Memory cards - help

[Khia]

Hi there,

I currently have a Canon EOS 300D - with a SanDisk Ultra II Compact Flash 15MB/s - 2GB

Now, I'm having some issues with this memory card and another... there was a beautiful storm brewing so I grabbed the camera and took some photos. They were there on the camera in the memory card, but when I put the memory card in the computer it says......

"you need to format the disk in drive I: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?"

So I tried everything to get it to work before I formatted it, tried the laptop and another computer. But kept saying the same thing :( So I formatted the disk and lost my photos.... then thought the memory cards were fine... went on a holiday, came home, put the memory card in the computer and wham.... it happens again!!!!!!!!!! I'm so sad, because I will now loose those photos too.

Does anyone know why the 2 memory cards are doing this? Is it the camera, the cards or me?

Your help would be greatly appreciated :)

[davsv1]

You can try software recovery on a formatted card, you should be able to bring back most of the images if the card is not completely corrupt . Then I would try a new card assuming your second card is as old as your first ( being it is only 2 gig I assume it is quite old) and if a new card works, toss the other two. Also you can try connecting the camera to your computer and reading the card through that rather than a card reader.

[ameerat42]

There has been a recent thread about a similar card problem, this one:
http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?104461-cf-card-prob

Have a read to see if anything is helpful.

Now to your problem:
1. Did you try to connect the camera to your computer via a USB cable instead of putting the card into the reader?
This will double check whether the card itself is at fault. You need to know this before you proceed.

2. Have you already formatted (I hope not!) the card?
If you have, then like Davsv1 said, you will have to try to recover any data you can from it.

Let us know when you can.
Am.

[Khia]

Thank you for your help. I have tried to locate the cable for the camera to computer and I can't find it. I'm going to take it Ted's Camera and see if they can fix it for me.

Cheers anyway
Khia