CF recovery & card reader

[wilgk]

Well the unthinkable has happened - after Tobias' thread, a sturdy CF card has curled up its toes here in Australia.
It was on the school/work 7D camera.
We have a young guy working as a sports trainee/assistant on his Gap year.
He's the son of a friend & is keen as mustard on photography, so I'm sharing the sports photo work as much as possible. The dreaded event of card failure happened at the school surf champs , nothing major if we can't recover the files, as there will be an Interschool comp next, that the best kids will go to.
The lesson however is there, that it can happen & he is shooting a family member's relaxed home/garden wedding very soon, so it's a very timely lesson.
Anyway I am about to download one of the free recovery software programs mentioned in that other thread.

My question is now about card readers, as on reading through past forum threads on this, 'cheap/dodgy' ones of those have been complicit in the blame when this happens, so I thought it worthwhile to maybe upgrade that particular step in the chain.

Suggestions on brands models of card reader for CF card grateful accepted & I'll report back how the recovery process goes.

[rpcrowe]

Here's my take on CF card readers. I have an old PNY CF Card Reader (non-UDMI compatible) as well as a Lexar UDMI CF card reader. Both of these readers have worked outstandingly for me over the years.

I like a CF card reader with a fairly tight channel into which the card slips or fits. Many of the readers for multiple types od memory media have channels that are not tight. It could be easy in a time that I was not paying full attention to my card, to insert the card offset and bend the contacts. While this would probably be more detrimental to the reader than to the card, I don't want it to happen.

I have had only one card fail me in perhaps 50 or a hundred thousand exposures. That was a Kingston 16 GB card I bought on sale. I had another Kingston card fail but, that card failed as I was testing it and I as able to return it to the meerchant from whom I purchased it.

Unfortunately, I cannot give advice on recovery of images since I was not able to recover the imagery, even with an image recovery program. Unfortunately I forgot the name of the program. I looked on an old computer to see if I could find the name but wasn't able to. Fortunately, I always shoot with two cameras and the images from the second camera saved the day for me.

[Manfred M]

I suspect Richard and I might have the same Lexar UDMI reader. Mine is USB 3 (fast) and reliable.

[DEAN01]

Sandisk has reliable card readers. They also have a good recovery program. I've used their card and readers for ten years with no problems.

[Shadowman]

I would think the card reader has as much chance for failure as any other method. I had one major failure and have had to recover images from a memory card twice. Recently I had some notice of a potential failure, first I transferred images to LR through my laptop's reader and once completed LR could not read the images. I re-inserted the card and on the second transfer the images were usable. After I removed the card from the laptop and inserted into my camera, I got a "card damaged" message and this was before the camera was turned on. I removed the card and set aside, a week later I tried the card again and it seemingly worked, however I don't plan to use it again. I've decided to take the warning message as a sign that the card has exceeded its useful life.

[IzzieK]

I have the same brand that Dean uses -- Sandisk and touch wood, I haven't had any failure at all since I bought it and inserted it in my camera. I also use two cameras like Dan and usually plan my photo trip so I do not have to change lenses midway.

[tao2]

My question is now about card readers, as on reading through past forum threads on this, 'cheap/dodgy' ones of those have been complicit in the blame when this happens, so I thought it worthwhile to maybe upgrade that particular step in the chain.

Suggestions on brands models of card reader for CF card grateful accepted & I'll report back how the recovery process goes.

Hi Kay,

Ah don't see the connection? The card failed in the camera so ye think that a cheap card reader has partly been at fault?

Cheap and dodgy card readers will break/die just as quickly (or last as long) as expensive, "reliable" ones. Expensive rarely means reliable nowadays. There is no default, no "standard". Ah have both expensive and very
cheap CF cards, a couple are several years old. One no-name Chinese card has been working for around 5 years now.

Ye can buy a very cheap hard disk for yer PC and a very expensive one. Either type can fail within a month or last for years.

Personally, ah never use a card reader - one less link in the chain...

[wilgk]

Thanks all,
I will look into replacing the reader & the card that was the culprit.
Robert, we use macs both at work & home & need a are reader for CF cards as a link, other than connecting camera via cabel.
The recovery software from pandora, wouldn't download, the card recovery.com recovered the files in the free version, but to open them you needed to pay.. A few hours lost there..finally the free version of recuva - worked at reading them & I could open them in Lightroom - so that stage has had a good outcome!
Thanks again for replies & suggestions.