xD Card reading problem

[lydia]

Hi,

I have an xD card full of pictures, but it cannot be read either from my computer or my camera now. It happened when I took it out of my camera and inserted into my computer and tried to upload my picutres. My computer could not recognize the disk. When I tried to put it back my camera, my camera could not recognize it either and asked me to format the disk. I don't want to format the disk because it has a lot of very valuable pictures I just took recently. Can anybody help me?

Thanks in advance!

Lydia

[kidscruff]

The newer XD cards (Type "M" or "H" will be printed on the card) have problems being read by older card readers. Also, the reader might corrupted the XD card, so that the camera thinks it needs to be formatted. DON'T format your card yet...

By the way, to overcome this in future keep the XD card inside your camera, and use the USB cable to connect the camera to the computer.

this thread might help:
http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23690

Also this thread links to free data recovery software:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1024&message=19103496

Or you could try:
http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/smartrecovery.html

I've not used any of these, just found them by searching google and camera forums.

One thing I WOULD advise: these programs will most likely ask for the drive with your "lost" photos... DON'T use the card reader. Instead use the camera + USB cable as this should hopefully be able to access the lost data.

Good luck. Oh, and you should always format the card using the camera, not a computer.

[tim11]

If neither the computer nor the camera can read the card, the problem is very likely the card itself. You can confirm this by using it with another camera; if you have access to one.
What you can try is dipping a cotton bud into cleaning fluid, I'd use methylated spirit, then gently cleaning all contact points. Wait for a few minutes to dry and hope it works.