Thanks all for responding. after hours of research. trying various recovery tools even low level format doesn't work. The card is not being detected. Windows detects the "adapter" but not the card. I even tried a psp format (which was dangerous, but I figured I could use file scavenger or some other undelete program if I could just get it to recognize.)
I usually backup everything but I am on vacation and had lots of moments lost in this
In fact I was just transferring it all to the pc when it died after 50mb of it transferred...
So basically it looks like a hardware problem and I would like to still recover the data. Can anyone recommend any "reasonable" priced data recovery businesses? It is a real sandisk card and has been working fine for several months.
Lesson learned... Flash media is not as solid as it seems to be. In fact in searching there are many many failures. Be sure to back up often. very often... and sandisk apparently seems to have lots of issues throughout the web. I think I will look into other manufacturers for my future purchases. (they partner with a data recovery service... go figure)
I think they should offer it as a free service when you card fails like this within the warranty period...