Error Message: "There is a problem with the CF card"

porter444 · Sep 26, 2011

I returned home last night from a trip where I took 500+ photos with my Canon XTi. I sat down at my computer to move the images to my computer and had a problem. When I attempted to copy the files from the CF card and paste them into a folder on my PC I started getting error messages and ultimately cancelled the paste. When I went to start over, the CF card shows as empty. When I insert it into the camera I get the following message: "There is a problem with the CF card."

I insterted another CF card into the camera and everything works fine.

My issue is that I lost all my pics from this trip! I know I can format the card and it will probably work again for new images, but I am hoping there is a way to recover the image files from the card. I am holding off on the format step as I expect it would making recovering the images impossible.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Scott

jimbotexas · Oct 18, 2011

The first thing I'd do is make darn sure your computer doesn't have a virus. As a network administrator, I would say it's very odd that the camera didn't have an issue before you tried to dump it to the PC and it makes me think a virus tried to write the boot sector. The bad news is that I have not yet found a good utility to recover files from a CF card.

bogeyguy · Oct 18, 2011

You maybe able to get a recovery software disc from the CF manufacturer.

Derrel · Oct 18, 2011

jimbotexas said:
The first thing I'd do is make darn sure your computer doesn't have a virus. As a network administrator, I would say it's very odd that the camera didn't have an issue before you tried to dump it to the PC and it makes me think a virus tried to write the boot sector. The bad news is that I have not yet found a good utility to recover files from a CF card.

SanDisk, the memory card manufacturer, gave away RecuePRO with all of its better CF Cards for several years. I've used it several times to recover files from CF Cards. Works quite well. Maybe they are still bundling it with CF cards...not sure...