Ever had a digital camera card fail?
 

On return from our Scotland vacation, one of my six 256K compact flash cards could not be read by my camera, my computer, or by any of the photo shops I took it to. Unfortunately, it was the one card that contained pictures we had taken of the queen, but more importantly were the pictures of my wife's chance meeting with Sean Connery. She was devastated to think that all the photos we took at the opening of the new parliament were gone.

I did a google search for "compact flash recovery" and found several software programs that promise to recover lost picture files, even on cards that have been erased or formatted. I downloaded one of the programs and it worked flawlessly. I was able to recover every picture and even some that I had purposely erased were still viewable.

If you think you have a dead card or if you have erased or formatted a card by mistake, don't despair until you have tried one of the recovery software programs. Your travel photos may not be lost after all.

Yes! This happened to me once. When I was in Europe, I viewed the pictures on my camera, so I know they were there. Then I brought them home to print at one of Costco's machines, and all the photos were gone. I still don't know where the problem occurred - with the card itself, with my camera, from the airport x-ray, from the Costco machine, or other cause. It had all my Murren, Lucerne, Brienz pictures on the card. I was devastated. But all the other cards were fine.

Ji jeff,

Mind telling us which one you used?

Ira

I chose PhotoRescue because they offer a demo version that you can try for free to see if it works. After seeing that the demo version worked, I purchased the full version. ($29)

Wow! This happened to me with a 256 meg card, and I lost all the pics from my cousin's wedding. It wasn't the end of the world, but I sure was disappointed. Tried to recover but didn't know about programs for this on the net. Please cite the source in case it happens again! In the meantime, I've reformatted the card.

Thanks! Trish

Trish,
If you have reformatted the card and haven't filled it up with pictures again, you still may be able to recover some of the original pictures. The site to download the free demo is:
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

Thanks Jeff...it's worth a try!

I cannot reommend Scott Tallyn at http://www.tallyns.com/ highly enough! They can recover the impossible -- but one hint. If these photos are really important, contact them FIRST and don't mess with the card yourself, since you can make a bad situation worse.

jeff49, many thanks for that post. I just got back from China to find that a series of photos had vanished - seemingly the first 20-30 shots taken on that 256K card. I'll see if PhotoRescue has an answer to that, assuming that it handles xD cards.

Wow--we thought we must have done something "wrong" with our 256K flashcard. We saw the pics we had taken in Sicily on the viewer--but, when we got home, maybe 20 pics were missing.
There is one pic that is totally "black", and we think that is where the missing pics are.
Thank you all for the valuable information about recovering these pics.
does anyone think the problem could be with airport x-rays of the camera/card???
thanks
surfingmomma

Having the same problem, what a timely thread. Thanks all.

jeff49: Thx for the info. I'm in the processing of deciding on a digital camera and hadn't even thought about picture failure. I saved this info just in case.

After reading this thread, I started searching for what could have gone wrong with my camera. This one article tries to explain what could have happened:

http://www.nyip.com/tips/flashcards0604.php

I thought this had happened to me on my recent trip to Paris. I had a 512MB xD card which I had previously used. I took my laptop and a card reader with me. I tried the card reader (which was new) with my 256MB card (which was also new). But I didn't try the new card reader with the 512MB card. Since I considered the 256MB card the back up, I used the 512MB card my first day in Paris, taking a couple hundred pics. When I tried to download that night, the card could not be read.

Luckily, when I took the card to a photo shop nearby the next morning, they were able to read it and put the pics on CD. But I didn't know until I got home whether the problem was with the card or simply the combination of card/reader so I was afraid to use the 512MB card for the rest of the trip.

If you take your own computer and card reader with you, be sure to check each and every card with that combination before you go.

(And the 512MB card works just fine with my other card reader after I got home. It just won't work with the new one which I purchased because it's smaller and less bulker, therefore better suited for travel. Too bad it doesn't work with all my cards.)

Jolie -- Thanks for the article link. Very informational, and I have bookmarked it to send to others.

Jolie -- that article is one of the best links I've been given in a long time. Thanks.

I had "lost" nearly 200 photos from a recent trip to Croatia. Couldn't understand what the probelm was; they were all showing in the camera just hours before I tried to download to my home computer; I still don't understand what happened, and it scares me for future use. Some photos were on a new card, not previously used, but another bunch were on a card I had used many times prior to this trip. Thanks for the links which I haven't had time to read just yet.

My troubles were with 256 and 32 mg SmartMedia cards. After some internet research, I found the following FREE program which recovered all but one of my photos. It is not only free but idiot proof (there was no technical info I had to fill in).

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

I hope some of our really technical photographers here can step in and give us non-professional some clues as to why this is happening. I doubt it is x-ray damage because the cards had good and lost photos on the same card. I haven't written to my camera manufacturer yet, but plan to do so.

Here is one non-technical hint on these cards, or how Ilearned the hard way.
We had an early digital camera and cards were expensive. A well-meaning friend offered to loan us an extra card. Then 5 days of great pics suddently disappeared. Later, I discovered that these cards formatted themselves to your equipment, and our manual stated a card used elsewhere should be reformatted in this camera before being used.
Now if I had only known of the recovery available as stated here...

I just wanted to thank Jeff49 for this thread. After reading about it here, I tried one of the recovery programs and my Switzerland pictures that were "lost" over a year ago were ALL recoverable. I'm just glad I didn't throw the card away in disgust, which was the way I felt at the time. Thanks.

For everyone's information, if you accidentally erase the card before using it again the recovery process is the same.

This is a lesson learned from having done it, not once, but TWICE!!!!!

I didn't read the full article that was posted but will say that just like rechargable batteries CF cards will fail after a while. You should replace your card, depending on how much you use it, every few years.

I have used eProvided.com for Image recovery after Photo Rescue software lost the data on my card originally, I was then not able to ever get the data back. Image recovery software stinks.

Be very careful if you want to keep your data, have the pro's handle the image recovery to stay on the safe side of the fence. "Do not try this at home"

I say go with eProvided.com ---> If you want digital image recovery handled correctly. See thier form for sending in your media cards. They do not use digital image recovery software they do it with a special machine.

;) A Press release about eProvided.com can be found on Excite Money Site

cqjbcq: Any reason you choose this as your one and only ever post to Fodors? To dredge up an oldish thread simply to bad mouth Photo Recovery which others said worked great, and then to praise the competing eProvided service and link to a press release. Do you work there??????

This is terrific information and thanks for all the references. I have only had one card to "lock up" and not be readable. I gave it to my son to look at and he was able to fix it--he said by "opening it with another name" but he is a computer guy. I will "store" this info for any possible future disaster.
I have used my cards for years and MANY pictures. I do not understand the post about replacing them "after a couple of years".

I got SanDisk's RescuePro software free when I bought one of their "Extreme" compact Flash media. It came on a mini-CD right in the package with the media.

I think the RescuePro software alone sold for $35 or 40.

I got SanDisk's RescuePro software free when I bought one of their "Extreme" compact Flash media. It came on a mini-CD right in the package with the media.

I think the RescuePro software alone sold for $35 or 40.

http://www.lc-tech.com/rescuepro.htm

I've never had a failure in 2 years, but this is GREAT info -- perhaps, considering the amount of pictures I take, I'm "living on borrowed time."

Wow!!! Right now PhotoRescue is running in the background bringing up shots I forget that I took. Unfortunately none of them are from my European vacation. Just as I suspected, my old camera must've been the culprit. All the photos I took on an old 128 MB SD card survived but the ones that I took on a brand new 256 MB card showed up blank when I downloaded them to my computer. I guess I erased most of the old vacation stuff in reusing the card. But I do still have the "bad" files on file in my computer should a day come when I might rescue them.

Ah - PhotoRescue is done. It found maybe 10 shots I thought I lost at the end of the run. Thanks Jeff49!

Would you mind sharing the BRAND name of the failed card?

I've been using a digital camera with compact flash cards for over 3 years now and only had one failure - I think I may have accidentaly tried to take out the card when the camera was still turned on. Since then my choice is to have several smaller cards, rather than going for one huge one - maybe worth thinking about if you're just about to buy a new camera ir purchase extra memory. That way if one fails (or gets dropped, lost, etc), you haven't lost all your pictures. Still, it's comforting to know there are recovery tools out there.

Greg,
The compact card that failed for me was a SanDisk Ultra II, 256 MB. It's supposedly one of their faster cards and I know I paid more for it than for their standard cards. Even after I recovered all my data, I still could not get the card to work or format so I sent it back for a free replacement as it came with a lifetime warranty. For this reason, you might want to make sure you keep up with sales receipts if your card has a lifetime warranty.

Sandisk is one of the best brands. you were unlucky jeff

i have 2 cards and use them on alternate days on holiday.

I have found some cards that are big names to be terrible. Actually the name of the company up above that handles image recovery without software for the clients they serve found that a big name company has chips that are actually lifting off the motherboards due to heat. This heat can be caused from taking many images at once to taking images in a hot environemnt etc.

They are able to place the chip back in order and solve the problem.

Not all big name card makers have manufactured these cards with proper Q&A!

To repeat a recommendation above, PCInspector works well and is free:

http://www.pcinspector.de/smart_medi...uk/welcome.htm

But if it works for you, consider a donation to the author!

Andrew

I do not have a digital camera, but many of my customers come in and have had their cards fail. I recommed recovery programs.

One customer that goes to Africa every year, finds that after his return to the USA, all his cards no longer work (everytime). They work fine there, but not after his return. He finally started to burn them to CD before he leaves for the airport, and then reformats them at home.

There are two things that are required for cards to work properly. Most instruction books fail to mention them.
1)A reader is great for download, but use the camera for deleteing the files. The camera programing knows how it likes thing done.
2) Depending on your use, 2-3 times a year you need to use the camera to reformat the card. This cleans up all the dead end paths, its like defragmenting a harddrive. If you notice you are getting fewer photos than you used to, reformat.

By all means get a recovery program.

I've never had a problem with a memory card after traveling overseas (or ever), but I've never been to Africa - so who knows what your customer does in transit? After downloading my pictures from camera (always with a card reader) I always reformat the card immediately in the camera. On my last trip to Europe, I took 4.5GB worth of memory cards with me, and I did fill them up and need to reformat at least one (had a laptop with me). I took almost 1700 pictures, though many were retakes and perhaps 300 of all of these are keepers.

People who have CDs burned of their digital photos while on vacation should keep in mind that CD-ROM discs are **NOT** indestructible! Whatever you do, don't handle them or scratch them! Plus they can and do go bad - I've had a couple of CDs stop working on me after a year or two (usually I can recover at least some of the files, though). Or a CD may simply be defective at the outset or not burned correctly. If you have essential photographs, you should never rely on a single CD to have the only copy of them. If any photos you have are that important to you, either take a laptop with a CD burner (so you'd have one copy on CD, another on the laptop hard drive) or get a portable storage device that will offload your photos for you (even then, try to get a CD burned to have two copies).

If you do rely on a single CD burned while on vacation, upon return home make at least one copy of each CD as soon as possible. It's easy to put away your vacation pictures on that single CD and forget about them, and in a few years that CD may no longer work.

Andrew

To Andrew's good advice, I would add:

1. When you burn to CD, always make sure you can recover your image files from it before you erase the memory stick/card.

2. For your backup CD, use a different brand blank than you used for the original copy. No one knows which maker's CDs are going to deteriorate more or less than others.

Yep, good advice. When I burn CDs myself (as opposed to having some shop do it for you while you are in Europe), I always use Nero which can automatically verify the files after burning. Some CD-burning software does not do this, which I think is very dangerous! Never assume your CD is good just because it burns successfully. I've had more than one CD or DVD turn out to be immediately bad when I tried to verify it.

Andrew

Just adding my name so I can find this thread for future use.

Cheers!

And this, boys and girls, is why commercial and portrait studios rarely do anything “important” (i.e. weddings, irreplaceable family portraits) on anything other than film. Sure, any number of things can happen to film as well, but I’ve never put a negative into an enlarger and look down at the easel and read, “error: this file is truncated.”
Here’s how we do save digital projects, if you’re interested.

The memory card is inserted into the computer (or a card reader for some of you) and the file appears in MY COMPUTER.
The contents are COPIED to a folder on the desktop.
The desktop folder is opened to make sure everything copied correctly.
We then go back to MY COMPUTER and COPY the contents of the card to a CD-Rom.
We check the CD-Rom in a second computer.
Finally, we create a file on a stand alone hard drive and MOVE the images from the memory disc into that folder.
After checking that all is well the folder on the desktop is sent to the Recycle Bin (trash) and the Recycle Bin is then emptied, freeing up considerable space on the “home” computer.
The memory disc/card is then put back into the camera and formatted.
A lot of hoops? Maybe. You are the ultimate judge as to how important your photographs are to you. By the way, a lot of people balk at the idea of saving to a separate hard drive, BUT….we buy stand-alone hard drives and find them a very reasonable investment. The last one stores 80 gigs and cost less than $100. They plug into a port and are pretty much ready to use out of the box. We find this economical enough that when a drive becomes more than 60% full, we unplug it, put it in its original box, and buy a new one. Consider how many really large files you can store in 40, 60, or 80 gigs, and it is in the tens of thousands, you would probably spend as much archiving negatives in sleeves and boxes.