Help Help Help!

[sacbee]

Bad time stikes everybody, this time it was my turn. Suddenly my 2 GB

Hitachi microdrive stopped responding and my 20D LCD was blinking with

"CF Error". Worse part was this happened after 2 days of photographing

during my vacation. My obvious question is how on earth I can get

back my images? Even my card reader (Lexar) is unable to read the

card. I'm keeping my fingers crossed with the ache in the heart for

your responses. Is there any way I can get them back?

 

My next question is "Which one to buy next?". Now I've realized the 2

1gig cards are better than 1 2gig card. But which one is more

reliable and fast?

[jimstrutz]

This, I think, is the big problem with Microdrives. With CF cards, a file recovery program nearly always restores things, but if your Microdrive catastrophically fails, what can you do? I have had one CF card fail completely, and was not able to be ever used again, but generally that's not the case with them. Microdrives are usually quite reliable, and I do have a 4GB Hitachi, but what happens if it's full of important images when it dies?

 

I know there are data recovery services available, but spending $1000 to get the images back kind of defeats the savings made on the purchase. On the other hand if a CF card fails catastrophically, even the data recovery options are unable to help at all. I guess there is nothing truely secure in this business.

 

Sorry, Sachin, other than spending a fortune with a data recovery service I have no help for you - just a rant.

[rainer_t]

Sachin,

 

A question arises when I read your post...

 

Was that microdrive working ok with that Lexar reader?

 

I ask because microdrives need more energy than flashcards do,

and most of these small reader supply themselves from USB, and

eventually this reader was connected to a 4-port-usb-hub,

that itself get supplied from USB, so that at the end of the

chain, there is not enough energy left for the microdrive to

work properly.

 

I have no microdrive, but I have seen this with a small 40Gig USB disk

that would usually work of with energy from USB but in some cases requires an additional power supply. (In my case, when I try to run

it on a 4-port-usb-hub or on a notebook).

 

So in case the microdrive had not worked with the Lexar reader

(or was never tested with it) try it on other readers that you have access to.

 

Should you get access to the drive do not make any attempts to

write the drive. I wouldn't even do a checkdisk/scandisk first place. In principle the best move would be to try to make a physical copy of the drive (to write an image of it to disk) to save the condition it

is actually in. From there, attempts to repair could be done.

 

Good luck.

 

Rainer

[rainer_t]

Sachin,

 

I think I have to make this a bit more precise:

 

Have your microdrive worked with the Lexar reader before it (the microdrivce) failed? (Because as you write ... it doesn't work with it now).

 

Rainer

[sacbee]

Hi Rainer,

 

Thanks for your response. Yes! before the failure of the mircrodrive, it was working well with the reader, I used to transfer my pictures using the same reader. Well now I've fixed the problem and would like to share some of the misconceptions I had and what I learnt with others.

 

1. In most cases when a microdrive gets corrupted, it is not really damaged. Its just that its file system gets concked up. A format will solve the problem.

 

2. But formatting "MAY" destroy the photographs. So its better you use "Photorescue" (perhaps a very reliable tool with an easy interface) to backup your photographs. I tried someother tools also, but nothing comes close to this one. The best part is you can see the thumbnails of your pictues when its recovering, this kind of builds up your confidence that you can recover your pictures.

 

3. Remember: You need to have a full version for saving the pictures, demo version just displays the thumbnails. ("PC Inspector smart recovery" couldnt recover any of my RAW files). One more thing I observed when recovering pictures was that the photorescue tool could even recover some pictures which I had taken long time ago and I had formatted the card before. Thats the reason I had enclosed MAY within quotes in point 2.

 

4. Once the photographs are transferred, shove the mircodrive in the camera's slot and format it. I had thought that camera can never access the microdrive, but thats not the case, it can recognize the file system, but it can format the drive. So formatting should fix the problem and get the smile back on your face.

 

5. You'll learn something when bad things strikes you.

 

cheers,

Sachin

[david_lau3]

"You'll learn something when bad things strikes you"

 

I can't resist to say that many had mentioned in their posts here - to avoid microdrive as they are mechanical devices and therefore less reliable than CF cards. Unfortunately not everyone listens.