How to recover photos from a corrupt CF card

Most of the photos taken using digital cameras are stored on CF cards. CF cards are loved by many camera manufacturers because of their compactness and large storage sizes. However, if your CF card gets corrupted or physically damaged, it will no longer be accessed by your computer hence making it a bit tricky to copy off the photos.

When the CF card is physically damaged, it is extremely tough to recover data on such a cf card unless you use top cf card data recovery company. But if it’s the card’s firmware that is corrupt, then there is a chance of recovering the photos. If you want to know how it’s done, that’s what this article is about.

What causes the CF card to get corrupted?

CF cards become corrupted when the firmware of the card is tampered with. This normally happens because of the following reasons;

Not safely ejecting the card when removing it from the pc.
Interrupting the process of formatting a CF card.
Manufacturing defects.
The card can also get corrupted when its firmware is attacked by malware
Using the card on multiple cameras that have different operating systems

Most of the above causes can be avoided. So, always ensure your CF card is safe by properly handling it whenever it is being used.

Recovering the photos

Steps for recovering lost photos on a corrupt CF Card

Use the CHKDSK utility tool to make the card visible

The main tool used to repair corrupt partition tables in Windows OS is called CHKDSK. This utility tool will scan through your entire storage device to check for any firmware errors and repair them thereafter. So, if your CF card is not visible in file explorer, there are high chances its partition tables have been corrupt. CHKDSK is what you will have to use to repair the partition tables.

To use this tool, open command prompt as administrator and type in the command chkdsk E: /f /r /x where E is the letter that was assigned to your CF card when it was still working normally. This command will scan through the firmware of your card to find out any errors in the partition table and correct them thereafter.

Recover the lost photos

If the card is now visible but you don’t seem to see your photos, then you will need a third-party tool to recover the lost photos. The first thing you need to do to avoid further damages is not adding any files onto the card because these can easily overwrite the photos you want to recover.

Some of the best tools that I would recommend for recovering your lost photos and any other files include;

EaseUS data recovery wizard pro

This tool can be used to do both data backup and also restoring any data that might be lost. It has both the trial and pro versions though the trial version lacks most of the features and it may not even manage to recover all your photos especially if they were large in size.

Stellar data recovery

This is another tool that has a good reputation as far as data recovery is concerned. The advantage that this software has over the EaseUS is that it can recover files on a wide range of devices. This makes it a good candidate for recovering lost photos on a CF card.

CrashPlan

This data recovery software is way cheaper than the first two and would be ideal for photographers that have a small budget. The only drawback of this tool is that it doesn’t sort backed up files by type. This may however not be an issue if all the backed-up files are photos.