[snazzy127]

Hello everyone,
I had bought what I thought was a 4GB SD card for my Pentax camera. As I was using it, after about 200 photos, I suddenly got a "Memory Card Error" and could not read the pictures from my camera on my camera or on my computer using my memory card reader. Long story short, I found out that someone had run a compression program on a 1GB card to make it have the capacity of a 4GB memory card. The last photo I took I guess wrote over the functional memory of the card and thus left it 'unreadable'. I've tried running a bunch of photo recovery programs to recover my photos and have had no luck. I don't want to format my card for fear of loosing my photos due to the fact that the card was already 'tampered' with. Anyways, any help/thoughts/ideas on how to recover my photos would be greatly appreciated ... I'd like to try it myself if I can before going to a professional and shelling out a bunch of money. Thanks in advance.
snazzy127

[kiwiguy]

Something here sounds odd, because camera image files cannot be "compressed", and to have an active compression program "running" on the card would need it to be attached to a PC, not a camera?

What is the make and size (from the card label)?

What model of Pentax?

Please remember that a lot of current hardware will not correctly address the newer high capacity memory cards, they were never thought of when the hardware was made. Does your Pentax actually support a 4 GB card?

[snazzy127]

Hi ... so here's the full scoop ... I have a Pentax S5i camera from about June 2005.
The SD card was bought on Ebay - the seller didn't know that he was selling 'faulty' cards. On the card it says it's a Kingston 4gb SD Card. So when I first got the card I had to format it using the camera and all was well - I had about I think 950 photos at about 2048X1536 resolution in the medium quality picture level, which now thinking about it I guess is about 1gb. Anyways, I took about 200 photos on it and then after the last photo got a memory card error. I was in India at the time so when I got home I tried to read it on my HP Compaq laptop and that didn't work. So because it was a Kingston card, I called Kingston and when they asked me for a serial number, I couldn't find one (I have a real 512mb card also that does have a serial number) so the Kingston rep told me that someone ran a program (I guess I used the term compression program incorrectly) that made it appear as a 4gb card and I guess the last picture taken wrote over the part of the memory that contains the function of the card ... does that make sense? I'm wondering when I formatted the card using my camera that it did recognize that it was a 1gb card, but that because it was a faulty card, it got messed up ... I'm very confused now. Anyways, so that's the full story. Do you think that my photos are recoverable? Is there anything that I can do on my own? As mentioned before, I have tried a bunch of recovery programs. Thanks in advance for all your help!

[kiwiguy]

It's possible that it's only a 1 GB card, you do state that your camera recognised it as a 1 GB card. But it might be a "knock-off" Kingston badged 4 GB card as well, it would surprise me if a 4 year old manufactured camera would actually correctly recognise a 4 GB card.

So it may be a 4 GB card that has been screwed up by the camera being unable to recognise the 4 GB size. many card readers are now also unable to recognise the larger capacity cards commonly available.

When you say you have tried "a bunch of" recovery programs, its not worth while listing what I would recommend as you may have tried them?

PC Inspector (free) has worked for me, but remember if your laptop card reader also falls over with a 4 GB card (which is quite possible), don't try anything until you have access to a reader that you know will read a 4 GB card.

Card readers (and cameras) not designed for the high capacity cards simply do not have the memory addressing range, so cannot see the card correctly.

I would suspect the 4 GB card capacity as the issue rather than the card being faulty, if it really was a 1 GB card it would probably work OK.

[slipe]

JPG files don’t compress as they are already compressed files. I don’t think it is possible that the card could have compression built in that would have it accept 4 Gb of JPGs on a 1 Gig card. I would guess the hack would have been to the identification segment on the card. The camera doesn’t usually access that sector for storage, but I guess it could have been a bad hack and it was overwritten. I haven’t the slightest idea how to rewrite it if that is the case.

If you formatted the card in the camera and it is really a 4Gb card you normally have a FAT that shows only a portion of the card available to the camera with a FAT 16 camera. That doesn’t usually cause problems except for limiting your card size.

If your camera is showing a card error and the computer card reader doesn’t see it at all your only hope other than recovery software is probably professional recovery. It is very unlikely to work, but you might stop by a store that lets you put the card in a viewer to edit and print photos. I’ve heard of that working for people who couldn’t access the photos on the card.

[imabiggles]

thats a pretty common scam. If you overwrite the header on a smaller size card it will display any capacity you want. It will work too, until you get to the physical card limit, then it will error out. If you do a complete reformat, it will likely display its true capacity. Sorry chum, but I think you got scammed. Edit - and that ebay guy who sold it to you is likely the scammer from my experience.

[snazzy127]

Hello everyone ... thanks to everyone for their help. Just a quick update on the situation. So I got my hands on a newer SD memory card reader that can read the higher capacity cards. The good news is that it does recognize the fact that it is a 4GB card, the bad news is running the recovery programs (I tried only PC Inspector Smart Recovery and Data Doctor Recovery Memory Card this time) it STILL couldn't recover my photos. Any thoughts as to why this is happening? Is there a better recovery program that I can use that might help? I assume that if I re-format this card, I'll definitely have lost my photos. I'm going to take slipe's suggestion and try it at a store that can allow me to put my card in the reader. In the mean time, any suggestions would be appreciated! I want to avoid the professional route unless absolutely necessary. I assume that at this point, they would have done what I have already. Do professionals have other equipment that helps them better recover data from corrupt discs? I know I have a lot of questions, but as I've said before, all help is greatly appreciated.
snazzy127
p.s. the guy who sold me the card on ebay refunded me my money ... the only good thing so far to come out of this situation!

[slipe]

A format doesn’t necessarily overwrite the data on the card. A quick format just tells the FAT the space is available but the images are still there. If you format in the card reader with a FAT quick format I am pretty sure you don’t affect the images. Don’t use Fat32.

I have no idea why the recovery software can’t see the images. I’ve heard good things about Zero Assumption Recovery software. Even the software you pay for will tell you for free whether it can see the images before you have to pay for registration.