faulty panasonic 1gig sd memory card

i have approx. 670 j.peg’s of my last o/s trip, with plans/ actual pix of a resort my company is building. these, obviously, cannot be replaced. when attempting to upload these from a card reader, i get a message ‘faulty i/o device’. the camera, a panasonic lumix fz20, gives the error message ‘memory card error-format this card?-yes/no’. i have not formatted the card. is there any way way of recovering this data? any reliable advise will meet with heartfelt gratitude. thank you.