corrupt 8gb sandisk extreme - no answer in search

Hi All

I borrowed a friends 8gb sandisk extreme III for a holiday. When about 1/2 to 2/3 full the camera gave an error (I think err 02) and said please format corrupt etc.

I have tried zero assumption recovery and a couple of others with no luck

I think my problem is that the card is showing up as 2gb instead of 8gb.

In the dos program photorec it has a note saying drive size must be accurate for recovery to work

Anyway to rectify this. Any idea why it has happened?

Camera and reader worked fine with another card straight after and lightroom 3 managed to get about a 3rd of the photos off the corrupt card

Thanks for any advise

This in your 40D? Try the various programs recommended here?

Is it a legitimate card?

JonSC wrote in post #10895103
Is it a legitimate card?

As far as I know my mates had it for a while. I was showing heaps of photos left when the card corrupted. so I reckon its safe to assume is a genuine 8gb card

I've tried a few programs from that list. I'll try some more

both programs I've tried don't produce a list of recovered files at the end

This is most likely from formatting/using the card in a system which is not capable of the FAT32 allocation. This will commonly occur when using the card in a FAT32-capable device after it's been used in a device capable of only FAT16. This is not the only possible explanation, however.

The card should be fine in your 40D. Format it in-camera, and it should offer the full 8GB of capacity. I'm using two 8GB and one 16GB cards in my 40D with no troubles whatsoever.
If the camera cannot format to the full capacity of 8GB(actually, slightly less), the card may be at fault or defective.

First thing I'd do is create an image of the card, as-is. Now I'm not sure how you'd go about this on Windows, you'll have to find some utility I guess, but on Linux or OSX you could use the dd command to create a 8GB file that replicates the data on the card exactly. That way if your recovery methods stuff the card up then you could probably image it back and start again.

Then you could try simply re-creating the partition table but not formatting or altering the data and see if you can read the contents.

Good luck, I hope you get your holiday photos back!

edit: On and FYI, I had a 16GB (Kingston) card do this consistently in a 20D, also with an err02. Some free recovery utility did get my photos back (an open-source Linux app, so not much use to Windows users sorry).

phreeky wrote in post #10897227
First thing I'd do is create an image of the card, as-is. Now I'm not sure how you'd go about this on Windows, you'll have to find some utility I guess, but on Linux or OSX you could use the dd command to create a 8GB file that replicates the data on the card exactly. That way if your recovery methods stuff the card up then you could probably image it back and start again.

Then you could try simply re-creating the partition table but not formatting or altering the data and see if you can read the contents.

Good luck, I hope you get your holiday photos back!

edit: On and FYI, I had a 16GB (Kingston) card do this consistently in a 20D, also with an err02. Some free recovery utility did get my photos back (an open-source Linux app, so not much use to Windows users sorry).

Cheers, time for some googling on how to img a CF card

Any more solutions?

Sandisk Rescue Pro has worked for me in similar situations.

snj1013 wrote in post #10911365
Sandisk Rescue Pro has worked for me in similar situations.

even when the capacity is wrong. i.e.8gb card coming up as 2gb. how did you fix this?

nathan96 wrote in post #10911383
even when the capacity is wrong. i.e.8gb card coming up as 2gb. how did you fix this?

use rescue pro to get all of the pics off of the card then use your camera to reformat or use your computer making sure that you have format set to FAT32.

Done and Done.

But not with resuce pro just multiple other recovery software programs.

Reformats as 2gb with fat32

I have even used DOS type program Ranish to delete 2GB partition then reformat. But it reformats as 2GB not 8GB. Disk manager wont let me create a partition bigger than 2GB

I think there might be a hardware issue. (i.e. warranty or bin)

Probably not, just Windows poor handling of disk management - it forces limitations on removable devices, in fact.

- Download Ubuntu LiveCD
- Boot off it (i.e. "Try", not "Install")
- Insert CF card
- Go to the Ubuntu partition manager
- Select the CF card (i.e. don't destroy your computers hard drive!)
- Fix the cards partitions

phreeky wrote in post #10911812
Probably not, just Windows poor handling of disk management - it forces limitations on removable devices, in fact.

- Download Ubuntu LiveCD
- Boot off it (i.e. "Try", not "Install")
- Insert CF card
- Go to the Ubuntu partition manager
- Select the CF card (i.e. don't destroy your computers hard drive!)
- Fix the cards partitions

cheers

Will give that a go and report back

There are known problems with some of these cards. I had one replaced by Sandisk.

Even though my mate reckons he got it from a good source am now going down the lines of a good FAKE. I'll need to ring him and double check where he got it from.

A lot of things that the "spot a fake" websites say to look at check out on this card but.
(a) the X in extreme isn't long enough.
(b) The ESP technology bit is too small
(c) the 8GB bit is in the wrong font
(d) No serial number on bottom!!!

(d) should have trigged me off earlier but I had never really noticed that my genuine cards all have serial numbers on them. And it doesn't look like the white serial number can be rubbed off from wear and tear

So looks like I have some bad news for my mate...

I'll put some photos up of the card later