Hi, I have a friends memory card that was in her digital camera and the battery died just after she'd taken a picture. I think it must have been during a write to the file system, because when you put the card into the reader it says it needs to be formatted. I have tried running chkdsk on it, but it says: The type of the file system is FAT. An error occurred while reading the file allocation table (FAT 1). An error occurred while reading the file allocation table (FAT 2). There are no readable file allocation tables (FAT). Does anyone know of a way I might be able to recover the pictures from the card? Thanks

If the reader you are using plugs into a USB port externally, it may not work properly when plugged into some USB ports you can plug it into, and in that case the error messages you are getting for the XD card may be FALSE. See response 3 in this: http://www.computing.net/answers/wi... ......... If the above doesn't apply..... FAT partitioning (it's probably actually FAT16; and FAT32, and previous FATs before FAT16) has two identical partition tables, only one of which is used at a time. If the data in one partiion table becomes damaged or corrupted, it can be replaced with the identical second copy if that one is not damaged or corrupted, but in your case, both of them are damaged or corrupted. The vast majority of, if not all, data recovery programs cannot fix anything if both partition tables are damaged or corrpted. You can't recover any data off the card when both partition tables are damaged or corrupted, unless you are willing to pay an expert to attempt to do that for you, or you use special programs that can attempt to repair the partition tables, and even then you may not be able to recover all the files on the card. Usually there is nothing physically wrong with the card and you can delete the partition(s) on it and make it (them) again and continue to store files on it, but by default that cannot be done in XP itself, and probably not in Vista. It can be re-partitioned and formatted when in the camera, or you could use a third party program to do that in XP or Vista. E.g. hp flash drive formatter http://files.extremeoverclocking.co... Click on Primary Download Site "This utility will format any USB flash drive, with your choice of FAT, FAT32, or NTFS partition types. http://files.extremeoverclocking.co... In most cases FAT is used for capacities of 2gb or less, FAT32 for capacities larger than that. NTFS is normally not used on memory cards or flash drives, and it is recommended you do NOT use NTFS for any partition of 4gb or less capacity, because you end up with less usable capacity.

No harm in trying a file recovery program. Depending on the amount of corruption, they can recover data with both FATs bad. PC Inspector (freeware) http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pcinsp... Zero assumption Recovery http://www.z-a-recovery.com The demo is limited It will only recover 'up to' four folders per run But you can make multiple runs Really good, but you have to pay for it. GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/

You could also try reading the card using Knoppix.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I used PC Inspector File Recovery - great piece of kit. I think pretty much everything was recovered, so thanks again.

Good work Neal. Thanks for posting back. :-)