Recovering data from removable media

Tallas · Post by **Tallas** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:44 am

So my wife and I just got back from a trip to Mt. Rushmore and on the way home the camera displayed a card error. We get home and put it in the reader to find out some of the pictures won't display in thumnail view and none can be copied off the card. We're looking for a way to recover the pictures but aren't sure which route to take. I was wondering if someone had experience with this sort of thing. We're not opposed to sending the card off, but I'm sure a software based recovery would be cheaper. Can anyone recommend a software product or company to recover data?
Its a 512MB compact flash card.

Fallakin Kuvari · Post by **Fallakin Kuvari** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:21 am

should come up as a removable media drive in windows, giving it a drive name.

run chkdsk /r on it

Post by **Ddrak** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:45 am

First thing to do is flip the read-only switch on the card to make sure nothing writes to it. Doing anything to the card can result in more data corruption and unless you're willing to risk your photos I'd advise against working with the card directly.

Put the card into a card reader on your PC (I assume you have one) with it set to read-only. It should come up as a driver letter. First thing to try to do is just copy everything off into a folder on your HDD. You may get weird errors, but if you get everything then it's happy!

Next it gets more complex and I'll have to play with a card at home to see what the real options are (no card reader at work). What I'll be trying to do is figure out how to create a backup of the card in its corrupted state so you can then set the card to read/write and start running things like chkdsk on it. Remember, those utilities can be destructive to data so it's advisible NOT to run them before you have a good backup.

Also, once you have a backup, you can send it places to have people work on the backup to recover data. That's why getting a solid backup is really the top priority at this point.

Dd

Fallakin Kuvari · Post by **Fallakin Kuvari** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 1:21 pm

^

What he said.

Post by **Ddrak** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:44 pm

http://www.drive-image.com/ seems a workable backup program for flash drives.

I tried winimage but it game me stupid errors under Vista.

Dd

Fallakin Kuvari · Post by **Fallakin Kuvari** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:00 pm

You running Vista too, Dd?

Post by **Ddrak** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:13 pm

Yeah - 32 bit on my laptop, 64 bit on my desktop. I like it.

Dd

Fallakin Kuvari · Post by **Fallakin Kuvari** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:27 pm

Nice, I'm running 32bit on my desktop... been playing Halo 2 and Shadowrun.

Really enjoying it, started liking it on the computer I work on at work and so I grabbed a copy to use myself.

Doesn't seem to be any major flaws with the OS itself, just some minor annoyances that are easily turned off.