My very reliable Sony DSC-H2 digital camera all of a sudden threw an error, saying the Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo had a “format error”. A quick Google search says it is a not so common problem but not to worry. You just use the camera to format the stick and you’ll be good. Unfortunately all the images on the stick will also be wiped out. I’d rather recover my images before I format the stick, thank you very much.
The problem with Google search is that there are simply too many results that are not useful. Further searching and poking around yielded a utility called Memory Card File Rescue Tool, 16mb, published by Sony. This seems really reliable.
The Memory Card File Rescue Tool page has a long list of helpful tips, such as the utility is only available in Windows, and that you will need not only the card model, but also the serial number, before you can download the tool. No matter, as I really do have a Sony card. Once downloaded the utility took 18 minutes to scan my near 2G of images. Once scanned it allowed me to recover the images to the disk and location of my choice, which it did very well. A couple of images seem to not render well, but that is much better than losing everything. I do have another backup on a secondary computer, but it is better to be safe than sorry.
Apparently these Sony cards throw these error intermittently and without reason. This I did not know. I’ll be more careful next time. Still, it is good to know that Sony has acknowledged that this has been a problem, wrote a utility to address it, and still has the utility available and updated for Win7/8. Good for their support.
I will not reformat my card, after I have recovered my images. The formatting literally takes only a couple of seconds. Menu, format, yes, confirm, then you are done. All my photos are gone.
