CANNOT ACCESS CARD - FORMAT? WHAT?!?!?!?!?!

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:10:09 -0700, infiniteMPG wrote:

I have a new Sony A100 DSLR with a nice Tamron AF 18-250 lens and a
Delkin Devices eFilm 2GB compact flash card. We snagged great tickets
for the Tampa Bay Ray's MLB game against the Red Sox at Tropicana Field
and were right behind the home dugout. Got great shots pre-game and then
snagged some great shots during the first couple innings including some
point-of-contact home runs and a great shot of a close call at first
base. We were really enjoying the game and people around us were
checking out some shots, too.

An important at bat was at hand so I picked my camera up to shoot and
noticed a red "E" on the bottom right corner of my camera display. Being
fairly new to this I thought maybe my battery was dying. I turned the
camera off and back on to see what was up and when it powered back up I
got the message CANNOT ACCESS CARD - FORMAT? YES - NO to which I replied
NO. My heart sunk!!!

I tried several more times with no luck. The Ray's won the game but my
mood was pretty low. When I got back home I put the card in my USB
adapter and my computer would just tell me to place a disk in the drive
when I clicked on the drive letter. I downloaded several free memory
card recovery app's and nothing worked, including Data Doctor which I
have heard good things about.

I have memory cards in my other cameras that are more then 5 years old
and have been thru all kinds of abuse and they still work great. This
card is almost new and had some of my best sports shots ever on it.

Any help????? :O/

Sounds like the filesystem or File Allocation Table or something got
corrupted. Windows (your OS?) is VERY particular about filesystems,
etc. If things aren't just so, it can't even "see" the drive let alone
read it. Have you tried reading the card with another OS like Linux,
BSD, or Mac OS X--They are more forgiving--or using their file or
filesystem recovery software?

So, don't format the card. Don't give up hope. Your pictures are still
there.

Stef