Recover Vacation Photos from Corrupt Lexar 800x 32GB CF card

The invention of digital cameras has made photography very interesting, inexpensive and easy. Loading film rolls manually and spending a huge amount of money to get them developed have become things of the past. Continuous development in the electronics world has made everything we do in life easier and less expensive.  CF cards, USB drives and hard disks are few devices which become embedded into everyday life and have now become necessities which we can’t live without. Digital cameras use CF cards to store the photos, audio and video files.

The Lexar 800x 32GB CF card is one of such advanced memory cards which has a capacity of 32GB and harnesses UDMA 7 technology which delivers an 800x speed rating and enables it to sustain read speeds of 120 MB/sec and write speeds of 45 MB/sec. The speed drastically increases the workflow and ensures lightning quick file transfers to the computer.

Memory cards like any other electronic devices are also prone to failures due to corruption. But the important thing to understand is that the corrupt cards very often lose the information which determines where exactly the images are located on the card. Therefore you just need to figure out a way to recover the lost data.

Below are a few symptoms, reasons and steps to recover vacation photos from corrupt Lexar 800x 32GB CF card

Few signs of corruption in Lexar CF cards

• CF card is detected by the system but you are not able to view images or data stored on the card
• Various error messages pop up like card locked, CF card error, error during read operation or the system asks you to format the memory card to proceed
• Camera may not allow you to take further pictures and you may not be able to view the previous pictures clicked

Various factors responsible for corruption of a Lexar CF card

• Missing of system files from the CF cards
• Virus infection
• Abrupt removal of CF card while transferring data from the card
• Using the CF card between different cameras without initially formatting it
• Switching off the camera before the image which was captured was written over into the CF card
• Physical damage

Recover Vacation Photos from a corrupt Lexar CF card

1. As soon as you realise that the card is corrupt or your vacation photos are inaccessible, stop using the CF card and do not perform any other steps except the ones discussed below
2. Insert the CF card into the card reader
3. Click on the Start menu and then navigate to Run
4. On the Run menu types cmd and press Enter. This will open the command prompt
5. In command prompt type the command chkdsk [X] /r where x represents drive letter of the card. This will scan the CF card and attempt Recovery of the bad sectors
6. After the scan is completed type the command chkdisk [X] /f where x represents drive letter of the card. This will automatically fix file system errors on the CF card

The above command will provide a report of what it has done. After scanning is completed, you will be able to preview the files which were recovered. Check the CF card to see if the vacation photos have been recovered.

More often than not the above steps do not recover the photos, and therefore the only option is to take help of third party software to recover all the files safely. Do not try any other steps which may cause further damage to the card and cause the data to be lost permanently. Recovery software’s like Stellar Photo Recovery are the most reliable option. It comes with a user-friendly interface for novice users and many other advanced features.

Steps to follow for recovering vacation photos using Stellar Photo Recovery

1. Download, install and launch Stellar Photo Recovery.
2. On home screen, select what you want to recover. 
3. Select the CF card to scan and recover from. Click Scan.
4. You can choose to customize the recovery process through Advanced Settings icon on top. You can select a specific file type, add new file type or edit Header to scan for faster results.
5. A dialog box of ‘Scanning Completed Successfully!’ appears. In the left-pane of main window, all the found files and folders are listed. The bottom-right pane lists the files stored in the selected folder. Select a file and preview in the right pane.
6. If the required photos are not on the list, opt for Deep Scan at the bottom and click Recover.
7. In the dialog box, specify the location to save the media files and click Save.

Stellar Photo Recovery is photo recovery software that recovers images, photos, movies, songs and other multimedia files which have been deleted or lost due to corruption or formatting of hard drives and memory cards. Combined with the exceptionally easy to use interface with its strong performance and recovery of the files with their original file names, makes it one of the best photo recovery software programs. Once you have this software on your system you will never have to worry about losing your photos to silly crashes and corruptions.