I took three weeks of photos on a trip to Patagonia. I reviewed my 500+ photos in the camera (Lumix 3x DMC-FX01) and successfully deleted those I did not want to keep. Then I put the 1GB PNY SD card into a machine to make a CD file at the camera section of a Meijers Store and it would not take. When I returned the card to my camera and tried to view the photos a message came up "Memory Card Error Format this card? Yes No." I'm afraid to go on into the menu from here for fear of losing three weeks of photos. What can I do?
Just before the procedure I had successfully inserted a 1GB and a 512MB card from my wife's Konica Minolta and made CD backups. The camera counter person said they never saw this happen before!

Paul W Schubert, March 2008

My camera does that, its just one byte out of place and it makes the camera files look corupt. Try putting the SD card in the camera and try to read it again. If not joy, get some data recovery tool and scan the SD card on a PC/Mac. Recover the files.

but what ever you do, dont format the card (never click yes to the menu option on the camera) and dont write to the card a.k.a. take any more picture on it, not that you can of course.

Dont worry the images are not lost. They're there, just find the software online to get them back. Google search "data recovery"

Samuel, September 2008

Just throwing out some ideas...
- Do other memory cards still work ok on this camera?
- Have you tried using a memory card reader to access the memory card on a PC? (to see if the memory card is dead or just the camera can't read from it)
- You should be able to find a free downloadable data recovery/undelete program that may be able to recover your photos if they've somehow been deleted.

Good luck ;)

David, March 2008