# Error on XD Picture Card



## Gramma X six

Hi all, it's been a while.
Anyway I attended my twin grandchildrens 1st B-Day Party in Saskatchewan, Canada and when I tried to download pictures from my camera onto my daughters computer, it would not download them and now when I put the XD Picture card back into my camera, it will not read the card it states "Card Error". I took the camera and card to a photo shop and they tried to download them as well, using another camera and it still did not work.
I don't care about the picture card BUTTTTT I really want the pictures that are on the card.
Also, all the pictures my daughter took, she accidentally deleted them all, whats the chance of that happening!! So we have NO pictures of the Twins 1st birthday, Is there anything I can do to get the pictures from the card (if there still there) that states "Card Error???

PLEASE PLEASE HELP?????
Thanking you in advance


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## Knotbored

This would not necessarily be a cure, but might help.
Get a card reader- they are cheap (about $15USA) and attempt any future fixes from your computer, treating the card like a hard drive. It is likely the camera to computer connection somehow confused the card files/folders and it will be far easier to find the error using a card reader.
Also get a new second XD card, format it IN THE CAMERA and see if it works correctly to eliminate the camera as the problem. Another $25 investment that will pay off if it helps identify the problem.


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## Gramma X six

Knotbored said:


> This would not necessarily be a cure, but might help.
> Get a card reader- they are cheap (about $15USA) and attempt any future fixes from your computer, treating the card like a hard drive. It is likely the camera to computer connection somehow confused the card files/folders and it will be far easier to find the error using a card reader.
> Also get a new second XD card, format it IN THE CAMERA and see if it works correctly to eliminate the camera as the problem. Another $25 investment that will pay off if it helps identify the problem.


I took my camera to the photoshop and they tried my xD picture card in another camera and that camera would not read the card either so it is definately not a problem with my camera, it is definately the card itself. I will buy a card reader today but when I took my card to the photo shop I would have thought they would have tried to put it in a card reader as well, they tried a couple different things and nothing worked. I am just so sad that I cannot get those pics off the card, they mean't so much to me. I actually have a laptop and have no place to insert the card, I allways trf the pics using a USB connection from my camera to my laptop and it worked fine until my daughter (who has a desk top) inserted my card into her desktop computer to download my pics and thats when the card error appeared and now the card shows card error, she was not able to download the pics from my card either.


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## Knotbored

free digital file recovery program
http://www.artplus.hr/adapps/eng/dpr.htm

This has been discussed on this message board as a good program for recovering pictures from scrambled cards. I have not used it, but see it reviewed with good results.


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## slipe

Your best chances of getting some shots of the twins first birthday are from your daughter&#8217;s card if she hasn&#8217;t overwritten the card with new photos. There is plenty of free recovery software that will find deleted photos as long as they haven&#8217;t been overwritten.


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## Gramma X six

Knotbored said:


> free digital file recovery program
> http://www.artplus.hr/adapps/eng/dpr.htm
> 
> This has been discussed on this message board as a good program for recovering pictures from scrambled cards. I have not used it, but see it reviewed with good results.


I just tried this web site and could not get them from my camera, but thanks so much, will this site recover pics from my daughters card if they had been deleted from the camera, her card is working fine but after she downloaded her pics to her computer she accidently deleted them from the computer and also deleted them from her camera as well.


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## Gramma X six

When u mean overwritten, I think she may have taken a couple pics on the card after deleting the twins birthday pics, but certainly not as many as there was of the twins, so will she still be able to recover the ones that were not overwritten?
Thanks sooooooooooooooooooo much


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## slipe

It is quite easy to recover the deleted pictures that weren't overwritten. Overwritten photos are gone.

This is the first freeware I ran across with a Google search: http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/smartrecovery.html Perhaps people who have used something they like could make a better suggestion.


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## Knotbored

Gramma X six said:


> her card is working fine but after she downloaded her pics to her computer she accidently deleted them from the computer and also deleted them from her camera as well.


Has your daughter checked her computer recycle bin for those deleted pictures?
(Items deleted from a computer go to an intermediate step, the recycle bin, and are not erased from the disk until a cleanup is done to that recycle bin, either manually or on a time schedule.)


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## Valiko89

try first formatting the card in the card reader and the recover the photos with a recovery software..


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## magz13

yeah i'm having the same problem too.

i downloaded several data recovery software programs and they don't work. my media card reader (in the laptop) isn't reading the card anymore. its so frustrating!! i tried the xd card on both my olympus camera and fuji and both are not reading the card.......... (its been working fine for about a year till now!)

its weird because it was fine when i was viewing the pics that i took on them last night... then i go to transfer them on my computer today and only like 5 of the pictures show up. then i take out the card to see what was going on then re inserted it and its not detecting it at all!!

i have many precious memories on it... anyone have any suggestions?


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## magz13

should i try formatting the card in the camera then seeing if the laptop will detect the card? i know formatting the card will erase all data though...

then should i try the data recovery software?


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## mythago

Hiya! I've had the same problem - my photos were fine, but when I put the card in my Aunt's card reader it wouldn't recognise it, and just offered to format it. I put the card back in my camera (Fuji Finepix F31FD) and it says 'Card Error'.

I sent it to a company who tried it in all their card readers, but couldn't get the photos back. They said there was no power going through the card, or something. They recommended a specialist in data recovery, but they charge £75 just to look to see if they can restore the photos, and if they can, it's another £250.

I've tried a few data recovery software packages, but they don't recognise my camera - it doesn't show up as a lettered drive (eg. A, C, D, E, etc).

I don't know what to try. I don't care about the card, but want my photos back very much. I was going to send it to Fuji themselves (costs £60 if they are successful - free if not), but will Fuji just try it in a couple of card readers & then give up? Will my card need specialists to try to recover the data? 

Why are all these cards failing? There are no warnings that I've ever seen about card readers corrupting cards. Are the manufacturers looking into it at all, does anyone know?

Sorry about the long rant. If anyone has any advise, or knows of recovery software that recognises Fuji cameras, or cameras that don't show up on the PC as a lettered drive, I'd be really grateful.

Thanks

Jen


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## slipe

Everyone seems to be ignoring *Valikao89*'s post. It might be the best approach for saving the photos. If the computer is able to format the card it might work.

Some cameras erase the card with a format. My old Olympus C50 did that. Other cameras just rewrite the FAT showing the space is available for overwrite but don't actually erase the photos. A Windows format of a hard drive doesn't erase the drive and I assume formatting your card in Windows does the same.

Any format will make the photos accessible only with recovery software. The hooker to the format approach is that something has to read the card before it will format it. And if you want to try to preserve the photos you would want to make sure a camera format didn't erase everything on the card. Many cameras come with a useless small card that would be good for experimenting.



> There are no warnings that I've ever seen about card readers corrupting cards.


I haven't seen any either, but I've seen a lot of posts where it happened that way. Card storing and reviewing fine in camera - put card in card reader and it will no longer work in either the camera or reader. The coincidence of the card working fine until inserted in a card reader is getting too frequent to ignore IMO.

There could be user error involved. It's pretty hard to put a card into the camera wrong but most card readers don't feel just right. The only card I read in my card reader is the mini-SD card from my cellphone camera. It never feels right inserting it. I thought it might be the adapter, but I tried a regular SD card and it was the same. I push it in until there is a little resistance then look at the drive letter. If it isn't showing I push it a little further. It isn't like the camera where it slides in smoothly and locks when in place with only one place you can put it.

If I had to guess I would say people are doing physical damage to the card - maybe the contacts. Or maybe the card has an internal weakness and some card readers hit it with a little harder current than the camera does. In that case the card reader would just exacerbate a problem already in the card.

But I've run across many posts here and on other boards where the last time a card worked was just before it was put into a card reader. there seems to be some liability in using a card reader. Maybe just some models.


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## Kukulcan

I could not get my pc to read the xD card using it's own card reader or by connecting the camera to the pc. However, I was able to recover many of the images by doing a "quick format" of the card (in my pc, not in the camera) and then using Smart Recovery 4.5 (freeware) which you can download from http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/smartrecovery.html


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## psudarsan

I had taken around 75 photos and when i tried to see them in the camera i get only two options.Format and Power off.Not able to do anything else.When i try to read thru the reader in the Laptop i see no files in the drive but find the card has occupied a vast memory.Before this happened i even got a picture error in the camers.
Please let know a way to retrieve all my photos.


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