Compact Flash Help

The facts:

Canon 5d mkii

I have 3 x 16 gig cards - 2 Lexmar and 1 sandisk

1 x 8 gig sandisk

The story:

On holiday and snap off 40 shots. Next morning try to transfer from Lexmar to Mac pro laptop via soniq card reader. Doesn't work. Try connect / reconnect a few times. Put card back in camera. All shots have been deleted! (Spewing cos some good shots of fireworks on there). Try another card in reader to laptop. Still doesn't recognise cf card. Leave for a week until off holiday. Since then have snapped off a further 500 shots on the sandisk. Get home and try and load to the imac. NONE of my cards being recognised. I then think maybe it's the reader?!? (All cards and reader about 4 years old). Go buy a new reader. Come home. NONE of the cards are recognised!?! I then try 2 "windows" Laptops. NONE of the cards recognised. I managed to get photos off sandisk card thru iCapture on Apple laptop but wouldn't work on iMac.

WTF?!?

Anyone ?

Help?

Cheapest things and saving data first. Seems like it's the card reader.

Do the images show up if you put the card back in the camera?
Do you have the usb cable to plug the camera directly into your computer?

If no and no-

If you have a friend with a card reader and a different computer setup you could ask them to try.
A new card reader is a fairly cheap test.
You could try a copy shop/print shop/pc store and ask them to copy the files onto your usb stick which might be slightly more expensive depending on who you get.

If no one can read the card on different readers/pc setups you could try restoring the images yourself using one of the hundreds of undelete/restore programs out there. Last resort: Send it to data rescue professionals, this is very expensive and only go down this route if your photos are extremely important (or you have tons of money). Even then there's no garuntee that they will get anything off the cards.

Do you regularly format your cards in camera?

Thanks for the replies. As said in original thread have bought a new card reader and still have same problem. I can't get any of my cards to even detect on a computer, they don't even register as being plugged in.

And yes always reformatt in camera.

supernova74 wrote in post #18195313
Thanks for the replies. As said in original thread have bought a new card reader and still have same problem. I can't get any of my cards to even detect on a computer, they don't even register as being plugged in.

And yes always reformatt in camera.

How many GB are your cards? Does the issue only occur on cards larger than 128GB?
Try this on your macs: click Finder-Preferences-General, then check the 'External disks' item. Switch to Sidebar tab, and check 'External disks' item for Devices.
Try using the Canon software Digital Photo Professional or Imagebrowser from the canon website and see if they can find the cards.
I don't know if it is possible to update your USB drivers on mac, but on PC you can download them from the laptop/motherboard manufacturers website, might be worth a shot.

DesolateMirror wrote in post #18195631
How many GB are your cards? Does the issue only occur on cards larger than 128GB?
Try this on your macs: click Finder-Preferences-General, then check the 'External disks' item. Switch to Sidebar tab, and check 'External disks' item for Devices.
Try using the Canon software Digital Photo Professional or Imagebrowser from the canon website and see if they can find the cards.
I don't know if it is possible to update your USB drivers on mac, but on PC you can download them from the laptop/motherboard manufacturers website, might be worth a shot.

Unless one is using a "tower" Mac and has installed a third party card, the "manufacturer" is apple and all drivers come with the system software.

Also, this issue of mac incompatibility with large drives died many years ago ... I'm assuming that's what you are referring to with the "larger than 128" comment.


Supernova only other thing that comes to mind is to do a reset on the camera ... maybe it is the issue?

Yes I am thinking he camera is the issue. How does one do a reset?

it might be a hardware issue on the camera... I'd be checking for bent pins.

joeseph wrote in post #18198864
it might be a hardware issue on the camera... I'd be checking for bent pins.

Do this on every device you have where a card can plug in. Use a bright light as the pins are well into the socket on a camera, and depending on the quality the reader. There is a case somewhere on the web of an individual that had a bad pin hole on the card, and virtually every device he had got a bent pin on insertion.