My sister-in-law called me on the verge of panic. Her CF card will not let loose its grasp on her images. She cannot transfer the files to her computer either through her camera or card reader. The message she gets is along the lines of, " the card is either corrupted or unreadable".

Thankfully this is not something I have run into before, so I am at a loss for helping her. Any tips or suggestions? I know there are ways to recover the images, but I am not familiar with any of them.

Thanks,

There is software that you can download or purchase that will recover files for you. I have used the Lexar image rescue software and it did the trick for me. Lost a couple images but recovered the other 250. You can either buy it or it comes included with the Lexar Pro cards. I know of many people who have gone out and bought a pro card just to recover another card. (I believe sandisk Extreme cards also come with similar software)

The best $30 I've ever spent was on PhotoRescue!
You can go to this site:
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/
and download a demo version first to see if the program will recover your images, then you can purchase it! I have the Expert Version, it works great!
They also have wonderful customer service!

Good Luck!

Kristi

www.f8designphoto.com

Lloyd and Kristi - Thank you.

I will look into them both. It would probably be a good investment for me to have some sort of rescue on hand just in case, so I'll rpobably buy the solution, then help my sister in law with the rescueing. She doesn't clear her card very often, and only recently began using the format command. Prior to that she would just go through and delete each image. Slowly I am trying to break her of some bad habits, and after this, she is a bit more willing to learn.

I have also used the lexar software and been pleased with it, but when that didn't work I sent my card into Tallyn's data recovery. They were absolutely wonderful (I have also sent some clients to them that have had the same response) and there in no charge unless they can recover your files. In my situation the images were gone, I spent a bunch of time on the phone with the company and they sent my card back and I wasn't charged a cent.
Tallyn's #- 1-800-433-8685

Good Luck!

I'm sorry she's having trouble! It happened to me a few weeks ago, I was going about my business and downloading my card while doing some other tasks. I think I pulled the card out before it was finished, and my directory was corrupted. Lexar's Image Rescue saved all the images, and hundreds of others that had been reformatted over dozens of times!

http://www.pcinspector.de/smart_media_reco.../uk/welcome.htm -Convar's smart recovery. It's Free! It's saved me a few times.