How To Recover Files From Corrupted CF Card?

Compact Flash card is commonly renowned as CF card. And it is commonly used in devices like digital cameras, camcorders, and other electronic gadgets because of its high storage capacity, reliability, fast data transfer rate, etc. Apart from this, the CF card can also save high-resolution photos, videos, and audio files easily.

Despite the above features, the CF card is prone to corruption and damage. At times, when you connect the corrupt CF card to your Windows or Mac system, it pops up an error saying “corrupt CF card” or “drive not accessible”, etc.

In this article, you can find a complete guide on how to fix a corrupted CF card, a reliable method to perform corrupted CF card recovery. Also, find common reasons that cause CF card corruption.

Is your CF card corrupt or unreadable?

If yes, then the foremost thing to do is to remove your corrupted CF card if it is connected to any device and avoid saving any new data like photos, videos, audio, text documents, etc. This will increase the chances of recovering data from corrupted CF card successfully.

Corrupted Compact Flash Card Recovery

a) Recover Corrupted Or Damaged CF Card

b) Fix Corrupted CF Card on Windows and Mac

A) How To Recover Files From Corrupted CF Card?

Performing corrupted CF card recovery is simple with the help of Remo Recover. This photo recovery software is best as it is designed with advanced scanning algorithms. This tool safely scans corrupt or formatted CF card, SD card, or any other storage device to recover photos, videos and various media files from it.

Step 1: Download and install Remo Recover software on your Windows or Mac computer and connect your corrupted CF card to your system.

Step 2: Launch the tool and select the Recover Partitions option to restore files from corrupted CF card.

Step 3: Select the corrupt CF card from the main screen, and click the Scan option to start corrupted CF card recovery.

Note: You can make use of the Deep Scan option if the corruption of the CF card is severe. You can even preview the recovered photos and videos from the corrupted CF card by double-clicking on them for free.

Step 4: Click the Save option to restore files from corrupt CF card to the desired location.

This compact flash drive recovery tool can restore raw-image and photos file formats like BMP, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and many more and video file formats like MOV, MP4, AVI, FLV, 3GP, and etc. from corrupted CF card on all latest versions of operating systems like Windows 11 and macOS Big Sur.

Why is my compact flash card not working or corrupted?

• Inappropriate handling of CF card: If you suddenly eject your CF card while transferring the data to a computer or during the CF card read/write process, etc. it can lead to CF card corruption resulting in the inaccessibility of photos, videos, and documents saved on it.
• Virus Attack: Virus-like Trojan, Malware, Spy ware, Adware, etc. are the most common reasons behind CF card corruption. Generally, if you often connect your compact flash card to the virus-infected devices leads to CF card corruption.
• File system failure: The file system manages the data saved on the drive. Any damage to the file system corrupts the CF card. Thus file system failure makes the CF card undetectable on the computer system which leads to data loss.
• Other Reasons: Using the same CF card on multiple gadgets, failed synchronization of the CF card data, viewing photos or videos when the CF card’s memory is full, etc. can lead to CF card corruption.

B) How to Repair corrupted CF card?

Repairing a damaged or corrupt CF card is similar to fixing corrupt SD card on Windows or Mac. If you have tried manual methods to repair a corrupt CF card such as assigning a new letter to the CF card drive or running a command prompt, it might not help you if the severity of corruption is very high.

Most Windows users run the CHKDSK function and Mac users run first aid recovery, which are in-built tools to repair a corrupt or unreadable CF card on Windows and Mac respectively. In most cases, CMD or disk utility function cannot help you fix unreadable SD card or CF card.

The only thing you can use is to format the corrupt CF card using the below method. Make sure you have recovered your CF card data using Remo Recover before you implement the method as it leads to a data loss scenario.

Fix corrupt CF card on Windows:

• Connect your CF card to a Windows computer
• Type: cmd in the Windows search box
• Open the command prompt as Run as Administrator
• Type: diskpart in the command prompt window
• Type: list disk and press Enter
• Type: select disk 1 and press Enter
  Note: Replace 1 with the corrupt CF card drive letter
• Type: clean and press Enter
• Type: create partition primary and press Enter
• Type: select disk 1 and press Enter
  Note: Again replace 1 with your corrupt or damaged CF card drive number
• Type: active to make the CF card partition activate
• Type: format fs = NTFS or format fs = fat32 and press Enter
• Type: assign letter = F
• After this, type exit to complete the method

Fix corrupt CF card on Mac:

• Connect your corrupt CF card to Mac
• Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
• Select the CF card which you want to format and click the Erase option
• Provide a new name to your CF card (optional)
• Click the Format option and choose the format type
  Note: Select exFAT if you want to make it compatible with both Windows and Mac. Otherwise, you can select MS-DOS (FAT)
• Click on the Erase option. Now, your corrupt CF card will be formatted by your Mac device