MMC card recovery

[Genghis the Engineer]

Anybody got any clues here.

I've got a Kodak digital camera (an LS443 if it's of any relevance) with a 128Mb MMC card in it.

The card seems to have somehow become corrupted. Some of the photos, when I view them on the cameras screen crash the camera (it just seizes up until I physically remove and refit the battery). Plugging the camera into the docking station I can see all the filenames from the computer, but it refuses to transfer them. Removing the card and putting it into a multi-card reader, the computer won't recognise the card as being there at-all.

I suspect that I may need to bin the card (which would be annoying, it's less than a year old), but I'd really like to at-least get the photos off it before doing so.

Anybody got an idea of how to solve the problem?

G

[englishal]

Could stick it in the camera and use the "Format" command if it has one.

[Genghis the Engineer]

That is unlikely to recover my pictures (and it hasn't).

G

[englishal]

No but it might save your card ;)

Option 2 is send it to a data recovery company, who claim they can recover the data from these devices.IF you can access it from the PC, then you could try a scandisk...Do you have any other devices which take a MMC card (iPAQ for example?). If so, pop the card in there and see if you can access the files, get them off, then format the card. If you cant format, delete all pics, then see if the card is readable on the PC, and run a format from the PC...

[Jhieminga]

I'm no expert but there seem to be a number of Data Recovery programs available for issues like these. Formatting definitively will not recover the photos (might also lose them forever depending on the type of format).

I'm surprised a cardreader won't read the card, indeed you could try scandisk on it, but be careful making any repairs.

With the camera in the dock, are you using it's own software, or does it come up as a drive letter in explorer? If it is recognised as a drive, you could try accessing the card through explorer and copying the images that way.

There are some links to tutorials and software for image recovering on this page (http://www.ultimateslr.com/memory-card-recovery.html)

I also found this article with a quick Google (it is 2 years old though, so the links may be outdated):
If you think a crashed or unresponsive PC is scary, just wait until you get a "corrupt data" message on your shiny new digital camera (DSC), 10 minutes after filling the memory card with several dozen once-in-a-lifetime photographs.

The memory cards used in digital still cameras, be they of the Compact Flash, SmartMedia, MMC or Memory Stick variety, are generally quite reliable but they\'re not immune to Murphy\'s fifth Law - if anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway - and sooner or later it will happen to you, so it\'s as well to be prepared.

Time for some good news. Unless the card has been physically damaged, dropped on the barbecue or fallen into a vat of acid there\'s a good chance that much of the data it contains will be recoverable, provided you don\'t do anything rash.

At the first sign of trouble, such as a badly distorted image appearing on the camera\'s monitor screen after a picture has been taken, or any kind of error message concerning the memory card, do not take any more photographs! Incidentally, always have a spare card or two handy, just in case.

There is a very small chance that the failure or error message might be caused by dirty contacts on the card so give the contacts a gentle wipe with a soft cloth or dust them off with a clean, dry brush. Avoid using any chemicals or abrasives as this will only make matters worse.

You might be lucky but according to data recovery experts the relatively crude filing systems used in many digital cameras are the root cause of a lot of problems.

Most non-hardware related problems fall into two categories. The first is the so-called "avalanche effect", which happens when a relatively small error develops in one file - the card is removed whilst the camera is still switched on, for example - and rapidly spreads to all of the other files on the card.

The other common cause of failure is when the card is frequently taken out of the camera and loaded into a USB or PC-Card reader - connected to a desktop or laptop PC - and Windows Explorer is used to delete, move and copy files.

This is a perfectly legitimate use for a memory card, as far as the PC\'s filing system is concerned the card is just another disc drive, but changes made to the card\'s filing structure can sometimes confuse the camera.

In cases where a PC reader cannot access a memory card you can sometimes copy images to the computer using the camera\'s serial or USB cable. By the way, you can avoid this kind of thing happening in future by completely erasing and reformatting memory cards in the camera after every few sessions.

If basic techniques have failed then it\'s time to bring in the big guns in the shape of data recovery companies or specialist software. The former option is worth considering if you are a complete novice, you\'re unwilling to take the small risks involved in DIY data recovery, or your own attempts have failed.

Be warned that a favourable outcome is by no means guaranteed, and it can be very expensive. Just type "memory card recovery" into your favourite search engine for a list of companies, and get several quotes.

Step one in DIY recovery is to try to copy the data from the card to a folder on your PC so you can safely experiment with the copied data and the original files are preserved. Depending on the degree of corruption this may not be possible and it\'s not unusual for Windows Explorer to be able to read the contents of a card but refuse to copy it.

Even if the data is complete gobbledegook check the size of the files, the larger they are the better the chances of recovering complete images. It\'s a bit of a long shot but you can try opening files using Windows Paint or any other picture and image editing software on your PC.

Before you give up or call in the experts try to reconstruct the data using specialist data recovery software. There is plenty to choose from, have a look at PC Inspector (www.pcinspector.de/smartmediarecovery/uk) and PhotoRecovery (www.lc-tech.com/photorecovery.asp) but my personal favourite is PhotoRescue, which is available as a shareware demo from: www.datarescue.com/photorescue

It only works on Windows 2000/XP or MAC (OS X). The demo will show you if there are any recoverable pictures on the card in the form of thumbnail images. If so you can pay the licence fee ($29) and you\'ll be sent the unlocked version of the program by e-mail. This will allow you to recover and save the full image files as regular JPEG files.

PhotoRescue is slow but methodical, rebuilding the files on a 64Mb card can take upwards of a couple of hours, even on a fast machine, but if there\'s anything on the card it will find it; it even managed to recover several pictures on one of my corrupted cards that had been deleted, after the card had been formatted!

[Genghis the Engineer]

Thanks for the advice folks - most helpful.

I tried two different recovery packages, photorescue (as recommended above), and another called Imagerecall. However neither could see anything on the card whatsoever - which was a little depressing.

But I could see the files with explorer - so with some experimentation I discovered that paintshop pro would make a reasonable stab at opening them - some it wouldn't, a few without trouble, and a number of others it would open part of the picture and the rest was greyed out. Fortunately that way I recovered most of the more critical photos (if not about 2/3 of the remainder).

Having reached this point, of the main photos being useable, I've explored the cameras manual and discovered a semi-hidden format option that I didn't know was there. So, in partial victory I've reformatted both the MMC card and internal memory.

thanks again,

G