I read this thread now.

I would try also gnu ddrescue, that should ignore errors and will keep reading.

ex:
ddrescue /dev/sdd ~/ddrescueimage.img log.txt

And also, if you still have the xd, have you tried to put your card in the freezer before trying to make an image of it? Sometimes works with hard disks...

Also foremost is sometimes useful to recover data from images created with dd or ddrescue.

Thank you mtb for an interesting hint. I put that invalid picture card in a freezer for one hour and then I tried to read the image of it with dd. It produced small, 32 MB in size file full of FFs with some tiny fragments of the data. Freezing was pointless in that case but it doesn't mean it will be pointless in any other case.

Then I tried dd_rescue for two times. In reverse mode it produced the file of 524288000 bytes (512 MB) with short logfile reporting none errors. In forward mode it produced the file of 32768000 bytes (32 MB) with huge logfile reporting a lot of errors. Both these image files consisted from the large patterns of FFs separated from time to time with small chunks of some data.

Finally I tried GNU ddrescue in the default mode. It produced the file of 32751616 bytes (32 MB) and reported two errors in the logfile. The image made by GNU ddrescue was similar to the images produced by dd and dd_rescue: a lot of FFs and some data from time to time.

Sorry if nothing good happened, but better to try than not to try.

Trying to work with photorec and foremost on the right image could also lead to nothing, but even 1 more photo could be interesting...

All the hints are valuable. Thanks to them I tried stubbornly to gain the image of that device and I finally succeeded. I recovered 84% of the pictures. Different tips described in that thread can be useful for other guys in the future. The trick with vertically positioned hard drive is interesting as well as the trick with deep-frozen hard drive.

Ubuntu and FinePix S9600
 

Fuji FinePix S9600 filesystem problem
I have scanned the thread- and my problem is similar if a little different.

I use Hardy and the Fuji camera. It has a 2G xD card which shows up on desktop as 565.3 MB Media with a usb symbol in its icon. Over the last 18 months I have copied about 5000 images from here , by opening that folder and select and dragging them to named folders on Desktop.

Last Sunday, I repeated the process. It started and after downloading 471 of 608 it stopped and reported an 200 I/O error. I tried the process on a Windoze machine and it stopped at the same point. I didn't panic- I know that on Linux this is a challenge not a problem. I unplugged the camera and saw one of the missing photos- in fact I can see all of the photos on the camera, and even take more.

So it looks if the camera is blissfully working using its own OS, but the VFAT directory corrupts on image 472. So it looks if the first few byte of the card are blown- I must have been working them too hard.

I have fiddled around with dd fsck testdisk with zero success. I have bought a Mikomi 56-1 reader in case that helps but I really need a working xD so I can check that it is working. Though a reboot suggests it can be seen. The new 1 Gig cards are working fine so now is the time to try again.

I need some heavy duty hints on how to find the drive. How to use the tools to recover the remaining images or the last 125 or so. And like the card my memory function isn't a reliable as it was when I first used a Unix terminal 20 years ago. So don't omit the basics.

Hi all, this is grumpy guy.I have an Olympus Stylus 770 SW which of course uses the notorious xD-Picture card - M-XD1GM. (Why I just lately unpacked the camera, uw case, etc. is another tale) In hindsight the card reader problem may be more important that the UW photo qualities. The camera is useless to me if I can't upload the photos to a Linux computer and use the Gimp for further work.
I run Fedora 9 on three computers in the Philippines. I have been Microsoft free for 10 years and I have no intention of subjecting myself to the power/control policies of the windows folks.
I keep reading all these horror stories about card reader/card problems. Can any one point me in the direction of a multi-card reader that works with this card AND Linux.. Even sarcastic responses may have value. Thank you much, Grumpyguy
<jarlynne@maui.net>

I suppose every card reader should work. I use cheap hama's USB 2.0 Card Reader 35 in 1. It works perfectly. The problem discussed above concerned spoiled picture card and had nothing to do with the card reader.

xD = "MTD", not block device
 

I realize it has been ages since the previous post in this thread. Still I like to add some info.

Other than (u)SD, CF and SM cards, xD cards do not have an internal IDE-adapter. The adapter is necessary to translate between "flashy" memory (MTD, memory technology device) and block device memory.

xD cards omit the adapter which could lower the cost of the card. The adapter has to be implemented either in hardware or in software. Some cameras have hardware for that, some leave it to the host: the (MS Windows) driver that came with the camera.

Linux comes with MTD-drivers. Not important for this thread but maybe handy to know is that the implementation was not optimal, resulting in slower access to the MTD.

Important for this story though, is that for quite a while cheaper "all-in-one" card readers would not (fully/reliably) support xD, because the necessary hardware would be missing.

A lot of info can be found at http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/faq/general.html and on wikipedia under MTD and FTL (flash translation layer)

Sorry for not deeplinking to the appropriate information, it has been a while since I first took that info to me and the details are a bit vague.

Thank you for increasing our -- or at least mine -- knowledge about flash devices and MTD. As I see you registered here in 2007 and you post one message each year. I think it's high time to increase your reputation in LinuxQuestions.org.