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Thread ID: 147841 2019-05-09 02:03:00 photos unavialable Laggard (17509) Press F1
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1460577 2019-05-09 02:03:00 I have found I have been using an unformatted SD Card, and cannot download camera photos. I looked on line for a free-ware solution and found myself surrounded by a lot of deceptive marketing! You Tube is not much better, from some of the feedback.

So does anyone know of a free-ware solution that is not going to scam you?
Laggard (17509)
1460578 2019-05-09 02:21:00 Are you sure it's unformatted? can you view the photos on the camera? If so it's formatted. If not there are no photos to retrieve.

A bit more detail would be useful, are you trying to read the photos directly from the camera with a cable or taking the card out and using a card reader?
Whichever one, try the other method. Not all card readers can read all card formats, and some cameras might use a file system that some OSes can't read directly but will generally work over a cable.
dugimodo (138)
1460579 2019-05-09 03:00:00 Unformated errors can mean its unreadable, ie faulty . Not allways though.

If it was unformated , camera wouldnt have been able to save any photos to it. In that case there is nothing to try & recover
Seems unlikey , surely the cam would give a error ,re unformatted card while trying to save phots

It could be faulty , or corrupt . If faulty you are out of luck , unless you spend $500+ to have it looked at by specialists


I have used photorec with success . Its free , but old and has some quirks .
www.cgsecurity.org

Most of the "free" software isnt free
And often they wont state that you have to pay to actually recover the data untill after youve run it. Ive tried plenty of free card recovery software in the past, they all only recovered a few files for free
or would just show whats recoverable and then you'd have to pay for full functionality .

Here some software to try. Assume its not free till proven otherwise .
www.lifewire.com
1101 (13337)
1460580 2019-05-09 03:16:00 Ive also used EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover , but hit the 500M free limit . That should get at least something off . 1101 (13337)
1460581 2019-05-09 05:55:00 I can see the photos in the camera, but XP tells me the card is not formatted, and do I want to format it now? Laggard (17509)
1460582 2019-05-09 06:30:00 I can see the photos in the camera, but XP tells me the card is not formatted, and do I want to format it now? That could be the problem - XP, it may not be able to read the Drive. DONT format it what ever you do you will then lose any photos.
If you dont have any newer Computer with a Newer OS, you can always boot from a Linux Live CD, that should read the drive, you can then copy them to another external Drive or directly to the XP drive. Its a little bit different in folder layout with Linux compared to XP, but do-able. :)
wainuitech (129)
1460583 2019-05-09 06:46:00 Thanks Wainui,
I'll use our laptop.
Laggard (17509)
1460584 2019-05-09 08:13:00 If you need to run data recovery software, the one 1101 linked -- Have used in the past as well.

There are others that are free -- www.ccleaner.com

One that is Really good, But the Free is limited to 2GB of recovery. https://www.xboft.com/

Just how Good ?? The partition on a SD card was showing as RAW - windows asked to format ( big no-no)

Well as we know when you delete a file its not really gone, recovered twice the actual storage amount of the actual card, it recovered all the pictures as well as ones that had been over written. (although somewhat damaged)
wainuitech (129)
1460585 2019-05-09 13:32:00 Thanks Wainui
I was able to download to the W10 laptop, that will do for now. I shall probably start using Linex on another computer I have,(it's quite a bit newer) and gradually migrate to that.
Laggard (17509)
1460586 2019-05-09 22:13:00 I can see the photos in the camera, but XP tells me the card is not formatted, and do I want to format it now?

Is the SD card a newer, higher capacity SD card and the card reader an oldish one? If thats the case, upgrade your card reader and it should work fine.
autechre (266)
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