As everybody else I've lost my precious pics & movs. The memory card (SD) of my camera suddenly stop working and showed a message saying that the card is not formatted and offered the option of formating it.
I have many pics & movies in this 4gb SD card. I've installed Recuva and it found all "My Documents" (Hard Drive) files but not those in the SD card. Actually when I click on scan it says "Unable to read boot sector"
I'm not much into computers so solving this problem is a challenge for me. Of course I want to recover those precious files.
I have used Recuva before without a problem. Tonight I transferred some videos off of my camera SD card to my desktop and when I went to use the camera again, I was asked if I wanted to format the card. I wouldn't answer! It wouldn't stop asking and when I put the card in my computer and tried to open it, I was told that the card could not be read. I went to Recuva to see if the pix were gone and/or could be recovered and I received a message that said "unable to read boot sector". I have no idea what that means for the future of my pix! I will mention that I used the card yesterday at Walmart to make some prints and it worked fine.
Recuva needs a drive with a valid partition table which is why you get "unable to read boot sector".
There are no freeware tools to handle drives of these type however the current version of DiskDigger allows 1 file at a time recovery (version 0.8.3.176 had no such restrictions).
Just a side remark (maybe off-topic ? if so, sorry!): You did try cleaning the SD cards connectors and/or did try another reader?
I?ve had a similar problem once; fortunately, everything worked again after blowing out the camera?s card slot and cleaning the card?s contacts (carefully!). Phew. Just sometimes it?s only the contacts, or a defective card reader. If you?re lucky.
To easily determine if your camera or card reader is broken, you can test with another (empty) card: Format it in the camera, take some dummy shots, and try reading those into your PC. If this fails, try swapping the card reader against another that you know works (lent from a friend maybe).
If you?re a very knowledgeable Linux user (or know such a person), it might also be possible to copy the raw data off the card (using tools like dd and dd_rescue), and try restoring your files from the copy.
Well, while I didn't actually "clean" the card-afraid to use any chemicals on it-I noticed some grooves in the connections so I'm thinking it's gotten old and well-loved. I tried the card in a variety of other SD areas like my laptop and a few photo machines and I get either "can't read" or there's nothing there. I don't have too many photos but they're from Thanksgiving and my 79 year old mom is on them so they are precious pictures to me! I will try the upgraded version and hope it'll be able to work a miracle.