Need Help with XD Card

[alec4444]

If there in anyone in the NYC area with a camera that can use the XD M-Series 2GB card please PM me. I purchased this memory without knowing that my D-630 couldn't use it. My wife took it to India and took a bunch of pictures with it irregardless of that fact. The chip became corrupted when we tried to get the photos off.

Using PC Inspector we got ~900 photos off of 1033 before the camera battery died. (Oh, and when you put in a new one it starts from scratch) I had heard that if I formatted the disk, most of the data would still remain and it would be faster to get the photos off b/c it wouldn't have to scan every sector. The format failed, and it is at this time that I discoved that the 2GB chip from this series doesn't work. (Although all the smaller size chips of the same series do work...how stupid is that?!) Now the chip is fully corrupted and even PC Inspector can't read it now.

So what I want to do is format this chip with a camera that can use it, and then try to get the photos off again. Slim chance perhaps, but I have to try. She's not going back to India again anytime soon.....

Suggestions are also welcome...thanks!

--A

[Dave Parker]

Alec,

Do you have a photography store close to you, I know when I worked at our local shop we would often download cards for customers who were having difficulty and burn to disc for them for a nominal charge..often times the reason the larger chips don't work, is just do to the newer advances in firmware, kind of what we have gone through with computers, I remember a time when computers could only effectively use 640K of Memory(Dating Myself I guess!) I would not recommend doing another format, a normal quick format of a card, disc, etc, does not erase the data, but deletes the pointer that tells the file system where the file is located, and formating it again, would again change pointers, possibly causing more corruption..if you were able to retrieve 900 you have done pretty good, but I would try some of the local photo shops with newer cameras to see how they read the information.

Dave

[alec4444]

Thanks, Dave! I think I nuked the card to the point where it has to be formated again...the moment I put it in the camera it tells me this. Though you just gave me the idea that I could get that done (by helping myself) at a Best Buy or something similar. NYC likely doesn't have the kind of stores / salesmen you have out in MT that would have the patience for anything less than a sale.

Cheers!
--A