IT Professionals

Fuji Finepix – Perhaps Not So "Fine," After All

Posted by on Dec 12, 2006 | 10 Comments

After trying to recover some photos from an “XD picture card” for the Fuji Finepix Z3, let it be said that I will personally never buy a camera supporting this type of media. After trying no less than 15 different flash recovery programs, only to discover that XD type M support with flash media readers is a complete joke, I am about ready to give up on recovering these lost photos.

“Card could not be initialized.” That was an error that was getting old really fast. Oh sure, formatting the card does take care of the issue, however it sure does not make photo recovery any easier. I mean, nothing says “recovery” like being forced to format the darn card!

Well here it is. Based on my exhaustive research, people are either having zero issues with this media or they are having consistent issues – there is no gray area here apparently. Yeah it’s unfortunate, but it looks like my hopes of recovering the lost pictures is a no-go. Considering every single program that I have tried is “drive based,” hence the camera itself does not seem to mount as a viewable drive when connected, I think it is safe to safe to say that my options are limited. Then to make things even more annoying, mounting the camera as the “camera” only yields – an empty camera! Fun stuff, folks.

So unless I can locate a photo recovery program that is NOT drive dependent and sees connected devices the same way as Windows XP (like with the camera), then it appears that I am out of luck.

On the plus side however, I learned that users of the XD picture card can prevent this issue by making sure to format the memory card before every use. Nothing annoying about that!

[tags]XD Picture Card, Fuji, Finepix, recovery[/tags]

  • WS

    I also own a Fuji camera that uses xD card. What you went through is not totally foreign to me, but you need to stop looking for software, but instead, you need to get a new card reader. MOST multi-card readers I have tried do NOT work with xD despite their claims. Get one that works. And it will work just fine as other memory cards, and all your recover programs will work.

    btw, formatting it, and THEN doing a recovery, actually worked for ME before I found out the culprit is the card reader, not the software.

  • http://picasaweb.google.com/efotografo John Cullen

    I bought a Fuji Finepix S5600 during the summer and also immediately had a problem with a brand new 1Gb xD card – at 1am in the morning just hours before setting off on holiday :-)

    The error I received – in the camera itself! – was exactly the one you report, “Card could not be initialised”, even for formatting. After spending almost an hour trying to get the camera to accept the card, digging around the ‘net and generally pulling out my hair in frustration, I remembered to try one last possibility. I used a clean, dry, lint free cloth to wipe the xD contacts! Lo and behold the camera accepted the card immediately – no (re)formatting required, and since then I’ve never had any other problem, even after removing the card many times to upload pictures via a card reader.

    This may not solve your problem, *but* if you didn’t try it already, give the contacts a wipe!

    John

  • David McElrea

    It is my understanding that these cards, being secure digital, will only work in the device in which they are formated. Any attempt to use the card in another device renders the card unreadable due to the encryption token being missing and the only way to use it is to reformat under the new device. The fact it no longer is readable in the camera means that the camera has lost the “passcode”. Disturbing if this is affecting many people. I smell a recall.

  • tinwheeler

    I was able to recover accidentally erased anniversary pics on a XD card with PC Inspector Smart Recovery (available free on the web).

  • http://photosrecovery.com/ Wayne Telfer

    I had almost 900 shots of our 3 – week Australia trip on a 1GB xD card on a Fuji FinePix S7000. I tried to transfer them from a card reader to my laptop before leaving Australia. The laptop crashed during the process and I deleted over 700 images. I was devasated, my wife was not very happy. I has read that digital images could be recovered as long as the card had not been re-formatted. So when we returned to Canada, I searched the web and found Photo Recovery. I downloaded a demo and found I could recover all but 30 images. I paid the $29.99 (US) for the program and made my wife very happy. I used a card reader to access the xD card and backed up all the photos. Photo Recovery turned a disaster into lasting memories of a great trip.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/peartree/ Jeff Partridge

    Matt,

    Have you considered putting the card in an external memory card reader and working from there? Windows sees these as removable drives, so maybe the software you’ve got would find it a bit easier to chew on.

    Later,
    Jeff

  • Stan

    Yeah, some (mostly cheapie) cameras do not ‘mount’ as drives. The ‘lost’ photos are on the card and the camera can’t find them? Get a card reader. They’re very inexpensive. They just plug into a USB slot. The card reader shows every card the reader can show as a drive. Put your XD card in the reader, and browse whatever is on it in Windows Explorer. If it shows nothing is on it, then try your favorite recovery or undelete utility. With something like Norton Utilities you can look directly at the card sector by sector, but you shouldn’t need that!

    Good luck!

  • Lawrence Yamasato

    A good handful of years ago I purchased online (2) Fuji Finepix S7000, both of which have provided my son and I good positive digital photo and video experiences, until last month, when he handed the camera to me and said there’s something wrong with the individual photo capture/shutter mechanism: it will take a shot, then display an almost white image, sometimes with fringes of aberrant color. Funny thing is that the video capture part works fine, even with preview. Both of us have gone over this camera with a fine tooth comb, hating to think that this is one for the repair shop; or to ask the question – is it worth it. My version of the same camera works fine. Any ideas?

    Mahalo (Thank you)

    Larry

  • Dfor

    PC Inspector Smart Recovery is the software you need. I was getting the same problem, “Card could not be initialized” with my finePix camera. Even thought I had about 100 photos on it. Never asked to be formatted when the card was inserted, plus I could view them in the picture view. Because when the camera is not picked up as a physical drive its hard to recover the lost data.

    But I read these posts and gave PC inspector a base after I tried several others and a couple of card readers. Install this software insert the xd card into your reader hit scan drives, select removable disk#2 (or what ever it might be) Click the button “Find logical drives” Click the green check button. And off it goes scanning your so called xd card.

    I’m telling you it saved my bacon big time!!!

    Good luck

  • TC

    All the pictures on my 128MB xD card got “formatted” (a.k.a. erased) from my Fuji FinePix 2650, and I have tried all of kinds of “recovery programs” to try and retrieve them: Flash Recovery, Uneraser, PhotoRescue, Recover My Photos, and even the above-mentioned PC inspector Smart Recovery, all to the same condescending result. It’s not however, that the “card could not be initialized”, because it can read the card. It is just that no files could be found. Should I give up, or is there something that will really work?
    Thanks very much