I had a problem with a 2GB CF card at the weekend. After about a dozen shots, my EOS 20D reported "Err CF". The camera recognizes other CF cards OK, but every time I reinsert the offending card, I get the same error. So the card (which is actually brand new) seems to be defective. I wish I had tested it with more than just a handful of photos before taking it out for the weekend, but that's another story.

I'd like to find a way to recover the dozen or so images that might still be on the card. I'm assuming that the last photo I took got stored on a bad area of memory (on the CF card), and is therefore not recoverable. But the earlier photos might be there, if only I could access the card. I've tried two different USB CF card readers on my computer, but both give me the same error:

<drive-letter>:\ is not accessible.
The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

I can't just connect the camera to the computer and read the card from there, because the camera gives me "Err CF" every time I put the card in. I did try putting the CF card in an old PocketPC PDA that takes CF cards, but it did not recognize the card. (It did recognize my other CF cards, so this is further evidence that the CF card is bad).

I've tried a couple of different programs that are designed to recover data from bad CF cards. One is called PC Inspector, and the other one is BadCopy Pro, but neither could recognize the card. I've contacted Lexar, who say they will try to recover the data, and will replace the card under warranty. Before sending it to them, I was wondering whether anyone else on the EOS list has successfully used any other techniques to recover data from bad CF cards.

Gerry

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