Data recovery on a 2gb SD card? Please make my wife stop crying!

[stephenator75]

I need some advice on what to do or try.

Basically I went to Italy for my honeymoon and I took about 1200 pictures. Got back from the trip and starting tranfering pictures to my pc. Something messed up and crashed. Now I can only see about 260 pics on the camera. Called Kodak...."we dont support 2gb cards." Sent the card to Kingston..."Can't do any data recovery because our card reader cant read the card." I know some data is on there still. The card holds about 1600 pics total. Can see 260ish on the camera.....Says I can take 300 ish more.

Got the card back today. Tried a couple of the freeware data recovery softwares. Most won't even read the camera as in XP it doesnt give it a driver letter. Tried it on my 2000 box and it doesnt find any data on the card. I am thinking that the software is crap.

So what do I do? My wife gets all teary eyed when we even talk about the pictures. Any programs out there that actually work? What about data recovery services....are they worth it? I don't mind spending a reasonable amount of money on this. Any help is much appreciated by me and my teary little lady. THANKS

[ampleworks]

You could try getting a card reader and see if you can have any luck. Since windows will then give it a drive letter and try the third party data recovery utlities.

To me it'd be worth the $25 for a card reader.

[gkline]

I would get a SanDisk card reader and give it a go. Good luck. How was Italy? Been there twice!

[stephenator75]

Forgot the mention that my printer has a card reader. It just says that I dont have a card in there. I got one of the programs to see the card even from the reader but it didnt see any data....even the data I can see when the card is plugged into the camera.

Italy was great. Was there when they won the world cup Wouldn't go back in the summer again though.

[Gosre]

Hi,
Frankly speaking, I don't know whether this software can help you, but I used it to recover my files in my PC last time. you can first download the demo to see whether it can find your file. If yes, then you can pay to buy.
download demo version: http://www.easeus.com/download.htm
Merry marriage!

[stephenator75]

I might try that one when I get home. I have tried to contact some data recovery services to see if they would be able to try it. The problem I am having is that most data recovery soft/services are for Harddrives and this is just an SD card. Most of the demoes have not even found any data on the card which is impossible....as I can still see about 200 pics when I look at my camera. Also the camera doesnt come up as a drive letter in XP, which makes it even more difficult to get anything to come up.

[ewitte]

Check your PM tomorrow. I've been organizing my hard drive recently. I'll be able to tell you the exact program I used to recover data off of a CF card a few years ago that I used in a Digital Rebel. I just have to look it up again.

[jester22c]

It sounds like if the camera could mount as a drive all your problems would be over. Have you tried connecting the camera (USB I assume) to another OS? Try booting from a Live CD (of any Linux flavor) and plug the camera in, see if you get anything.

[ewitte]

Recover My Photos v 2.80 is what I used. There should be a newer version by now. It worked for me and it sounds like the same thing happening to you.

[stephenator75]

Plugged the camera into my 2k machine. It comes up as a drive there, but the demo software doesn't show anything on it or it wants to only look at internal memory. The camera comes up in XP.....it's just under the scanners and camera field and doesn't give it a drive letter.

Ewitte I will try that software when I get home. Thanks

[stephenator75]

Ok well I tried those programs. I am still not able to get anything to even start working. My card reader thinks there isn't a card in there. The camera won't give a drive letter in XP and the "recover my photos" software doesn't seem to work in win2k. Any work around for this that you can think of?

[Strogian]

If it doesn't get a drive letter, you are probably out of luck. But windows gives out more than just drive letters now, (drive letters are almost to the point of being an old "compatibility" feature) so it might be possible.

If you have lots of free time, download this program:

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/WinObj.html

That lets you look at all the objects available from Windows. I'm not sure how this will help you, but the idea is that if you can find the device that corresponds to your drive, you can read the blocks off of it. If not, then nothing in Windows will help you.

Obviously this will take huge amounts of time if you haven't done it before. But at least you could poke around so you might find something useful.

What would be nice would be a command-line version of this tool, so you could unplug the device, run the program, plug the device in, run the program again, and use a text-comparison tool to find what got added.

[Demitris]

I need some advice on what to do or try.

Basically I went to Italy for my honeymoon and I took about 1200 pictures. Got back from the trip and starting tranfering pictures to my pc. Something messed up and crashed. Now I can only see about 260 pics on the camera. Called Kodak...."we dont support 2gb cards." Sent the card to Kingston..."Can't do any data recovery because our card reader cant read the card." I know some data is on there still. The card holds about 1600 pics total. Can see 260ish on the camera.....Says I can take 300 ish more.

Got the card back today. Tried a couple of the freeware data recovery softwares. Most won't even read the camera as in XP it doesnt give it a driver letter. Tried it on my 2000 box and it doesnt find any data on the card. I am thinking that the software is crap.

So what do I do? My wife gets all teary eyed when we even talk about the pictures. Any programs out there that actually work? What about data recovery services....are they worth it? I don't mind spending a reasonable amount of money on this. Any help is much appreciated by me and my teary little lady. THANKS

If you are really concerned about your picture then don't try to write any thing on the card reader and don't use any low level data recovery utility. It will only make your condition worst, if picture get corrupted you won't be able to recover any more.
Use Stellar Phoenix Digital Media Recovery Software to recover lost, deleted and formatted digital pictures, after an accidental deletion, media format or corrupt media. Phoenix Photo Recovery Software works with any type of digital card reader or storage media that appears as a drive letter in your local PC. The program displays images and files that it finds and allows you to recover all of them.
Download the demo from http://www.stellarinfo.com/digital-media-recovery.htm Through demo version you will be able to see your recovered data.

Hope you will succeed.

Best of Luck.