Back in 2003 12.8 million digital cameras were owned, a marginally larger number than film cameras, 33% of households were seen to own a digital camera by the end of the year.



Cameras such as these in combination with other digital products such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and MP3 players all require media on which to store the digital data. Flash media, memory cards and microdrives were designed in combination with these digital products. Unfortunately, as with computers, digital media does occasionally suffer from corruption which in turn can cause stored information to become locked away in the storage media, supposedly inaccessible.

A wide variety of digital storage media forms exist today, all with varying storage capacities dependant upon make and model. 8MB through to larger 6GB microdrives are now possible.

First placed into this market by SanDisk Corporation in 1994, CompactFlash Memory has become the most popular storage media of late. This media uses flash memory semiconductor technology able to house audio, text, video and images on flash chips. Being non-volatile and also solid state (no battery is required to keep the data stored and no moving parts exist) has made this technology tough and reliable, just right for portable digital products.

Sony and Toshiba created Memory Sticks and SmartMedia cards, respectively, which also turned out to be very popular. Memory Sticks have become the dominant storage media type for their own products, digital cameras, Clie' handhelds and computers. Other manufacturers also use Memory Sticks, in particular Konica. SmartMedia cards tend to be rather thin and fragile, and have a top capacity of 128MB. Similar to solid state technology, no moving parts and a small size are perfect for active and constant transfers between digital devices.

Initially introduced in 1998 with a capacity of 170MB, IBM Microdrives are also now popular and have grown in storage size to be able to cope with 2GB. Although solid state memory cards like CompactFlash are more impact resistant, microdrives have been seen as reliable and very economic with regards to digital devices.

Whatever format you use, be it one of the afore mentioned, or some of the other varieties e.g. SecureDigital, xD Picture Card, MultiMedia Card, Mini CD-R/CD-RW, more and more people are relying on digital media and its associated problems, rather than traditional film.

Gone are the cases of film overexposure and damaged film rolls, in come the hardware failures and data corruption. Data organization and storage now uses the FAT file system. Corruption of this filing system results in the digital device that houses the memory card not being able to locate the data, whatever is stored being 'lost', although still remaining on the memory card.

Corruption typically occurs when a device is low on power or when memory cards are removed whilst the power is still on. Such circumstances result in the file systems not pointing to the data. Hardware failure tends to come from damage, e.g. by rough handling or accidental breakage, to the digital media so that it is unable to properly connect with the associated device which needs to read the data.

Various data recovery companies, such as Vogon, MJM, Storagesearch, CBL-Tech and Ontrack, are readily available for any of the data recovery difficulties you may encounter with digital storage medias and their associated devices. A wealth of experience and data recovery innovations mean that most data that is 'lost' is in fact retrievable with the right techniques.