Data errors on an Extreme III 2.0 Compact Flash

[almejia]

I have an Extreme III 2.0 Compact Flash memory card purchased about a year and a half ago. I use this card to take pictures with a Canon EOS Rebel Xt camera. I took twenty some pictures and when I try to display them, the LCD monitor displays for some of them (but not all) “Corrupted data”
Can you please explain the problem to me?
Can the pictures be recovered and if so, how?
Is this a permanent problem with the card?
I have a San-Disk card reader Image Mate 12 in 1. Can this help?

Any help and advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Alvaro Mejia

[dang]

Here's a free recovery program: http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_re ... language=1
Barry (http://www.pbase.com/madlights/profile) highly recommends this in other threads as doing an excellent job.

[prinothcat]

It has been suggest that you format your cards outside of your camera on a regular basis. I think because the in camera formatting does a less intensive pass on the card and will not always render it fully "clean". Once it's been base level formatted on your computer, then reformat it in camera. There may be reasons not to do this but I have never seen them. The older data may be the cause of your problem. It also may be time for a new card depending on how much it gets used. You may want to try a new card just to eliminate the possibility of a bad card. The final issue may be the camera itself writing or reading bad data. You could also use the reader to hook the card to you computer and see if you can read and write to it normally. That may also indicate a bad card or bad data being written/read by the camera.

[dougj]

Here are a couple of posts from a data recovery person that make an interesting read.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=26733141

On formatting
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=25258455

Alvaro - If Dang's recommendations don't work out, you could check that particular forum as it focuses on storage media. There are some threads similar to yours.