Problem with SanDisk SDHC card and Nikon D5100?

I was using my Nikon D5100 one night at a dinner and all of a sudden my camera froze and then said I had a damaged memory card out of nowhere. I didn't do anything to it and it just said that it was damaged all of a sudden when nothing even happened to it. Now I plugged it into my computer to see if the memory card still has the pictures and the memory card doesn't even show up. My computer doesn't even recognize it. I don't know what brought this on or anything but I have pictures and videos that I really don't want to lose. I downloaded a photo recovery program and that didn't even recognize the card being in my computer! The card won't even show up. Is there any hope to saving my photos? Is there a person I could take it to? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

These cards are well known for sudden failure and that's what happened to yours. Replace it.

If your computer does not recognize it, there's not much you can do. If you can manage to format the card in your camera, try that.

Once the card is formatted - if you can format it, immediately put the card into your computer and run your photo recovery program on it. Formatting in the camera should not delete the image data, but it will delete the file information - but most importantly, will let you (if successful) access the drive again in your computer.

The file recovery program simply re-attaches the file information to the image data.

If still nothing, you can try running "chkdsk /f" (use /f or whatever your computer drive it assigns to your card). Chkdsk is a command line program on Windows computers.

If still nothing - you are probably out of options. You can probably send it in to a file-recovery facility, but they are rather expensive as they mostly do forensic type work.

Memory cards are not permanent storage devices. Sorry if you knew about this just right now.

http://keerok-photography.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-keep-your-memory-card-healthy.html

Ooops!
You say " I have pictures and videos that I really don't want to lose".

You have learnt an important lesson the hard way! SD cards do not last for ever. They fail. They are desigend to hold your photos and videos until you get home. You then download them to your PC and wipe the card to start again.

Do not use SD cards for long term storage.

It sounds very much as though your sd card has failed.

All flash memory fails, they can only be written to a finite number of times. That said these days this is in the order of 100, 000 write cycles. As with any data storage medium SD cards WILL fail. To this end I would recommend getting several good quality cards ( I use Sandisk Ultra, Extreme and Extreme pro) and instead of buying 1 large card buy several smaller ones (this may even work out less expensive in some cases). This will help you to not have "all your eggs in one basket". Also replace your cards every few years, even if they work fine and stress test new cards by running a utility such as H2testw.

You should also backup, backup, backup. DO NOT leave your precious photos on an sd card for any longer than you need to, copy them off as soon as you can and follow the 3-2-1 backup strategy. That is to say have 3 copies of your files across 2 different types of media with 1 copy off site (i.e. On a hard drive at a relatives house or use a cloud storage service.

For sdhc card

http://r4i-3ds.com/buy-kingston-2gb-4gb-8gb-microsdhc-memory-cards-for-r4-series-flash-cards-c-16.html

I have had success with this… Download the program
http://www.linkedin.com/..._SHARE-lnk

You have to use a card reader either on your computer or an external USB card reader. Put the card in the card reader, open the recovery program, then select the drive where files are deleted, then press "Next" and wait for it to do it's magic.

If above does not work, you may have to format the memory card (use quick format), and then use above mentioned software to scan again the memory card and recover your files.