Crappin my pants here guys (deleted sd card pics)....

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blackbeaSSt

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sorry if this is in the wrong area, but it seems like maybe a windows problem.

bought a new digicam a couple weeks ago. got all the kids christmas pics on the card and everything since then. i go to throw it in to dump the card and nothing pulls up. then it gives me a "delayed write error". thought it might be the adapter in my computer so i throw another card in there and it works.

so i take the card back to the camera to review the pics AND THEY AREN'T THERE.

what the crap is going on? its a new card and no computer can read it. am i SOL with the pics that were on there?
 
If no computer can read it you may be out of luck but you could try a recovery program like Recuva or GetDataBack to see if it can detect the card enough to be able to recover the files. If it were extremely critical to recover the pics there are services that can do it. I imagine they just read directly from the memory inside the card.
 
First rule, Don't Panic.

I haven't had the opportunity to work with many of the undelete or recovery utilities that are currently available, but I am going to give you one piece of advice:

Do not put the card into any device until you are ready to recover files. Any time you do -- either in the camera or your PC - you are upping the chances that you will be unable to recover files. Just take it out, set it somewhere safe and research your options.

Someone will respond with their favorite undelete, or recovery program. In the past, I have used Testdisk, but I am not sure if it is still the program of choice for this operation.
 
Sp33dFr33k said:
If no computer can read it you may be out of luck but you could try a recovery program like Recuva or GetDataBack to see if it can detect the card enough to be able to recover the files. If it were extremely critical to recover the pics there are services that can do it. I imagine they just read directly from the memory inside the card.
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well its not a do or die deal to get em back, and im sure its a fortune anyway.

just sucks donkey balls the card is 2 weeks old at most and its dead?

and will a recovery program work if the computer can't see the card?
 
I have use Recuva in the past to retrieve deletes image. Let us know if this work.
 
blackbeasst said:
and will a recovery program work if the computer can't see the card?
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Are you certain the computer can't read the card? As you in plug it in and nothing happens (no USB device notification)...

My guess is the partition table got hosed when you had your delayed write failure and it just needs to be recovered, which is something that testdisk can do. But as I said above; I'm not sure that it's the best at what it does anymore, so you may want to see if someone else recommends something better.
 
Another free tool for recovering files from memory cards is PhotoRec, I've had some luck with it retrieving files from cards in the past. It doesn't have a gui, but its fairly straightforward.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Good luck.

Edit: Lol Demon beat me to it, just realised Testdisk and Photorec are two sides of the same coin
 
In cases like this GetDataBack for FAT/NTFS will be your best bet as it will in most cases if the problem is not severe able to recover the files/folders and directory of where they're located as they originally are. I've used Piriforms Recuva before but it does provide the feature of GetDataBack mentioned above.

If your SDCard is completely dead and not recognised by form of hardware detection tool (WDM, Active@Killdisk, your BIOS or a recovery tool), then your pretty much out of luck as the flash memory must've been burnt out or the flash memory bios erased.
 
The first thing i'd do is flip the Read Only tab, before anything else.
 
I've had good results with being able to recover files from memory cards in cameras.

Like when my friend used my camera to take naked pics of his GF and "deleted" the pictures before he gave the camera back :p
 
demon, yeah i've tried 3 computers and the only way it finds it is with an external sd adapter. but then it tells me i need to format it and won't let me into the root of the card.
 
blackbeasst said:
demon, yeah i've tried 3 computers and the only way it finds it is with an external sd adapter. but then it tells me i need to format it and won't let me into the root of the card.
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Thats fine -- it's seeing the card, it just doesn't have a valid file system or partition on it. Testdisk should be able to recover as long as you haven't formatted it.

I'd recommend flipping the read only tab to "on" as mentioned above. Then run through test disk to see what it can find. If it looks promising, cancel out, eject the card, turn read only off, and then run through test disk again and let it go.
 
ok getdataback sees the pics that are/were on there.....but i can't get them unless i pay for the full version?
 
blackbeasst said:
ok getdataback sees the pics that are/were on there.....but i can't get them unless i pay for the full version?
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Some of them do charge, but at least you know the data is still there.

Try the testdisk app, it's free I think.
 
blackbeasst said:
any reason why a 2 week old card would do this?
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It's most likely a corrupt partition table that is causing the problem, and I bet that delayed write message is when it happened. Could be the card, cable, motherboard, or even the card reader/camera. It's hard to say.
 
Demon10000 said:
It's most likely a corrupt partition table that is causing the problem, and I bet that delayed write message is when it happened. Could be the card, cable, motherboard, or even the card reader/camera. It's hard to say.
Click to expand...

As Demon10000 said, it could be anything. After you recover all your images from this new memory card, I suggest a format by the camera (not your PC) and then do some test shots, try to read them off, etc.

My Nikon manual recommends that memory cards be formatted in the camera, not by PC.

That all said, if you got a real "bargain" on this memory card, you probably bought something that isn't too good. There is also an issue that some brand-name memory cards like Lexar are widely counterfeited coming from guess-which country. (So don't go buying really inexpensive cards off eBay. :) )
 
x509 said:
There is also an issue that some brand-name memory cards like Lexar are widely counterfeited coming from guess-which country. (So don't go buying really inexpensive cards off eBay. :) )
Click to expand...

Most of them are Sandisk if your talking about Micro/Normal sized SD Cards. There are programs that can test the full capacity of fake labelled flash memory cards as well confirming by the serial no if you have a fake or genuine one.
 
ok i was able to fetch them off using the recuva program!

as far as the card it was free from best try when i bought my digicam. its a sandisk so its not a chinese ebay knockoff. or at least i hope not.

there were some videos on there that i wasn't able to recover but its no big deal.

thanks for the tips on programs to use. i forgot to mention that i tried glary at first and it didn't find crap. so i'll stick with recuva from now on.
 
for future reference, a write delayed error means that you physically messed with the card before it was able to finish writing to it. kinda like pulling the card out in the middle of a file transfer (not to say you did that). it's possible to cause this even pulling it out of the camera.

if the above is not the case, i'd just throw that card away and not mess with it. it may be a lemon.
 
d.v. said:
for future reference, a write delayed error means that you physically messed with the card before it was able to finish writing to it. kinda like pulling the card out in the middle of a file transfer (not to say you did that). it's possible to cause this even pulling it out of the camera.

if the above is not the case, i'd just throw that card away and not mess with it. it may be a lemon.
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that could be true. my one and a half year old has some grabby hands and like to touch stuff on/around my computer (see here for another episode from her grabby hands :D)

so best bet is to probably not use it?

and could the "safely remove hardware" thing may have caused it?
 
blackbeasst said:
and could the "safely remove hardware" thing may have caused it?
Click to expand...

If you eject a USB disk without using the 'safely remove hardware', this is what could happen.

Writes to the disk are slow, so the disk controller caches things in memory. A delayed write means the cache was trying to update the disk, but couldn't and therefore the data was lost.

If you remove a disk without the cache being emptied, you get the message saying a delayed write failed.

When you 'safely remove hardware', windows makes sure that the cache has been completely written to the disk and then un-mounts it so no writes can make it into the cache.
 
Demon10000 said:
If you eject a USB disk without using the 'safely remove hardware', this is what could happen.

Writes to the disk are slow, so the disk controller caches things in memory. A delayed write means the cache was trying to update the disk, but couldn't and therefore the data was lost.

If you remove a disk without the cache being emptied, you get the message saying a delayed write failed.

When you 'safely remove hardware', windows makes sure that the cache has been completely written to the disk and then un-mounts it so no writes can make it into the cache.
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hmm. i've also noticed recently that when i have something plugged in via usb that it i get the icon in the system tray, but it doesn't show anything to eject?

XOR != OR said:
Seems to be limited by network speed, the little cards have some decent throughput.
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cool. i'll have to check it out.
 
d.v. said:
technology never ceases to amaze me... goodness, portable wifi storage at the container level.
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No kidding. Not only does it work pretty well, it's cheap too ( well, relatively ).

It even has a setting that lets the card automatically delete the oldest photos on the card, to prevent the card from ever filling up. Presumably it won't exercise that option on pics that haven't already been transferred.
 
I can personally recommend TestDisk as well. I've restored partitions completely that I've accidentally deleted/formatted.
 
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