or ideas that I can use myself? (I'm not too good with knowing all about "sectors" and all that)

I'm really desperate. I nailed some great shots, and this is going to really be bad news if I can't recover the files. But I'm pretty sure they are recoverable.

Please help! Thanks in advance.

cmason · March 6, 2011

I haven't had to use this software, but I made a bookmark folder some time ago just in case. These are two 'free' or open source photo recovery tools. Doesn't hurt to try, but I have no experience with either:

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/digital-image-recovery.htm

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

goodluck

Weisel · March 6, 2011

Thanks. I may check those out if my current venture doesn't work. I've seen many good reviews on "PC Inspector smart recovery 4.5", and I downloaded it, and am currently running it.

Some say it runs slow, and I can say that seems to be true, but I don't care, as I need the photos! As of now, it's showing 28 (and counting) files found. It doesn't say anything about them being recovered yet, but found, yes. That's making me feel better already. It seems to be finding 1 file every 5 minutes, approx.

Any other advice from people is still welcome.

Weisel · March 7, 2011

Well, I've come back to report good news. Hopefully this post will some day be of use to some others. I have had success in recovering my files from the CF card, using PC Inspector smart recovery 4.5. It looks like all the photos are there, and they are also partially intermingled with photos that were still on the card from last shoot(but were formatted over)

So basically, this program rocks, and saved my skin! It's free too. It's also so easy to use, even a caveman could do it.

The program at first said my card was too badly damaged to use "quick mode" or whatever, so it needed to go to "surgical mode" or something. It took nearly 20 hours, but it saved the photos, and I'm stoked! Now, off to go edit them.

dbveto · March 7, 2011

Weisel wrote: »

Well, I've come back to report good news. Hopefully this post will some day be of use to some others. I have had success in recovering my files from the CF card, using PC Inspector smart recovery 4.5. It looks like all the photos are there, and they are also partially intermingled with photos that were still on the card from last shoot(but were formatted over)

So basically, this program rocks, and saved my skin! It's free too. It's also so easy to use, even a caveman could do it.

The program at first said my card was too badly damaged to use "quick mode" or whatever, so it needed to go to "surgical mode" or something. It took nearly 20 hours, but it saved the photos, and I'm stoked! Now, off to go edit them.

I have also successfully used PC Inspector smart recovery and their other one for regular drives PC Inspector File Recovery they both Rock

VayCayMom · March 7, 2011

Great news !

sirbenfro · March 9, 2011

I've used this quite a few times, never failed yet!
I used it on a couple of corrupted Cd's, DVD's as well, worked well. Free as well!
http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

sara505 · March 14, 2011

I had this happen to me with a SanDisk CF card a few years ago. They used to package recovery software with their cards. It took hours and hours and hours - but I did retrieve the files. It's something I hope never ever happens to me again.

cbbr · March 14, 2011

Sara - Sandisk Rescue Pro. Its much faster now and works great.

OP - glad to hear that it worked out!

sara505 · March 14, 2011

cbbr wrote: »

Sara - Sandisk Rescue Pro. Its much faster now and works great.

OP - glad to hear that it worked out!

Thanks, Chad, good to know.
I lost an external HD once, too. Luckily, nothing important, but I came close. I've been paranoid ever since, with multiple HDs in a couple of different locations.

It's all too scary! :-)

marikris · March 15, 2011

Glad that fixed it, OP!

Had this happen to me in my last wedding. 8 gb card only showed 120 photos when there are 300 in there (first dance, all the family formals, good stuff) - made me ill. I used Sandisk Pro and got them all back. Lightroom says it can't read about 25 photos recovered, so will have to solve that.

Art Scott · March 15, 2011

marikris wrote: »

Glad that fixed it, OP!

Had this happen to me in my last wedding. 8 gb card only showed 120 photos when there are 300 in there (first dance, all the family formals, good stuff) - made me ill. I used Sandisk Pro and got them all back. Lightroom says it can't read about 25 photos recovered, so will have to solve that.

were you shooting jpg or raw?? If raw run thru adobes DNG converter then lightroom.

Must rescue files from bad CF card.

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