OK here it goes. I know all the rules, backup backup backup.

But I was on the phone talking my wife through setting up a new XA-10 and when I told her how to initialize the hard drive I pressed the button on mine. I freaked out and pulled the battery hoping it would stop but now my computer will not read it and the camera wants me to initialize the hard drive.

Is there anything I can do? ANYTHING? Any suggestions. I know what I should have done...I need to know what I can do.

Hopelessly yours.

Anyone have any experience with file recovery software on a camcorder flash drive connected by USB?

Your camera does not have a hard drive. It has 64GB of internal flash memory, that flash memory can behave much like a hard drive. It uses a file allocation table like a hard drive does.

When the "initialization" started the first thing that probably happened was the file allocation table got "zeroed" out (usually the first character or two of each filename on the media is replaced with a symbol or character). When you pulled the battery you halted the initialization process and that's why nothing seems to be able to "recognize" the media.

You also have 2 card slots, I would try putting a blank card in one of them, see if you can format or initialize that in camera, then follow the instructions in the manual for copying material from the internal media to the card. It's a long shot because the camera may not be able to recognize it's own internal media.

I assume you had material on the internal media you don't want to lose, if that's the case you may be best off contacting some of the companies that specialize in data recovery from corrupted hard drives.