I need help!

Okay, so today I shot pictures for the school yearbook. got some of the best off of the computer, and edited them. BUT, when I tried to transfer it over to their (Dinosaur) computer, it wouldnt recognize it, so I figured I could just pull it out.
PROBLEM! now every computer I stick it in says

"You need to format the disk in drive __ before you can use it" and the camera basically
says the same thing. I have tried a couple recovery programs I found here, (FreeUndelete, ADRC, and I think there could have been another I tried) But, they seem to be looking for deleted files on a readable card.

Can anyone help me? I think it may have other shots on it that were good too...

It is a PNY 32GB SDHC card, by the way.

Thanks so much!

Did you keep the originals on your computer? I'd hope so, but you never know...

Was the school computer a different OS from yours? An old one? Details?

tonylong wrote in post #14251592
Did you keep the originals on your computer? I'd hope so, but you never know...

Was the school computer a different OS from yours? An old one? Details?

I kept the originals of those, but there were more pictures than that.

The OS is Windows XP on the old computer (Suspect it was originally a Windows 98, Vaio brand) but my computer is a Windows 7.

Are you using an external card reader or built in readers. If it's a built in reader on the old computer it most likely won't recognize the newer sd card.

Worst case scenario, pull the files through data recovery software. I just had to do that the other day, and it was a pain, but it got the job done.

Any luck? I'm hoping you have the important stuff backed up on your computer...... Shooting with a camera that can write to two cards is beyond a good idea when doing hired work IMO.

brokensocial wrote in post #14254801
Worst case scenario, pull the files through data recovery software. I just had to do that the other day, and it was a pain, but it got the job done.

Can you reccomend one? All the ones I tried were for getting deleted files off readable cards; I have an unreadable card.

jra wrote in post #14257554
Any luck? I'm hoping you have the important stuff backed up on your computer...... Shooting with a camera that can write to two cards is beyond a good idea when doing hired work IMO.

Nope, no luck so far... I wish I could afford one with dual card slots; It wasnt a paid gig, It is a very small church school (I homeschool as a satelite off of them, wish I was close enough to go there.)

Martin55 wrote in post #14259225
Did you keep the originals on your computer? I'd hope so, but you never know

| Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Yes, of the school photos; However, there were other pictures on there as well! I am not sure what, but I'd sure like them back!

First thing you do after a shoot: Copy EVERYTHING off of the cards to your computer. Preferably to more than one location.

I didnt lose the files from the shoot; not the good ones, anyways. they are now on two computers and a CD.

Always format before every shoot if you already are not. It forces a good habit of ingesting and organizing and also prevents catastrophic data losses if you have not ingested in a long time. I know people who only shoot on 8 gig cards and swap them out so that if they lose something it isn't that big of a deal.

While I appreciate tips on how to store data, and how to safeguard it, can anyone help me with retrieving the data that is on this card?

At this stage you just might be out of luck. Try formatting the card then running the recovery software. At this point I don't really think you have much to loose.

Numenorean wrote in post #14260234
First thing you do after a shoot: Copy EVERYTHING off of the cards to your computer. Preferably to more than one location.

This is second nature to me. After I copy them to the hard drive I then copy them to a backup drive. I never have a problem with missing photos due to data corruption. The only problem I have is I have digital photos dating back to 2002 and 35mm scans now that date back to the 80's. Cataloging everything is my next task.

I had the same thing happen to me when I did Yearbook last year. Their computers are also Jurassic (WinXP Pentium 4 and 512MB RAM to be exact) but that's besides the point. I stuck my CF card into one of their CF readers and it wouldn't recognize it so I pulled it out, but then it would then give me the error message on all computers.

I *think* I somehow got rid of the problem by sticking the SD card back into the camera and fiddling around with some files (example: delete a bad photo or take a new photo) before getting it working on a my Win7 laptop. But of course, this is what I *think* happened, no guarantees. But I guess it's worth a try if you haven't reformatted your card yet.

Also, this may sound "sooo-1990s" but maybe you can take a look at the SD contacts, although the percent chance of a problem arising from that is near 0.00001%. I once pulled out an old SD card and put in into my camera which gave me a read-error message. Pulled it out, cleaned the contacts, and voila. Maybe the card could have accumulated dust while in the jurassic computer...

Sorry if none of these helps. Hate it when the card fouls up on you. Good luck.