M9 Card Unreadable

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kutting

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I feel a bit sick, I came home from holiday with a 16Gb card full of family photos only to discover that the card is now unreadable.

I know, I know I should have spread the images across multiple cards - hard lesson learned!

I've tried slotting the card into a couple of different computers, reading on the M9 as well as cleaning the contacts and it seems the card is dead. When I plug the card into the M9 the info screen shows no capacity remaining. If I press play the camera ceases to function until I switch it off and back on.

Is there anyway to recover the data on the card?

It wouldn't have been so bad, but I also managed to open the back on my Nikonos with a fully exposed roll of film in it this morning :bang:
 
Yes - as long as the computer sees the card you can decipher the contents with Rescue Pro. Note - it will show the DNGs as Tiffs and you can either run them through Adobe's DNG converter or rename them as DNG to be able to open them.
 
Thanks, I'm downloading the trial version of Rescue Pro as I type this.

Unfortunately my card is unreadable the pricing of recovery by LC Technology (endorsed by Sandisk) is expensive - $200, but cheaper than going on holiday again.

Are there any alternatives?

Cheers,

Kevin
 
I noticed that my card is recognised under Mac OS X disk utility, albeit briefly before it disapears from the drive list.

Similarly it shows up in Rescue Pro's menu and i'm able to press scan before it disapears from the drive list, but Rescue Pro reports that the file is overwritten with 0's. I'm not sure if that's as a result of the card disappearing from the drive list.

Has anyone successfully managed to rescue a apparently dead M9 card? If all else fails I'll send it off to LC.

Kevin
 
I'm just waiting for the inevitable ... "It wouldn't have happened with film!" comment. 😛

Seriously ... I hope you sort this out. I had something similar happen a while ago but some rescue software got me back to sanity. 🙂
 
Is the card physically damaged? If the card suffered physical damage or is cracked, then it could be fatal.

Hopefully, a recovery program might work.

Also, take a look at Zero Assumption Recovery. I was able to successfully retrieve images from a colleague's SD card after he accidentally erased all of them. Of course, that was much simpler, and the memory card wasn't corrupt.

Best of luck.
 
kutting said:
I noticed that my card is recognised under Mac OS X disk utility, albeit briefly before it disapears from the drive list.

Similarly it shows up in Rescue Pro's menu and i'm able to press scan before it disapears from the drive list, but Rescue Pro reports that the file is overwritten with 0's. I'm not sure if that's as a result of the card disappearing from the drive list.

Has anyone successfully managed to rescue a apparently dead M9 card? If all else fails I'll send it off to LC.

Kevin
Click to expand...
If that happens you may have ejected the card improperly from your Mac, causing Slow Leopard to try and "repair" it. Try a rescue program on a PC.
 
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all have great advises only if the controller of the card is not damage. a software solution can usually fix the problem. however, if the controller is damage where it is un-mountable and you have exhausted every single troubleshooting procedure, then you must have the data recovery done by a professional company.

unfortunately, this also happened to me while i was in hawaii with my m8.2. i was going to do over the trip but financially not feasible. i resorted to a company in Germany. They recovered my 98% of my data. Their process is that they remove the flash chip which has all your pictures. They then take that chip and solder into a good controller where it is readable/mountable. transfer the images(raw for me) into an ftp site where you can download the zip file after payment. granted, it cost me a good amount of euros, but i was very happy that this service existed. i sent you a pm in regards to this company.

from now on, my macbook air is ready to xfer the pictures each night! lesson learn.
 
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kutting said:
I noticed that my card is recognised under Mac OS X disk utility, albeit briefly before it disapears from the drive list.

Similarly it shows up in Rescue Pro's menu and i'm able to press scan before it disapears from the drive list, but Rescue Pro reports that the file is overwritten with 0's. I'm not sure if that's as a result of the card disappearing from the drive list.

Has anyone successfully managed to rescue a apparently dead M9 card? If all else fails I'll send it off to LC.
Click to expand...


I think you're overlooking the fact that the card itself may have a hardware failure. Calling it "M9 card" as if it were the M9 that rendered it unreadable may be blinding you to this fact.

What brand is it? If it's SanDisk or Lexar, they provide their own rescue software (do a little digging in their respective websites). If it's one of those buy-one-get-one-free brands, I really don't think that any data recovery software or company, no matter how expensive or competent they are, will be able to retrieve anything from something that cannot hold anything anymore.

Best of luck. It is one of the worst sinking feelings after coming from a good photoshooting session.
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
If it's one of those buy-one-get-one-free brands, I really don't think that any data recovery software or company, no matter how expensive or competent they are, will be able to retrieve anything from something that cannot hold anything anymore.
Click to expand...

There is no reason to be so pessimistic. There are quite a few components on a memory card that can fail, and only if the memory chip itself fails is the data really lost. (Actually not even then, but at that point another vacation is probably cheaper.)

It's also possible that it's just a software problem, then you don't need to send the card in but can solve the problem by downloading the right program from Internet.

It's very unlikely the that all the data is really lost.
 
The card itself doesn't have any "software". If a part of the memory component is toast, that's it: all storage is based on a sequence; if the break (or breaks) happens closer to the beginning than towards the end of the order, that's it, you cannot in good faith recover the data.

In theory, you should be able to retrieve the data even if this is the case, but it would take a real "binary brain surgeon" to piece the data together. The brainier, the more expensive.

Now, if, like you said, it's a "software problem" (which to me this means that the index table got corrupted, somehow, rendering its mounting --and by definition, its "readability" by conventional software) the chances of recovering some if not most of the data intact are much higher.

I would look closely at the card to see if it doesn't have any physical damage (cracks, perforations). If you have access to an incredibly competent hardware geek, you could have him/her (ok, him) do a diagnostic. If the diagnostic of the actual memory component is toast, that is the end of the story. :-/
 
Rubbish! Remember Capa's Normandy beach landing photos.... how atmospheric they were LOL!

In this age of conceptual photography I am sure one could explain away printing blank frames...


sepiareverb said:
no, with film you'd have no means of 'rescuing' anything...

(beat me to it JSU)

via Tapatalk.
Click to expand...
 
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