CF Card & USB Are Not Recognized

Recuva
1

Apparently, I have a damaged CF card that I use in my Nikon D70 camera. I do not know what happened, but I had over 300 pictures on the card. When I was shooting the photos and within an hour after, they were on the card and able to be seen on my camera, but later in the evening I got the error message "File Does Not Contain Images." I searched online for ways to fix the problem and eventually found Recuva.

Unfortunately, Recuva is not recognizing when I plug in the camera via USB or when I put the card directly into the computer tower. I do not know how to scan for the corrupt/lost images if it won't recognize it! Does anyone have an answer or suggestions?

Thank you; I really appreciate it!

Brooke

2

Hi Brooke, and welcome to Piriform.

When you plug the card into the computer card reader, is the computer giving the card a drive letter?

Without a drive letter very little will recognize the card, not just Recuva.

If it is getting a drive letter, can you fire up "Disk Management" and see what it says about the file system, as shown here with one of my SD cards ...

post-8751-0-18625900-1384816881_thumb.jpg

Thanks.

:)

EDIT: How big is the card by the way?

3

Hi Dennis,

Thank you for replying! First, the CF card is 4GB. When I insert the card, it does not give me a drive letter. However, when I plug the camera in using the USB cord, it does show up as a digital camera/D70. I don't have the option to use Recuva when I have the program open and am searching for drives. I also tried right-clicking the D70 option when I have it plugged in and Recuva does not give me the option to scan it.

Thanks again!

4

The fact that it lists it as a camera and not a drive means it is connected as a Photo Transfer Device (ptp) recuva (and most other disc recovery softwares) can only scan drives.

The fact that when you connect the flash memory directly to the computer (via a card reader) may point to one of two things faulty card or (by coincidence) faulty reader. If you insert a second card into the reader does the computer see it?

5

Yes, the computer recognizes other cards. So for this reason, is there no way for me to recover the photos from the CF card? Thank you!

6

Hi Brooke.

I’ve been away for a few days so sorry about the delay in getting back to you.

A couple of questions.

Which operating system are you on (ie XP Win7 Win8)?

Did this 4GB card work OK in the card reader before now?

Apparently the Nikon D70 has two USB modes, one of them called “Mass Storage” …

The D70 has two USB connection modes, "mass storage" where the camera pretends to be an external hard drive, and PTP, which is an industry standard camera-computer USB protocol.

http://www.erikburrows.com/index.php?node=Nikon+D70

It’s probably in “PTP” mode by default, and if this is the case, try switching to “Mass Storage” mode and see if Recuva will then scan the problem card whilst in the camera.

If not, then you could insert the card into the computer again and have a look at another recovery software to check as to whether it’s only Recuva not recognising the card …

Free Nikon photo picture recovery software: (EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free Edition)

If this still won’t recognize the card, then one of the options available to get around that is to do a “Quick Format” of the CF card, and I mean “Quick Format”, not a “Full Format” which will wipe the card.

A quick format will re-initialise the file system and let the camera software and Windows know that the space on the card is now available to be overwritten, although it won’t actually write over that space. The files will still be there.

The card will now be given a drive letter, and will be recognized by Windows and software like Recuva.

However, before you do that, with the card being only 4GB in size you can look at the option to make a backup Image of the card first with a free program called “USB Image Tool” …

USB Image Tool:

The only problem with this, is I don’t think it will “Image” a card plugged into a card reader, and I don’t have my camera cards with me at the moment to test this. You may need a USB adapter such as this …

http://www.amazon.com/PQI-USB-CompactFlash-Card-Reader/dp/B000W4T9KG

Finally, as requested in my first reply, can you have a look at the card in “Disk Management” and let me know what it displays?

EDIT: For anyone interested, "USB Image Tool" will make a back up Image of a camera card inserted into a card reader. This backup enables you to try different ways of repairing a card, with the option to restore the Image back to the card each time to try something else.

post-8751-0-54257100-1385573267_thumb.jpg

7

Hi Dennis,

First, I am so, so sorry that I am just now replying! I thought I had it set up so I would receive notices on any replies, but apparently not.

The desktop I am using has Windows Vista. I did not use the card reader before this, as I always dumped the pictures on the computer by connecting it with the USB cord. I did try the Disk Management you suggested, but it did not register, so there was nothing displayed.

My camera was in ptp mode and I switched it to mass storage. I also tried the other recovery software and it did the same thing as Recuva does and does not recognize the card. I also did a quick format on the card when I first started trying to recover the photos.

I finally got Recuva to recognize the device and to scan the card via connecting it through the USB, but it keeps giving the error “device not ready” when I try to scan it. It does scan and show files, but when I select them and hit recover, it continues to give that error.

Thank you for all of your help and again, I sincerely apologize for such a delay in responding!!

Brooke

ETA: I've been trying to recover the files all afternoon and finally got it to scan. It found 410 files (28 ignored) and now when I try to save them, I get this error: "the wrong diskette is in the drive insert %2 (volume serial number %3) into drive %1"

I have absolutely no idea what this means or what to do with it!

8

Hi Brooke, and welcome back. :)

No worries about the time, I'm just happy to see folk return regardless of how long it takes.

Straight off the top of my head, I've seen that error on here before but haven't yet searched for the topics containing it. I usually do that before replying but one of the other guys may remember it, and the solution, without having to search. Also to let you know that we are paying attention to you. :)

I think it has something to do with either a floppy drive or a CDROM drive, and the solution was simply to put a disk into one or the other (you may not have a floppy drive), and then carry on and see if the error returns.

Inserting a disk into the drive generating the warning also stops the error happening in future is what I vaguely remember.

Anyway, I'll have a search for that issue and come back to you, and even though my memory may be way off, you could try sticking a disk into either your floppy if you have it, or your CDROM drive/s and see what happens. Maybe a blank disk, but any if you don't have blanks.

EDIT: The only thing I've found so far is this re a Microsoft bug, which isn't very promising ...

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=28783&do=findComment&comment=235401

... but try loading the drives as suggested because even if I'm miles off you will at least eliminate that as a possible fix and in the meantime we may get some input from others.

9

Ah, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! That worked!! I put it in a disc and ran the scan again with no problem. I recovered the pictures I thought were gone forever. Seriously, THANK YOU for all of your help!! :)

10

Brilliant!!

You've made my day Brooke, and I'm so pleased you recovered your precious pics. :)

11

DennisD, I made myself an account specifically so I could come here and tell you that you are a genius. Inserting a data disc into the DVD drive solved my issue, which was the same "wrong diskette" error Brooke had.

Thanks!!

12

Hi taborj, and welcome to Piriform.

... I made myself an account specifically so I could come here ...

You have no idea how much we appreciate people who take the trouble to do that as so many folk leave us hanging after spending time trying to help them. Thank you very much.

I can't take credit for the fix, but simply remembering it is an achievement in itself for me so I'll take credit for that. :)

Pleased you got your problem sorted.