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Author Topic: CF Card Problem with H3D-39  (Read 1781 times)

pflower

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CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« on: January 22, 2011, 12:28:52 pm »

Never come across this before.  I finished a shoot on a Sandisk 8GB CF card in an H3D 39. Before starting the shoot I formatted the card in the camera.   After finishing I reviewed on the camera (to the extent that you can with the LCD on an H3D) and everything looked OK.  Took it out and tried to copy over to a computer and no card reader will mount it on a Mac running OSX 10.6.4.  No problems with the card readers since other cards mount OK.  Put it back in the H3D which immediately asked me if I wanted to format the card without me doing anything at all.  I cancelled and the camera now says there is no media.

Since I can't get the card to mount I can't run anything like image rescue on it?

Any idea what has happened or if there is anything I can do?

Thanks
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AldoMurillo

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Re: CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2011, 12:43:20 pm »

Hi, sometimes when a disk doesn't mount you can go to applications>utilities>disk utility and look at the left part to see if there's a "connection" with the computer.  Sometimes the disk is greyed out and you just have to right click>mount,  or to click at the mount point link (blue path at the bottom).   If you don't see the disk in disk utility probably there's a problem. 

I've had to recover images from my nikon gear, with data rescue, and it did a good job (most of the images were rescued)  But I've never tried it with my hasselblad gear... I hope you recover your images, Good luck!
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Aldo Murillo

pflower

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Re: CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2011, 12:55:24 pm »

Nope nothing visible anywhere.  Its as if the card suddenly lost its formatting completely.  Yet nothing was amiss during the shoot and before turning the camera off and returning home I scrolled through every image on the lcd - so it is not like I forgot to put in a card (although thinking about that would be impossible).  It is not as if images are corrupted.  They simply do not exist and neither the H3D or my mac recognises the existence of the disk. 

This seems very strange to me - I have never actually had a card failure but would image it would be something like a crash where things get corrupted - but to become completely invisible?

If I reformat is there any prospect of finding some program to examine the card and try and extract information?  I think I read somewhere that reformatting doesn't actually destroy information but have never tried this before.  What programs are there out there that might help?  I only have something called Image Rescue which I must have found on a card.  But this says that it only extracts .jpgs and .tiffs.

Any thoughts?

Thanks
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EricWHiss

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Re: CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2011, 01:10:51 pm »

I'd try one of the photo rescue programs on the card since it sounds like it can be seen by the computer and after that toss the card and get a new one.  Cards can go bad and I've had a Sandisk cards go down like that several years ago.  I got most of the files back.  Good luck!
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Rolleiflex USA

pflower

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Re: CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2011, 02:01:37 pm »

Upon reflection I decided that I had no alternative but to reformat.  I then found an evaluation copy of a program called CardRescue.  Scanning the card it says that it found a load of .tiff files - the Hasselblad produced .3FR files.  Anyone got any idea whether this would work or are there any other programs better suited to .3FR files that anyone has any experience of?

Thanks
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BarbaraArmstrong

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Re: CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2011, 11:37:05 am »

I'm afraid my immediate reaction is that the last thing I would do is reformat.  I haven't had trouble with memory cards.  This just comes from my knowledge of computers, and I'll be very interested in hearing if I am wrong.  Use another card for ongoing needs and send this one to a company specializing in this kind of rescue.  Good luck.
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pflower

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Re: CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2011, 12:14:16 pm »

Since I couldn't mount it on the desktop I decided that I had not option but to format it in order to mount it.  I then found a piece of software called CardRescue which I bought.  It took about 40 minutes to scan through a 8GB card and said that it had found 125 files.  These were saved by the software as .TIF files but each said that they were about 48-50MB in size which was about right but only 290x210 pixels in size.  Changing the extension to .3FR solved that and I appear to have recovered all the images from yesterday.

What really surprised me was that the software really had found 125 files on that card - some of which were over a year old.  Now I format the card in the camera every time I use it and would estimate that I had used that particular card probably 25 times during the past 12 months - each time reformatting it.  Yet still some pictures survived all that time.  Not something to recommend, but nice to know that you can rescue images sometimes.
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Barkeeper

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Re: CF Card Problem with H3D-39
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2011, 12:37:29 pm »

Hey pflower,

you are lucky guy - the H3D-39 uses (or used? with older Firmware) "Tiff files" with only one color per pixel.
These files are easy to recover.
They do also have always the same file size.

The H3D-II50 is a bit more difficult.
The files are compressed inside the back, so the files are compressed "Tiff files" (s.o.).
In this case the file size is not allways the same, which makes it a lot more difficult to recover.

BTW:
Formating does nothing to your pictures itself.
It deletes only the "table of content" (FAT file allocation table).
With recover or data carving software you will get your pictures back.
To erease the files you have to overwrite them with other pictures or data. (If you have to give the card back to a rental, e.g.)

Greetings
Barkeeper
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