help needed with SD card

Hi,
I have a Pentax OPTIO 550 digital camera which is in for repair for
the third time since I got it new in July last year. I won't recount
the other numerous problems i've had with it (unless you want to know,
in which case respond accordingly), just the last one.

Having used it to take several pictures, whilst on holiday, the camera
jammed, in this I mean it locked up and would not respond to any
button commands. The two rear indicator LED's for flash and focus just
flashed repeatedly on then off.

The only option available was to remove the battery then the SD card,
put the battery back in and cycle the camera on then off the on again
and check it was ok, which it appeared to be!!

After switching the camera off I re-inserted the memory card then
switched it back on to be greeted with the message "CARD NOT
FORMATTED". Another set if photo's lost!"£$%^&*(). But perhaps not.

Does any one know if the images I have taken can be recovered and if
so how? Pentax were no help and neither were the card manufacturers.

Kind regards Duff Sparky.

Duff Sparky,

Sounds like a lot of problems Ouch.

Regards recovering images, and indeed any other information, the best approach is to not write anything to the card at all. There are several packages out there that can do recovery.

Image Recall is shipped with the Lexar cards. However, I had to recover a damaged IBM microdrive that was showing about 6Mb free (what happened to the rest of the 1Gb!!?) I tried a couple of programs, and only one worked with the Microdrive properly (I'd have to look it up).

However, for SD recovery, I used "Image Recall / Don't Panic". You can get it here: http://www.davoom.com/products/index.php?boxaction=software_recovery
or their home page www.imagerecall.com.

Hope that helps!
Matt