Corrupted data on xD card

[clarence_holland]

<p>As some of you (may) know, I use xD cards in my Olympus cameras. Well, I took some shots on a 2GB card; and was able to download successfully some of them. I left the window open on one PC with the images in memory; while I started work on my second PC (Linux). Both PCs are located on the same computer workstation. I believe I somehow hit the keyboard of the first machine with the second, and whatever that key combination was, it caused me to lose format or partition information on my xD card. Now, I can no longer retrieve my images; nor can I format the Xd card. Under Windows Disk Management, it shows the xD card as having a healthy partition, but also has hatch lines through the visual of the card. When I try to reformat my card; I get an error message that says that Windows cannot complete the formatting operation. I was going to try to reformat the card; and then run photo recovery software, but that is not an option (since I can't complete a format). I am curious if you know how I could force a format on the card, and/or recover the images ??? Nor can I format the card in the camera. (It would be a shame to lose a good 2 GB card, but I would no longer trust it anyway. What I want to do is learn from this problem and how to deal with it if it happens again; especially in a field situation.)<br>

Thanks in advance for any feedback and suggestions.</p>

 

[craighagan]

<p>First off, it sounds like you may well have a corrupt card. I'd recommend<br>

that you first pull off whatever you can get, then replace the card.<br>

I'd use your linux box for this work.</p>

<p>Step 1 is to save a working image of the card for processing. DD the card to one or more files (or whatever you can get), this will give you something to work with. You may need to play games with the dd command (noerrors, seek, skip, etc)<br>

to get all of the data.</p>

<p>Next, dig up a copy of magicrescue http://www.student.dtu.dk/~s042078/magicrescue/ and run it<br>

against those dd'ed files. It should be able to pull out your jpegs.</p>

<p>After this, try using linux to zero, partition, and format the card:</p>

<p>zero: dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/do/raw/card<br>

to mess with the partition table on the card: fdisk /path/to/raw/card<br>

format: mkfs.vfat / mkdosfs /path/to/first card partiton (or you can just hit the entire device, not sure what windows will like)</p>

<p> </p>

[clarence_holland]

<p>Craig,</p>

<p>Many thanks for your very helpful answer. I really appreciate your taking the time to respond as a member of the photo community.</p>

<p>Clarence</p>