USB troubles with iBook

[BigDave]

For all you Mac heads out there.

I accidentally unpluged my USB compact flash card reader without dragging it to the Trash first. Now, it won't recognize the device. I've tried shutting down and restarting; no luck. I tried pugging it into my IBM Windoze XP machine and it worked fine.

What can I do?

[DJPoLo]

You're running OSX, I assume?

You'll have to reload the driver for the Flash card reader.

-Chet

[BigDave]

Yeah - OS X

Thanks, Chet!

[George]

Hi Dave,

Sorry it took till now for me to notice this one.

On Mac’s, always un-mount any mounted external volume before ejecting it mechanically, or unplugging it (USB/FW drives, USB memory sticks, card readers and PCMCIA cards). Un-mounting is easiest accomplished by selecting the volume with a single click and using the Command E, or Control click on the volume and select the Eject option from the contextual menu that pops up. The third option is to just plain drag the volume to the trash. Always un-mount external volumes via software first.

Dave, I believe the problem with your card is that it needs re-formatting now, or the machine just wants a re-start (more about that later). Just put it back in after re-starting the machine and it will probably say it can‘t recognize the device right away and offer to format it for you. Or if that doesn’t happen automatically, open DiskUtility.app from /Applications/Utilities/ and chose an erase with the MS-DOS format (if it’s camera card) and Bam, you will be back up again. I recommend re-formatting Flash Cards occasionally anyway.

The re-install a driver thing is a relic of the past with OSX. There will almost never be a situation where a driver will get it’s hard drive version corrupted in OSX (unlike in Windows and older Mac OS’s). The protected memory feature in OSX (side effect of the UNIX multi-user stability OSX brings to the table) keeps the FAT from getting modified in any way when something errors out and hangs, or the driver in RAM is corrupted. Just log-out and back-in, or re-start and 97.536 percent of OSX problems will go away.

Issuing a sig kill via the “Force Quit” or, the terminal will almost always get something unstuck without-a logout, or re-boot. I use logout and re-boot as escalating levels of OS X fix after a Force Quit doesn’t do it. In drastic situations a fsck at startup can be forced in single user startup mode (removes the OSX Gui from the UNIX machine underneath).

More info here: http://www.glinder.com/files/macosx/osxhin...-singleuser.pdf

and here: http://www.glinder.com/files/macosx/

There are also great freeware and shareware aqua utilities that will run a battery of UNIX level things that are all good when used properly (the one I like is called “cocktail“ and is available at www.versiontracker.com). Always read the readme’s first

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Regards,

Edited December 2, 2004 by George

[George]

One more USB thang’ about Apple PowerBooks. If you have any Titanium, or newer Aloominium PowerBook running OSX, do not plug/unplug USB items while the machine is actually asleep. I had a friend ask me to help him find out why his 17” aloohminium was freezing when he unplugged his little Kensington USB mouse. So I spent 10-15 minutes verifying that any combination of USB plug-n-play worked fine for every USB item I tried (respecting the aforementioned always un-mount volumes first rule for external drives).

Then as he got ready to leave, he closed the lid (puts it to sleep) and “then“ unplugged the USB mouse. I said HMMM! and asked to see it back for a moment. Shore enuff’ it was locked up tighter than a drum and required a 5 second push on the power button to hard kill the machine (BTW, this is better than using the re-set button as it doesn’t default some PRAM values that you may have customized).

I spent a few minutes verifying it a couple times and then tried it on mine running Panther as opposed to the Jaguar OS he was running and yep, locked up every time the mouse was unplugged while it was asleep (with an optical mouse anyway). He then asked me what he should do about it and I said “stop doing that”.

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Regards,

[Nik Habicht]

BTW, in the interests of preventing corrupt image files on CF cards --- Always format cards in camera after dumping images onto a computer. There are a number of potential issues with dumping the card, then shooting some more and redumping it.......

Using Image Recovery software sucks ass --- but has saved co-workers asses.....

[BigDave]

While the subject of image recovery is up...(Please don't ask why)

Can anyone suggest a service for image recovery? I know the images are still on my card, but I want a pro to take a look at it.

[Merlin Orr]

As Nik mentioned you might try Image Recovery software. I think this place may do the recovery as a service as well. I know they will help you via E Mail or phone.

OR - you may try

If you have access to XP machine.

Try recovering images using Windows XP by taking the following steps:

1. Copy complete card reader drive over onto hard

drive, status should indicate that there are files being copied even though

Explorer may not display them.

2. Unchecked box in Explorer's Folder Options - View "hide protected

operating system files" (change it back afterwards).

3. Files now displayed with *.chk extension. Manually change

extensions to *.jpg. See all good files/images - probably only one photo is actually bad - just hanging up the transfer of the rest.

[Merlin Orr]

I am sure there is a similar procedure with the MAC - here is one for XP.

You might also try plugging the card reader - or whatever contains the media - into a XP machine and go to My Computer - right click on whatever drive that contains the media and then click properties. Go to the Tools tab and run the error checking option with no boxes checked. This will work on most removable media or hard drives.

Another approach

If you think you might just have a single photo corrupted, try going to My Computer - double click on the device containing the media and drill down to where the final folder that contains the photos. They will normally load into a window containing the thumbs of the photos ( contained on the card or disc) - go to View on the tool bar and select -Thumbnails. The photos will start opening up and continue till it gets to the "bad" photo then stop. Note which image does not open. This image/file is usually the one that is corrupted. If you then start the process over from My Computer and again drill down till it first shows the images contained on the media - delete the offending file/image. Sometimes more than one are corrupted but most of the time it is just one.

I would first try the error checking tool before proceeding to this method.

[BigDave]

What if you were an idiot and accidentally formatted the CF card?

I have run some image recovery software, which is why I know the images are still on the card, but there is an error at about 122 MB point on the 2.2 GB card that is preventing a full run.

[Merlin Orr]

If you have already tried a recovery program and can't get there... I have been there and done that. I called a few local computer repair shops and got the name of a hard drive recovery specialist. They got it done - 6 hours at $125.00. (Just for my estimating program) Hope better luck to you.

You might try here if you are still working in Florida.

[BigDave]

I'm not really concerned with the cost. Thanks for the heads up. I just am looking for a good service.

[Nik Habicht]

BD,

Sorry -- it took me a little while to find this again. Check out Photo Rescue from a company called data rescue. Their app is what I use most of the time to recover colleagues images. If you don't want to tackle this yourself --- although I think you're capable, I'll be happy to give it a whirl for you. If you do decide to try this yourself, be aware that it's a timeintensive process --- using a firewire card reader it usually takes about 1/2 hour to run a 512 mb card. Using a USB reader or PCMCIA slot reader is likely to take longer --- maybe as much as a few hours. The good news is that you can give the demo a whirl, without spending a penny, if images are recoverable, then you can decide to buy and recover.

Erasing or even formatting a card isn't the worst thing out there --- you're not really overwriting the card with 0s and 1s; instead you're throwing out the "Card Catalog" that the computer queries to see where the individual pictures are. No card catalog --- the computer doesn't know what it's looking at. Photo Rescue looks for files that have the form of known image formats, and copies any files it finds to a new folder on your hard drive.

Compact Flash Card Maintenance: On a Mac always make sure to unmount the card before removing it from it's reader. To unmount, select the card icon and depress the apple key and tap the letter "E" on the keyboard. In the alternative drag the icon to the trash. Then remove the card from the reader. When you put the card back in the camera, format it before resuming your picture taking. Burn back-up CDs and/or back up image files to external hard drives. I prefer and. Never edit off the card --- instead copy the images to a folder on the hard drive, then dismount and eject the disk before beginning your editing. When you've had a card acting up, after you've recovered the images, use the free card wipe utility from Data Rescue to overwrite the card with 0s and 1s and to test its function. WARNING: Card wipe has the ability to overwrite the data on any drive connected to your computer ---- so this utility should not be installed on any computer that children or the computer illiterate have access to.

[George]

Howdy Nik & Dave

Because Dave is running OS X, he does not need to run the risk of a piece of software that can erase the startup drive while running from it. The Apple OS X DisUtility.app (which is found at /Applications/Utilities/) will do exactly the same job as Card Wipe without the risk as it WILL NOT erase the startup partition while started up from it. It is also the easiest way to run a permission repair on a X startup volume, which should be done every once in a while.

Apples DiskUtility.app allows the same format option (all zero’s) and the 8x Random Write erasure method also. It will format in the MS-DOS filesystem (also UNIX, HFS and HFS+ journaled) and will allow cards formatted by it to be directly used in most digital cameras without re-formatting (but Nik is right, a camera is best for that job as some cameras want specific folders written at format time and all digital cameras want the MS-DOS filesystem format).

Hope this helps,

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Regards,

[Nik Habicht]

Yup, you can tell I live on the dark side of computing. The reason I harp on formatting cards in camera before use is that I've never had a corrupt card in 2.5 years with digital. I've fixed plenty of my colleagues though --- from the "I only format once a month camp" to the "I've never formatted when switching from one type of camera to another camp." In both types of cases the photographers are having a tough time comprehending what went wrong --- since it always worked before......

[George]

Right with you there Nik. My idea of emptying a card after the pictures are copied off is to format it before I take it out of the reader. Then I usually format it again at the camera “just to be sure“.

Just like Nik, I have never had trouble with CF cards except for the first one (8MB ha ha) I got back in late 98 for my first digital camera (Kodak DC-265). I pulled it out of the camera while it was powering down and I was a little impatient. It just needed to be re-formatted, but it took me three weeks and $60 to get a card drive and the software to do that back then. Which by the way was still cheaper than replacing an 8MB card back then. Things have sure changed :-)

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Regards,