NEED HELP QUICK QUICK QUICK!

[Eireann]

Sorry, but I had to be sure someone would read this quickly.

I took tons of photos at my friends' wedding yesterday. The memory card is 16GB.

Now, I want to start going through them and picking out the best for a photo album. It's my wedding present to them, though they don't know it yet.

I plugged the card reader into the computer tower, and inserted the card. Now, keep in mind, I've used this card before. It isn't new. And I've downloaded pictures to the computer from this selfsame card.

Now, though, a window pops up telling me the card needs formatting. I'm not about to do that and put the pictures at risk. I tried putting the card back into the camera, then plugging the camera itself into the computer, and that had zero effect; the camera didn't even show up as being an accessory to the computer.

HELP! What do I do? I need to get these photos saved somewhere! I know they're still on the card, because I turned on the camera and looked at them. So they're okay. But they're stuck on the card.

[Kaylyn]

See if you can find drivers for the camera itself online. If you can, install them and they should be able to recognize the camera as a drive. Also make sure your camera is set to the "view pictures" mode rather than the "take pictures/video" mode.

I don't know if it'll help but it's the first thing that came to mind.

[csquared]

If you put the card back into the camera, can you preview them on the camera?

If you can preview them, take a deep breath. You are safe.

If not, you may have problem.

[Eireann]

Yes, I can view them on the camera, so that's all right. I just plugged it into the computer again and went to view mode; the only thing that happened was that I couldn't see anything on the camera's view screen. As soon as I unplugged it, I could see the images again.

The card is a Kingston 16GB SDHC. There are no drivers; I checked. There have been issues with previous versions of Windows, but I'm running Windows 7, and as I already mentioned, I've been able to work with photos off this card before. Could it be that I have too many photos on it for them to be read?

[Arcus]

I'm having the same issue with my 32gb SD card. For me it turns out that the card reader is the problem. It has trouble with anything over 8gb (even though it's listed to work up to 64gb.) I'm thinking that I'm having a driver issue because it started after a Windows patch. Reinstalling the drivers didn't help so it looks like I need to find a new reader. Not sure if you are having the same problem, but it's something to look at.

[Kaylyn]

It might be an error due to improper removal of the card without "ejecting" it first in the past. I've run into that before. I'm assuming there's no way to cancel or ignore the formatting and still be able to access the pics on the card via PC. Any way to test it on another computer?

[Eireann]

It won't let me access the pictures, no. I'll ask around to see if I can try it on someone else's computer.

[Eireann]

Oh, and I know it's not the reader; I bought an external one because my computer's card reader refuses to recognize anything over 2GB.

[Kaylyn]

You can also try a different USB port. A random suggestion that I ran across online just now was, try rebooting the computer without the reader plugged in and then once the computer is started up, plug it into a different USB port than the one you were using.

[Dreamstalker]

When I was having this same problem, I was able to pop the card into a different camera and download them from there (you may not have that option though). I also use Zero Assumption Recovery.

[csquared]

At least we know the data is not trashed. Now it is a matter of figuring out where the problem is. At this time, I don't think we can rule out anything. However, the fact that you can't read the card through the card reader or camera leads me to think it is in the computer. I would put my efforts into finding another computer to try and read it.

[Eireann]

Could it be the new graphics card? That occurred to me earlier today. I haven't worked with any photos since I got it, and every time I turn on the computer, this message pops up:

"The Catalyst Control Center is not supported by the driver version of your enabled graphics adapter. Please update your AMD graphics driver, or enable your AMD adapter using the Displays Manager."

[lordlundar]

The two aren't related.

As a test, try plugging your card reader into another group of USB ports. What I mean by this is USB ports are paired up per interface ie 2 ports per interface. On the back of the system they will be stacked like this.

[Eireann]

I plugged it into another port, but that did nothing.

[Eireann]

...I've figured it out.

It's not the card. It's the reader. I took a look at it (it's clear plastic), and discovered that one of the contacts is sticking up. I put another card in it, plugged it in, and got the same error message.

I'm pricing card readers now. Thanks so much for all your help!