Help with jpg retrieval from a SD card

aprazer402

I have over 350 small jpg photos on a 4GB Lexar SD card from my Panasonic Lumix camera, which were taken in the last three days and I need them on my PC. I have used this same camera and SD card daily for maybe 10 years now, never a problem. I got a message on the camera screen "Memory Card Error Format This Card" YES or NO. Well I know better and have said NO. I have built-ins for various cards in two PC's using Windows 7, neither one will identify the card. An older PC w/Wind. XP, when using an external USB SD card reader plug-in, will name the drive as I, but when I click on it, it shows 0 for data size. I tried chkdsk /x /f I: and it would not work. I downloaded Wondershare Photo Recovery and it did not work. The Geek Squad Boys want $200.00 to start, plus I'd have to drag in a PC and no guarantees. I read about trying to get the RAW files off somehow, but IT is not my game. Any thoughts, or do I just go out for a Sunday drive and take them all over again with another camera. Thanks in advance. I'm going to get some chow, I'll be back a little later.

gurot1

Sorry I am not too helpful, but I do know there is the possibility to read the files. Years ago a memory card from camera corrupted on me. My cousin downloaded something on his Linux computer to read them and save them (my windows pc wouldn't even read anything from the card, just like your case). Unfortunately, he doesn't remember what he did. Just wanted to let you know that it is possible.

aprazer402

Well the SD card failed, I tried for hours yesterday trying to rescue the photos. So I put a new SD card in the same camera and it's been working fine all day. Word to the wise; after several thousand photos and a few years, replace the card before a failure occurs. Thanks gurot1 for your reply.

Gatecrasher

Did the flash card "fail" or is it just corrupted?

If you can re-format it you might just have a file corruption. If that was the case, you probably could have recovered the data.

aprazer402

The SD card must be bad. After I gave up trying to retrieve the photos without trying to format it, I did try and format it in the camera. When I selected the camera screen "yes" to format, after about three seconds the screen says :"Insert SD Card Again", when I take it out and push it back in it just repeats asking me to format again. All is well again, I had another brand new Lexar 4GB card I put in the camera and it worked fine all day today. The old SD has a lot of the gold? contact surface scratched off from repeatedly taking in in an out for ten years, it was time. The cards are cheap, time is money though. Thanks for asking.