Compact Flash Cards or CF cards are used as storage devices primarily on digital cameras and DSLRs. Most of the prized shots you capture using your camera stored on these little pieces of technical brilliance. So if disaster strikes your CF card and you lose the pictures from it, you could end up losing memories of a life-event, your contract with a client, even your job. Okay, that’s taking it a bit over-the-top, but the situation of this poor guy sounds quite disturbing too: “I have a CF card for my Nikon digital camera, but today I inserted the card in my new Canon digital camera and used it to take some pictures. When I inserted the CF card into the Canon camera, it could be recognised and started working regularly. However, all of a sudden when I was taking photos the camera shut down.

On restarting the camera, it says the memory card is corrupted and cannot be accessed. To check if it is possible to copy all files stored on the card, I inserted it into my computer running Windows 7, but my computer says it cannot access the card. I’m in the panic! Is there any way I can reclaim the photos already stored on it?” The answer to such kind of queries is – Yes you can! In this guide we’ve compiled some great ways in which you can; and since we’re considerate, we’ve thrown in some information on CF card data loss in general as well. So read on and explore!

Reasons for CF card corruption There could be several reasons behind your CF card becoming corrupt or inaccessible. Two primary ones are:. Physical damage to the card.

Logical injury or corruption of the card Physical damage can be irreparable at times and is usually caused by the breaking of the card or magnetic damage to it. Logical damage is mostly repairable, and there are plenty of ways to recover data from CF cards in its case. But before we go to that, it is important to understand what can cause logical corruption so that if possible, the risk factors can be avoided in the future. A CF card can become logically corrupt if:. You remove the card during a file transfer process.

Virus / malware infects the card. You use the card on multiple devices and operating systems Easy ways to recover photos from corrupt CF card We’ve classified the ways to recover CF card data into three broad categories. Here they are with detailed descriptions: 1.Using native utilities like CHKDSK The CHKDSK utility is quite powerful in repairing corrupt partition tables. Hence if executed on an inaccessible CF card, it will at least be able to make the card visible to the computer in which it is inserted.

After that, you can recover the data using any of the methods mentioned subsequently. To recover partition tables on the CF card, use the command: chkdsk g: /f /r /x Here ‘g:’ denotes the drive letter assigned to the card (so you should replace it with the one assigned your machine. A word of caution – Using commands like these to fix partition tables might be risky since they are ultimately intended to make changes to the MFT and File Allocation Table. So this step should be avoided if you don’t have a full backup of the data on the card or else you might eliminate whatever chances of data recovery you have. Free Open Source CF Card Recovery Tools They have their plus points and performs to a different level of satisfaction. The free utilities also have drawbacks associated with it. Few are entirely command prompt based, so non-technical users might have a hard time using them.

Plus in some cases, they fail to recognise a corrupt card despite it showing up on “My Computer” as a non-formatted drive. So it doesn’t work in situations where the card’s file system is corrupt.

Plus, it can’t pull off data from severely corrupted CF cards. Paid CF Card Recovery Tools By far the safest, most accurate way to recover data from corrupted / damaged / inaccessible CF cards is through a premium CF card recovery tool like. This tool works and does a commendable job of recovering lost or deleted photos, videos and audio files with their original names. Since the tool has a highly interactive GUI, even non-technical users can use it easily as follows:. Connect the CF card to computer. Launch Stellar Photo Recovery Software. Click on the required file formats from What to Recover window.

In the next screen, select location from which you want to recover Photos and click on Scan. A dialog box of ‘Scanning Completed Successfully!’ appears. In the left-pane of main window, all the found files and folders are listed. The bottom-right pane lists the files stored in the selected folder. Select a file and preview in the right pane.

Select the desired files and choose Recover and then Save option Final Words There you go. As promised, that’s everything you need to know about CF card recovery.

Hope you never have to resort to it, but if you do, excellent CF card recovery tools would be your best bet. Also, read about.

Hi Sumona I was downloading about 20 CR2 (raw) images from a 16gb cf card in a card reader when the download stopped after three image transfers and my Windows 7 pc told me I had to reformat the card if I wanted to proceed and then failed to recognize the device. After searching the internet for a solution I came across the Stellar recovery software and installed it. When I ran the s/w for the first time it said the estimated recovery time was 58hours! I left it running all day and it still had only searched 5% of the cf card. I quit the program and restarted setting options for recovering raw images only.

Still the same estimate. After leaving overnight only 20% had been searched so I abandoned again. Can you please advise.me on how to proceed.

I look forward to your response. Many thanks, Andrew Winfield (UK).

Hi Sumona, I highly appreciate your efforts of helping people with your great knowledge about the data recovery. I also seek your help regarding my corrupt CF card of 128GB by Lexar. I accidentally inserted my card into the camera when its battery was low and it started showing to format the card as it wasn’t readable by the camera. I tried connecting it with my macbook but it doesn’t show up there.

But it does appear in disk utility. I tried stellar trial softare to recover the data but after the scan it shows that no files were there to recover. Also the scan gets completed in few seconds and i have 100 GB of data approx in the card. Please help me out.

AppleXsoft SD Card Recovery is also a CF card recovery software for Mac OS X 10.4 or higher. It is designed to recover photo images that were corrupted, accidentally deleted or formatted from your CF Card (Compact Flash Card) effectively. It can also recover other files from the SD Card, such as video, HD video, RAW images, music, documents and so on. There are many CF Card brands including Kingston, Sony, SanDisk, KingMax, Samsung, Canon etc. Each CF card manufacturer may have different series, e.g. SanDisk has a series of CF cards including Extreme I, II, III, IV, Ultra I and II, Standard. AppleXsoft CF Card Recovery supports all CF card brands and types in the market.

Mac CF card recovery will never write to your CF card during the recovery process, so it's really safe to use. Download Free Evaluation Version to scan your CF card and see the recoverable photos or other files. Things to keep in mind: Most cameras don't ease the photos and files completely from your camera's CF card on deletion or formatting.

In most cases only file names and file properties are erased, while your photos and data may still remain in the card. AppleXsoft Mac CF card recovery software can still recover your data from your camera's CF card.

Keep in mind, the less actions you do with the CF card you are going to recover your data from, the higher the recovery chances are. As soon as a file is accidentally deleted, or you discover any missing, do NOT save any more files to that CF card; otherwise you may overwrite your files. If you simply erased photos on your CF card right from your camera, Using this software you'll almost certainly be able to recover them! Please follow these steps to complete your CF Card recovery on Mac:. Step 1: Connect your camera or card-reader Connect the digital camera to your Mac computer with the USB cable that came with the camera. If you have a CF card reader, place the CF card into a card reader connected to your Mac.

Note: You may also need a card reader If your camera cannot appear in the Drive list. Step 2: Launch Program Double-click the program icon from application folder to run CF Card Recovery software. Step 3: Select the drive letter, file types or camera brand. Select the target device which contains your CF card. Choose your camera brand (Optional) and file types (image/video/audio/office/document/text and etc).

All types are selected by default. It is recommended to select only the file type you need to reduce the time of scan.

Step 4: Select a path to save the recovered files. Click the Options icon in the tool bar to select a path to save the recovered files, the default is set to save the recovered files in the user's home folder. Notes: To avoid possibly overwriting, do NOT take more pictures on the same CF card before you recover them. All recovered files must be saved to another storage device or another drive letter in the system. Do not select your CF Card as the destination, as this will destroy the data on the CF Card and it will not be recoverable!. Step 5: Scan your CF card. Click 'Start Scan.'

The software will automatically scan the CF card you have selected on Step 3. It will list the photos and files it finds during scanning. And save them to the location you specified on Step 4. The software support display all the recovered photos in thumbnails mode. Also, you may know the estimated completion time and sector number it scanned, and the number of found files from the interface. Step 6: Complete the Recovery.

Sd Card Recovery Software Mac

When the scan is completed, you will get a scan completed message dialog box. Go to destination folder to view recovered files. You get back your lost files! As you can see, Mac SD Card Recovery is incredibly easy and doesn't require any advanced knowledge of data recovery skills. Using CF Card recovery is secure and risk-free.

The software performs read-only operation on your CF Card, and saves the recovered photos and files to your hard drive. It is safe and easy. Are my lost photos from CF Card recoverable?

If your data is not overwritten, usually can be restored. It is recommended to of Mac CF Card Recovery software to see if your lost photos are found. It may just take a few minutes. What is a CF Card? A CF card (Compact flash card) is a popular memory card invented by SanDisk that uses flash memory to store data on a very small card. CF cards are most commonly used for storing photos in digital cameras, but are also used in devices such as Tablet PCs, cellular phones, and portable music players.

Data Recovery Sd Card Mac

CF cards originally could only store a few megabyes of data, but now can store several GB. The new CF+ standard can store a possible 137 GB of data.