Card won't download

sara505

Anybody out there? I know it's Thanksgiving but I have a little time this morning, in between baking bread, to at work a pile of images taken the other day. Alas, my card is crashing my EOS Utility - "An internal error has occurred." The other card from my second camera loaded fine. I tried switching the card into the second camera, same "internal error", so it must be the card. It's a 4GB Extreme III card. Thank you in advance for your help. And happy Thanksgiving.

rainforest1155

Ouch! You could try to recover the photos using such a tool like this one: http://www.artplus.hr/adapps/eng/dpr.htm

Don't do anything on the card until you have been able to get your photos off it. Don't try shooting any more photos, don't format it. Just plug it into your computer using a memory card reader and try the software I linked above. If this tool can't help you, please let me know and I'll search for another one. I haven't tried the above tool so far, but it's the best I could find right away.

I hope this helps! Wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving nevertheless.

Sebastian

sara505

rainforest1155 wrote:

Ouch! You could try to recover the photos using such a tool like this one: http://www.artplus.hr/adapps/eng/dpr.htm

Don't do anything on the card until you have been able to get your photos off it. Don't try shooting any more photos, don't format it. Just plug it into your computer using a memory card reader and try the software I linked above. If this tool can't help you, please let me know and I'll search for another one. I haven't tried the above tool so far, but it's the best I could find right away.

I hope this helps! Wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving nevertheless.

Sebastian

Thank you, Sebastian. Yes, I have set the card aside until I can get my hands on the above. Somewhere along the line I did read that it was better to use a card reader than to off-load from the camera, have not gotten around to that yet - now would be a good time to start, however, my card-reader is on the Vineyard (I live a dual life, some would call it schizophrenic) and I am in my Boston home for the next few days. It may be worth shelling out a few bucks to alleviate the anxiety, however, tomorrow of course. It's not a wedding, it's a family shoot, a combined famly, the two step-kids will not be back in the area for a while. I do hope to retrieve these photos. Doesn't San Disk offer a way to retrieve images?

I will enjoy this day, kinowing that fully 95% (or more) of everything I worry about is for naught.
Enjoy your day!

rainforest1155

sara505 wrote:

I will enjoy this day, kinowing that fully 95% (or more) of everything I worry about is for naught.
Enjoy your day!

Thank you.

You could also try connecting your camera directly to the computer and see if it shows up as a removable device in your explorer. Just make sure that you cancel all autostart inquiries and close the camera tools.

Apparently, SanDisk has a tool bundled with their most expensive cards:
"Every SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash card comes with RescuePRO® so you can recover images, documents, mail, video, music – just about any digital file, with ease. Built with leading-edge media recovery algorithms, RescuePro lets you preview recoverable data before you try to retrieve it. With RescuePRO’s unique recovery algorithm for MPEG audio and MPEG video recovery (MPEG-1/2/3) what you see, and what you hear, is what you can recover."

I wasn't able to locate a download for this program, but you could try contacting them directly. Maybe they would be willing to help you out.

Let me know on how things develop. Enjoy your day as well!

Best wishes from Leipzig Germany,
Sebastian

sara505

rainforest1155 wrote:

Thank you.

You could also try connecting your camera directly to the computer and see if it shows up as a removable device in your explorer. Just make sure that you cancel all autostart inquiries and close the camera tools.

Apparently, SanDisk has a tool bundled with their most expensive cards:
"Every SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash card comes with RescuePRO® so you can recover images, documents, mail, video, music – just about any digital file, with ease. Built with leading-edge media recovery algorithms, RescuePro lets you preview recoverable data before you try to retrieve it. With RescuePRO’s unique recovery algorithm for MPEG audio and MPEG video recovery (MPEG-1/2/3) what you see, and what you hear, is what you can recover."


I wasn't able to locate a download for this program, but you could try contacting them directly. Maybe they would be willing to help you out.

Let me know on how things develop. Enjoy your day as well!

Best wishes from Leipzig Germany,
Sebastian

I actually have the San Disk recovery CD, will find the time (and nerve) to tackle this at some point today, hopefully. While I did have some time to mess with photos today, this is not what I had in mind; this requires another kind of head to deal with.
I am also remembering I had problems with the camera with this card on the day of the shoot - very very slow processing, a quickly eaten battery - something must have corrupted the card. This is starting to sound scary, but I'm thankful this is not happening to me for the first time with a wedding!

I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Wow, Germany - cool! dankeshein!

pathfinder

sara505 wrote:

. Doesn't San Disk offer a way to retrieve images?

I will enjoy this day, kinowing that fully 95% (or more) of everything I worry about is for naught.
Enjoy your day!

SanDisks image recovery software is Rescue Pro Deluxe4.0

It works quite well, even if the card has been formatted, but not overwritten.

sara505

pathfinder wrote:

SanDisks image recovery software is Rescue Pro Deluxe4.0

It works quite well, even if the card has been formatted, but not overwritten.

I got 'em! But it was a bit of an ordeal. The first utility, suggested by Sebastian, did not work for me for some reason; I re-tried loading the images via a card reader this time, as opposed to off the camera, and was able to load about half the images (out of a couple hundred) before I got an error message: corrupted files. Then, thanks to San Disk Rescue Pro (I happened to have v 3.0 on hand), I was able to pull the rest (and everything I've shot since July!) off the card. It was a cumbersome process, but it worked!
You gotta love this technology that pulls erased and corrupted files out of the ether and magically delivers them back to you without a pixel out of place. See? Not to worry.

Thanks for all the help.

sara505

My question now is, what do I do with the card? May I reformat it and use it again, or is it no good? Thank you!

rainforest1155

sara505 wrote:

My question now is, what do I do with the card? May I reformat it and use it again, or is it no good? Thank you!

Great - I'm glad that everything worked out just fine in the end! The SanDisk tools seems to be the way to go. Thanks for letting us know about it. I'm sure this will be useful to others too!

Concerning the card, I would try to format it in the camera. Then you can try filling it up till it bursts with images from your computer. Try viewing them on your camera and copy them back to your computer and see if they are fine. If this works out okay, format the card again and try taking a couple of test shots with it to see if the camera can still properly save the photos. If you're able to view the photos on your computer, I would say you can go back to use the card. Just make sure that you regularly download the photos and see if they work without problems for the next few weeks. So in case, there's another problem, you won't lose that many photos in the worst case scenario.

Have a great Sunday,
Sebastian

sara505

rainforest1155 wrote:

Great - I'm glad that everything worked out just fine in the end! The SanDisk tools seems to be the way to go. Thanks for letting us know about it. I'm sure this will be useful to others too!

Concerning the card, I would try to format it in the camera. Then you can try filling it up till it bursts with images from your computer. Try viewing them on your camera and copy them back to your computer and see if they are fine. If this works out okay, format the card again and try taking a couple of test shots with it to see if the camera can still properly save the photos. If you're able to view the photos on your computer, I would say you can go back to use the card. Just make sure that you regularly download the photos and see if they work without problems for the next few weeks. So in case, there's another problem, you won't lose that many photos in the worst case scenario. Have a great Sunday, Sebastian

.

Yes, this is such good news - I was thinking, how will I ever shoot another wedding, knowing that such a thing could happen?
I will format the card, etc. see how it goes. Thanks for everything!

I'm now off to conduct an inter-faith Thanksgiving service (I am also a cantor) -it's a great Sunday here in New England.

Sara

george-1

sara505 wrote:

My question now is, what do I do with the card? May I reformat it and use it again, or is it no good? Thank you!

How much time did it take to recover the images? Do you want to do that every shoot?

I would toss the card, as I would not consider it reliable enough to trust my photos to.

sara505

george-1 wrote:

How much time did it take to recover the images? Do you want to do that every shoot?

I would toss the card, as I would not consider it reliable enough to trust my photos to.

I never want to do it again. But I like knowing it's an option in an emergency. I think you're right, I will probably never really trust that card again, and the price of 4GB cards is coming down all the time.