retrieve pictures

[cmdmfr]

My wife and I have taken a cruise. We took pictures with a cannon digital camera using a 2 GB SD disk now when I try and put them on my hard drive some of the pictures say not available but when I put the disk back in the camera the pictures show up. Is there any way I can retrieve these pictures off the SD chip I have tried down loading them from the camera and there is no change.

 

[lll1929]

On my camera, I leave my memory card in the camera and hook the camera to my PC. If you have a USB chord for your camera, perhaps you can try that.

Perhaps, sharing the model and type of camera, you may get a few more responses.

 

[macko420]

Have you tried using a different picture viewer on the computer? Maybe you could see them that way.

 

[Icarus]

I had a similar problem and found an app that fixed it, let me see if I can find it ...

ok I used a program called freeundelete. see if it does anything for you.

http://www.softarea51.com/windows/System_Utilities/Backup_Restore/Review-FreeUndelete.html

Though it's possible your problem sounds a little different from mine.

-David

 

[pammex]

Don't know much about this stuff but I had similar problem and lost many pics....my son after the fact said the SD card needed to be formatted or something as such.......it was on a Canon camera also....

well I lost some pics, but took on another vacation after son formatted the card and all the pics were fine....

 

[Makai Guy]

Don't know much about this stuff but I had similar problem and lost many pics....my son after the fact said the SD card needed to be formatted or something as such.......it was on a Canon camera also....

well I lost some pics, but took on another vacation after son formatted the card and all the pics were fine....

What pammex' son meant was that the formatting of that particular card had become corrupted. The card could be resurrected for future use by reformatting it.

Please do not take this as a suggestion to reformat your card as a means of recovering your lost pictures. Once you reformat, all information currently on the card will be lost permanently. Only reformat after you have exhausted all means to recover the current data and are willing to accept the data loss, in return for the use of the card for future pictures you may take

 

[cmdmfr]

sd card

That is one thing that I did not do was format the card. I am almost sure that this is the problem. Needless to say I probably will loose some pics but not all so I will try to retrieve them and if all fails then I will have to reformat the card and hope this solves all the problem

 

[Passepartout]

I think that before I gave up entirely, I'd put the SD card in one of those reader/printers (Kodak or others) at Walgreens, Wal-Mart, photo equipment stores. If your camera will read the card, another reader ought to be able to also, At least you may be able to print the now-missing pictures- which is more than you have now.

Re-formatting the card now will erase everything on it and it will be rendered same as brand-new.

Jim Ricks

 

[macko420]

I think that before I gave up entirely, I'd put the SD card in one of those reader/printers (Kodak or others) at Walgreens, Wal-Mart, photo equipment stores. If your camera will read the card, another reader ought to be able to also, At least you may be able to print the now-missing pictures- which is more than you have now.

Re-formatting the card now will erase everything on it and it will be rendered same as brand-new.

Jim Ricks

Also, if you have trouble there, ask the photo attendants to take a look using their computers. I had this happen a few years ago when I couldn't read the card using their kiosk. When the attendant put it in his computer he could see them there. Unfortunatly, neither of use realized that it was actually a problem with the kiosk and I ended up losing my precious pictures.
But the point is, that it is worth a try. Don't format it before you try this because you will lose everything for sure.
Unless this is an 'older' camera, formatting prior to taking pictures is not necessary. Today's technology does not require that. At least I haven't found any cameras that still do that. good luck!

 

[pammex]

Thanks Makai Guy...yes that is what I meant exactly...and yes I lost many pics
It was abrand new card..so who knew not me...but my son knew right away..boy am I out of the loop...

cmdmfr....good luck....don't format as I did until you try everything else, cause as everyone says...the pics will be lost.....( I did try the card on various computers and some got or saved more pics than others, so all was not lost.....
I never even thought to ask for help on here duh....................

 

[Makai Guy]

When we returned from a Baltic cruise a couple of years ago, I had two memory cards loaded to capacity with pictures. I managed to screw both of them up (I'll post how I managed that in a separate cautionary post) and thought I had lost all our shots from this once in a lifetime trip.

I was able to recover all but a handful of them after several days research on the web. Since my camera used smartmedia cards, I found what I needed by doing google searches for "smartmedia data recovery".

It was necessary for me to buy an inexpensive card reader that plugged into a USB port on my computer. I picked this up at Staples for something like $15. (Note that if your cards are SD cards over 2 MB in capacity, you need to be sure to get a reader that can handle SDHC, not just SD.) Reading the card directly allowed some operations that were not possible when accessing the card via connecting the camera to the computer.

Next, I found some software that could be used to recover files where the directory structure had been corrupted. I'm a little embarrassed to report that by now I can't tell you exactly what I used. Here are a couple of current freeware programs from the Major Geeks website that sound promising:
PC INSPECTOR smart recovery
Photo Recovery - note that this is a beta version

 

[Makai Guy]

A warning, if you have a FULL memory card

I managed to screw up two memory cards that were full to capacity with images.

I was viewing the images using Windows Explorer in "filmstrip" mode. One of the things this lets you do is rotate an image so that if was taken in portrait (vertical) mode, it will display in the correct orientation. I thus reoriented a number of images. In doing so, I managed to corrupt the Smartmedia cards.

In a card with some available space on it, this is not a problem - I had done it hundreds of times before. But when the card was already full, the write-to-card operation caused problems. I think this operation writes the new, reoriented file before it deletes the original one, and in attempting to write where there was no room, it messed things up. I'm surprised the operating system didn't prevent this.

Anyhow, if you have memory cards filled to capacity, copy the files to your hard disk, and reorient them there. I always do this with any other editing, but thought a mere re-orientation would be harmless.

 

[Blues]

Note that if your cards are SD cards over 2 GB in capacity, you need to be sure to get a reader that can handle SDHC, not just SD.

I might add that you should buy the SDHC version even if your current cards are 2 GB or less. The SDHC version will also read/write plain SD; and as time goes on, cards will get bigger and you'll want the reader for them.

These things are now so cheap, I don't know why everyone with a camera doesn't own one.

I got this combo from NewEgg -- $17 for both a reader and an 8GB card! How can you beat that? Both card and reader work just fine. Or you can get the reader only for just $10.

-Bob