Compact Flash Card Not Reading & Can't reformat

I have a 512MB Compact flash card. It was working fine in the camera and i put it in my card reader to transfer the photos. I copied the photos i wanted successfully and put the card back in the camera.

From that point on the camera would not read the card. I then put the card in the reader again and the pc said the card was not formatted. I tried formatting the card and the pc wouldn't let me. Tried to format the card using the camera and got the same response.

Tried using one type of data recovery program (Flash File Recovery) and it didn't seem to do anything. (Not sure if it is a dodgy program)

Any ideas?

What did the PC respond for an error message? What was the response from the camera?

---Bob Gross---

At work so haven't got my camera with me. But when i first click on the flash card drive it says:
'The disk in drive G: is not formatted. Do you want to format now?'

After clicking 'Yes'

I get:

'The disk in drive G: cannot be formatted.

I don't understand when you say you click on it in the camera.

With the card in the camera, go to the menu for format and format the card. If it won't, tell us what it says at that point.

I believe that the card must be formatted by the camera before anything else.

Sorry, posting as i work.

Using the card in a multi card reader with Windows XP. Trying to open it in My Computer. Wasn;t in the camera at that stage.

When i put the card in the camera the menu that has the format option in isn't available. Seems to be greyed out.

Do you have another cf card to try and see if it can be formatted?

This sounds similar to the problem I had a week ago and reported here.

While in use, the camera had a problem writing to the CF card ("CF err"). When I got the CF card home to the card reader, I was able to recover the image files using a file recovery program. Then I tried to do a complete format in the computer, and it said it could not be formatted. Then I put the CF card back into the camera, and it was able to quick format there. Go figure. Then I put the CF card back to the computer, and it was able to do a complete format. Go figure. Then I put it back to the camera and did a quick format again, so now it is clean and ready to go.

You should not have to do any complete format in the computer unless you are having problems, but I cannot explain why a quick format in the camera will work in that situation. If neither one will work, then the CF card is probably doomed.

---Bob Gross---