"CARD CANNOT BE ACCESSED" Canon 7D

[Lauren_12]

Help! I have over 200 photos on a 16 GB Compact flash card. when I try to download to my computer I get the error message "you need to format disk before you can use it" I know this will delete all of the images. If i try and view them in the camera (Cannon 7D) I get the error message "Card cannot be accessed" is there any way to recover the images.....will software be the answer, or is this a physical problem? Anybody?

 

[bjornl]

There is data recovery software which you can try, but given the current state, I would not be very optimistic. If the images are irreplaceable there are data recovery places which offer a much better chance to get the data off the card, but they aren't cheap.