What kind of file system do memory cards typically use?

[blurredvision]

Does anyone know? Is it a typical FAT file system? Thanks.

 

[dug777]

I would have guessed FAT16/32, and a few googles seem to support this, here's a random one:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bi...ulti_page.asp?cid=6007

All digital SLR and compact cameras we've encountered use the FAT file system as the basis for placing photos on a card and keeping track of the location of those photos. This means the cards themselves have to be FAT-formatted, regardless of whether they're hard drive or flash memory storage media. Cards with capacities over 2GB must be formatted FAT32, a newer variant of the FAT file system that is not widely supported in older digital cameras (though most camera models that accept CompactFlash or SD introduced from roughly 2003 onwards should be FAT32-capable).

 

[blurredvision]

Thanks, I also did a bit of googling myself, but couldn't really come to anything conclusive for this particular setup. I'd be willing to bet some money that it's FAT, though. A friend of my wife has lost a bunch of holiday pics on her new DSLR, and I'll be attempting to recover them for her. Hopefully it's not a lost cause, since she's already taken more pictures after finding out the first 150 disappeared without reason. I have decent hopes of recovering some, though.

 

[Sukhoi]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Thanks, I also did a bit of googling myself, but couldn't really come to anything conclusive for this particular setup. I'd be willing to bet some money that it's FAT, though. A friend of my wife has lost a bunch of holiday pics on her new DSLR, and I'll be attempting to recover them for her. Hopefully it's not a lost cause, since she's already taken more pictures after finding out the first 150 disappeared without reason. I have decent hopes of recovering some, though.

I actually recovered a bunch off a SD card...can't remember exactly what I did. Maybe ran a chkdsk on it.

 

[arrfep]

Download Zero-Assumption Recovery software. Free and easy to use, I've used it with success.

 

[bobsmith1492]

We made a custom file system following the FAT32 guidelines (you don't want to look, it's nasty) and my camera picked it up just fine (Konica/Minolta).