SD Card Failure: Photo Recovery

Washand

New Member
I have a Canon 500D SLR and have been using it in combination with a 16GB SanDisk Extreme SD card. I took the card out of the camera while it was turned off and stored it for my return from a vacation. When I got home, the camera says it cannot read the card and both my 2 laptops do not assign a drive letter to the card (although the ta-da music suggests that it can see it).

I have a backup of most of the photos but there are a few that I didn't get around to backing up that I would like to salvage if possible. I have read that I should format the card so that the laptop assigns it a drive letter and then use recovery software to retrieve the files. I am reluctant to do that without independent confirmation that this will work, and I am also wondering which recovery software will do the job efficiently (preferably for free, but I'll consider something good at a small cost). This is not an invitation for software companies to advertise their products!

Thanks very much.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Recovery software wise, I have used Piriform's Recuva before and it has worked well. It's free too (it's made by the same people who make CCleaner) http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

I know it says the 'Professional' version will recover the files, but the free one should too. The only difference is the support, I think.

What I would try doing is putting the card in a card reader, then running Recuva on it just to see if that can do anything. I understand that Windows is not assigning the card a letter, but Recuva may still work on it.

If it doesn't, then all I can think to do is format the card and get Recuva to do its job on the formatted card. The last time I used Recuva was to retrieve some files from a hard drive which had been formatted by Windows XP setup (and it did retrieve them), so I'm pretty sure it can recover files from formatted drives.

Whatever you do is going to be a risky business and there is no guarantee that you will get the files back since the card itself may be dead (or the data corrupted), but give Recuva a go and best of luck. :good:
 

Washand

New Member
Thanks for the suggestion, but uuurrrgh, what terrible software. The free version tries to install lots of extra unwanted software, menu bars etc. and it is packed full of malware. I had to sanitize my hard drive after deleting everything it installed in spite of my opting out of all the spamware, and I certainly didn't run the program. I appreciate that you were trying to help but I'm pointing this out to warn anyone considering installing this software.

The program that has been recommended to me is RescuePRO, which SanDisk themselves used to supply, but it is a high price at almost $40 for the standard version. There are lots of other cheaper options so it's hard to know what is good and what is like the free version of Recuva - to be avoided like the plague.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
That's odd re Recuva. I use CCleaner (and so do a lot of members here) and never had a problem with either. Did you download it directly from Piriform? Odd that it was installing all that extra other stuff...

EDIT: I have just quickly downloaded and installed it from here: http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download/standard no problems whatsoever with it installing spyware etc. Installation is just like CClenaner's. I think you might have downloaded a dodgy version of it because the one I downloaded and installed looks absolutely fine to me.

It is possible that you clicked on an ad to install it and that in turn installed the other stuff. I downloaded it directly from Piriform just now and it is fine. Click on the link I have put in this post and it should start to download automatically. Then install that version. Because I am telling you, this version is fine.

I know Recuva usually works, so I would not agree at all that it is 'to be avoided like the plague'. It comes from a reputable company to start with...
 
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