please help

[dungeon]

I bought my ps40 just before going on holiday and am
a complete beginner. I travelled home today to find that my 256mb card which was full, is empty or formatted. Have I lost everything or is there some way of recovering the images?

[James7266]

This is a tough one, and I see by the date that it might be too late with any help. I'm in school for computer networking and have learned of many software utilities that can help people who have lost something. One woman in class said that she formatted her hard drive but had forgotten to make a copy of an ongoing project of two years. The instructor mentioned a utility (you will have to hit the net to get names and reputations for these products, I don't want to recomend one as I've not tried one) that will repair the formatted hard drive to it's condition before the formatting. If you don't know, hard drives store info in little sections. Formatting marks each memory section so that it can be written over again. If that check mark is removed, you can access the info again. Your memory disk is allot like your hard drive. I believe you can get those precious memories back, but really don't have any proof.
I hope I've helped. Good luck! Jim.

[G2Jim]

I don't know specific software either, but you'll probably need to use a card reader instead of your camera for hooking up the CF card to your PC and be able to access it using any utility software. If you don't have one already, they are inexpensive and come in very handy for uploading photos to your PC or Mac.

[dungeon]

Thanks to both Jims. I have eventually tracked down software from flashcardfix.com (via webattack.com) and have recovered most images. Happy Days!