XD Flash Card

[Drazick]

Hello.

I have a Fuji digital camera. The suitable flash card is XD card. I have a card which is unable to read. The camera states it needs to be formatted. Is there anyway to restore the pics on it? Any special software?

Thanks.

[LLXX]

Try some of the data recovery programs mentioned here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=67728

[Drazick]

Thanks...

I'm looking something specific for Memory Cards...

Anyone?

[nmX.Memnoch]

I specifically mentioned memory cards in the last post of that thread.

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

[jaclaz]

..or try with the program that comes together with testdisk:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.html

...it is called PHOTOREC, the name says it all....

jaclaz

[Drazick]

May be I should explain a more about the problem, My camera says it needs to be formatted, I can't access it from "my computer". I can see the drive letter but it says it can't access it.

Would those program still work?

I can't check each cause i'm travelling at the moment and using Internet Cafe's...

Thanks.

[jaclaz]

Would those program still work?

Yep, the idea behind testdisk/photorec (and MOST but not ALL file recovery programs) is to access directly the hard disk (or memory card) data, bypassing the filesystem driver of the OS.

If the camera is shown as a drive letter, it means that there is a working physical connection, so it will work.

The AMOUNT and/or "quality" of recovered data cannot be estimated offhand, though, very often in these cases recover is TOTAL, some times it is partial, a few times is NO recovery at all.

As a general advice as different utilities use different "strategies" to acces the data, if recover with one is not total, you can try another one.

jaclaz

Edited February 18, 2006 by jaclaz

[LLXX]

...also, when automated recovery programs are unable to recovery anything, using a disk editor directly will work, providing you have a good understanding of the filesystem structure.

Photos stored by digital cameras don't tend to be fragmented but instead stored contiguously, and almost all of them are JPG which have easily identifiable headers, so even if the filesystem structure is corrupt or entirely missing it should still be relatively easy to identify the start and end of each file.

Just don't let the recovery program attempt to write to the volume being recovered, otherwise it could make things worse, especially if you plan to try several different recovery programs.

Edited February 18, 2006 by LLXX

[jaclaz]

Yep, LLXX is right, what actually you "should" do is:

1) make a byte-by-byte copy of the damaged media to a file on your hard disk

a program like:

http://www.roadkil.net/

http://www.roadkil.net/DiskImg.html

is what you need

2) make ANOTHER copy of the file

3) mount the SECOND copy of the file as a virtual disk, with something like:

http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html

http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...ts/VDM/vdm.html

4) try recovery with program on the mounted virtual disk

5) if results not Ok, change program and loop to 4), if image has been altered, loop to 2)

jaclaz