OK, this is serious !!!

Canon 7D using a SanDisk 16 GB Extreme UDMA card ..... shot all day while travelling.. Now in a Motel in Moscow, Idaho and went to put card in card reader and plugged into my laptop and it says that it can't recognize card, it must be formatted before use - do I want to format card? *** Hell no! *** ... I put it back in the camera and tried to pull up pics, and I get "Card cannot be accessed - change card or format card with camera."

I had some fabulous shots today ... Is there anyone that may be able to retrieve these photos

Rick

You sure the little slider lock on the side is in the correct position?

Should have mentioned it's a CF card ..... no tab.

Oh ok. Sorry hope there is some way to save them

This happened to me years ago after a family reunion and thought all was lost. I used the sandisk rescue pro recovery software was able to recover all the images from the card.

It looks like you can download a demo of the software to see if it can recover anything before paying for it. Mine was bundled with one of my extreme cards. I bet there are other software that may be free to do the same thing.

I hope this helps and good luck recovering your images.

Try uploading directly from camera to computer, worth a try, instead of card reader.
Good Luck.

Card reader crap itself out.

Get some recovery software and you should be able to get them all. You already said your camera can't read it but just in case, don't try to shoot any more with that card and do not format it. Formatting it wouldn't be the end as long as you didn't write images on it.

I downloaded "Cardrecovery".com - it's supposed to recover corrupted image files, Including RAW (Which I shoot) - I ran it, and it only identified 2 images, both JPEG (?) ... I opened the JPEG's and they were not viewable ....(Really pixelated). I'd love to think it was the cardreader, but it won't recognize the card in the camera either...

It "MAY be as simple as a physical malfunction of the card, and not the memory ..... When I inserted the card into the reader, it was a little stiff so I pushed a little harder and then realized it was upside down... The 'reader' has pins that the card sit's on, so perhaps something physically happened in the card itself .. hopefully that's an easy fix - none of the pins are bent in the reader.

Look carefully in the camera with a bright flashlight for bent or missing pins.

You need Sandisk recovery or Lexar. They've work every very time I needed them to.

Moscow, huh? My daughter goes to school in Pullman. Spent quite sometime where you are.

When I have had cards go bad, I use "Zero Assumption Recovery" to recover the files from cards with broken formats etc.
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/
Although the software can cost money, picture recovery is a free function.

ottor wrote in post #16761535
When I inserted the card into the reader, it was a little stiff so I pushed a little harder and then realized it was upside down... The 'reader' has pins that the card sit's on, so perhaps something physically happened in the card itself .. hopefully that's an easy fix - none of the pins are bent in the reader.

That might be worse than a faulty card. You say that the card doesn't work in the reader or the camera, so it can't be a bent pin in the reader. It's possible you've broke a pin and it's stuck in the card, so I'd carefully examine the holes in the card before doing anything else.

ottor wrote in post #16761535
When I inserted the card into the reader, it was a little stiff so I pushed a little harder and then realized it was upside down... The 'reader' has pins that the card sit's on, so perhaps something physically happened in the card itself .. hopefully that's an easy fix - none of the pins are bent in the reader.

How many times has this happened, never, never use force when installing a card, be 100% sure it's always the right side up.
If the card read in the camera prior to removing it, but nothing after it was forced into the reader, or camera now. I agree with hollis_f, look at the card again. Also try another card in the camera and the reader to see if it reads a different card, it will help you understand if it's the reader / camera or card that's the problem.

I ran into this with Lexar card last summer with the exact same message. The card froze and there were no broken pins, etc. The only thing that worked was Lexar's card recovery software so like MDJACK said 3rd party probably won't work.