I took my Nikon Digital Camera on vacation and shot pics on 2GB SD flash cards. The night before I came home, my host tried to view one of the cards using the card reader on his HP printer. It would not show the files. I assumed that this was due to Nikon’s proprietary NEF format. At home, I usually connect the camera to the computer directly through a USB 2.0 cable. When I did this, I found that the 2GB flash card that my host had monkeyed around with no longer showed any files!!! Since nothing was done to overwrite the files, I wonder if there might be free data recovery software that I could use to try to recover them. In advance, thanks!!!!

Your pictures may still be intact. Using high-end digital SLR camera such as Nikon requires (I believe) a little different discipline in how you handle it. I think the following two links will shed more lights on what the problem is (Click to read each one.) What is NEF Format What format fo save NEF files In addition ... of particular interet is Nikon's statement on the proprietary of NEF i_XpUser

Thanks for your reply XpUser. I've never been able to put the SD cards in a card reader and read them after use in my Nikon Camera. I need to connect the camera to the computer and let its card reader do the job. I think that when my host inserted the SD card into the card reader on his HP printer, a quick delete was done leaving the original files probably still intact ... if I can recover them. The card shows up in Disc Managment when placed in the camera connected to the computer using a USB 2.0 cord and uses a FAT file system. I'm hoping that a free or inexpensive file recovery utility might help get the files back.

Try This file recovery. No guarantees that it will work but it sounds like it might.