so you made a complete Bass of
yourself by dropping a digital camera
into the pool? I can help you retrieve
the images; I can also help if you accidentally
deleted a bunch of photos.
The Hassle: My digital camera decided to
take a dip in the sea. Though I recovered
it, the camera is ruined. Is there any way
to rescue the memory card—and all my
precious photos?
The Fix: I can’t give you a step-bystep
for resurrecting the camera
(I lost one that way, too). But I’ve successfully
recovered photos on both
an SD and a CompactFlash card. It’s
critical to keep the card submerged
in water (salt water if necessary) to avoid
corrosion. When you’re ready to start,
soak the card in fresh water for a few
minutes; rinsing isn’t as good, since you
need to remove the salt water from all
internal contacts.
Air-dry it (don’t use a hair dryer—it
could damage the contacts). Gently
clean the SD or SmartMedia contacts
using a cotton-tipped earbud and a small
amount of isopropyl alcohol (don’t saturate
it). Once they’re dry, lightly rub the
contacts again with a clean pencil eraser.
CompactFlash cards are tougher to work
with. Using a small screwdriver, gently
pry the enclosure open just enough to
slide the circuit card out. Work from the
sides, not from the connector end. Then
follow the steps above, starting with airdrying
the card.
I’m not as optimistic about the camera.
But if it’s already dead, you can’t hurt it, so
go ahead and try the same rinsing routine
outlined above. Then dismantle the camera,
let it air-dry, and clean all the contacts.
And keep your fi ngers crossed.
The Hassle: I pulled my CompactFlash
card out of my card reader while it was
moving images to my PC. I can see
some of the images on the card, but
others aren’t there at all and still other
photos show up with only half an image.
What’s going on here?
The Fix: You found out the hard way
that you need to wait until all reads
and writes are complete before removing
a media card. (Ditto for any other
external storage device—MP3 player,
hard drive, or fl ash drive.)
You’ll need a tool to resuscitate those
fi les. For deleted fi les (nope, they’re
not in the Recycle Bin), the undelete
program you already own may work. If
not, try my favorite, PC Inspector Smart
Recovery (www.pcinspector.de). It’s free,
it’s easy to use, and it brings dozens of
file types back to life, including all the
standards (JPG, BMP, TIF, and GIF),
plus AVI, MOV, and many types of RAW
fi les. The downside is that the program
is slow: It can take atleast 10 minutes to
recover three deleted fi les.
If your image fi les are corrupted (on a
memory card or on a CD), try ImageRecall.
The Rs. 1,800 tool restores deleted
fi les, recovers damaged fi les, and determines
whether your card is damaged. A
trial version (available at www.imagerecall.
com) recovers ten images.
Once you’ve moved the image fi les from
the card to your hard drive, use your camera
to reformat the card. That way you’ll
repair any allocation errors and save new
images contiguously; subsequent photos
will write faster and be easier to recover
in case of a mishap.
Would love to here from you...