Corrupted SD, recovered: what next?

maninsuitcase

maninsuitcase

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Chris
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I have just managed to corrupt my Sandisk Ultra SD card. Not sure if it was lightroom or the camera as it was behaving odd in LR before it failed completely.

I have formatted the disc so it can be read at all and I am now attempting a recovery with the software in this thread which seems to be working so far: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=261244&highlight=mac+recovery

Now what is the best way forward? Format again, leave it with the format, bin it? Basically I nearly lost some (personally) valuable pictures and am not sure I now trust this card.

Thanks.
 
As my old english teacher once told us "if in doubt - leave it out"...

You can pick them up cheap enough if you look around - so I would be inclined to get a new card & bash the hell out of the old one so you dont use it by mistake & end upo in the same situation as before....
 
I'd try reformatting it and copying some big files on and off, see if they get corrupted. If it is broken send it back and get a new one as Sandisk Ultra products have lifetime warranties don't they?
 
sorry to hijack a little.. surley if you format the card you loose the images?? im asking as i have a card that it corrupt and would like the pictures off... how do i go about it... sorry for the hijack
 
Personally I'd be afraid to trust it again, I'd send it back for a replacement.

ROB C you'll need to get some data recovery software, some cards come with free recovery disks (got one somewhere) we have used image rescue (I think?) in the past and that recovered pics from a formatted card easily enough. Don't reuse the card untill you have recovered the pics or you might overwrite them.
 
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I'd relegate it to emergency use only. One of my cheaper cards now has this honour
 
I wouldn't trust a card that had crapped out on me so I would smash it to pieces and bin it. You could try claiming on the warranty if you've still got the receipt and are feeling lucky.

Where did the card come from? If e-bay, are you sure it's a genuine one? Many aren't.
 
Send it back for a replacement, or just bin it. Memory cards are cheap and it's not worth the risk.
 
Send back or bin. Don't trust it again - ever.

With regard to formatting - a quick format of a card is not actually that destructive. Sure, you can't see the data any more - but this is because the quick format only erases the master file table not the files themselves. The drive shows as blank because the MFT is like the index - it tells the computer where the files are on disk.
Sometimes a quick format is needed to get the card to even recognise as a file system in recovery software - but the software can the go on to retrieve the files (Assuming no new data is written to the card).
 
Think it's the reader as I did all my transfers via the camera last night. Once I reformatted the card the camera read it fine but the card reader was having none of it.

Trying to read my spare card now and it's not even recognising it. Will try again using the camera to read in a bit.
 
Rob.C said:
sorry to hijack a little.. surley if you format the card you loose the images?? im asking as i have a card that it corrupt and would like the pictures off... how do i go about it... sorry for the hijack
Click to expand...

Way I did it was format the card in camera so it could be read by the computer (camera as the reader). Then used Lexmark Image Rescue 3 to recover all images from the card.
 
The card has failed you once - do you really want to risk it doing the same again ?

Replace it .
 
That's just it, I don't think it was the card now but the reader. Using the reader my mac can't even see the card, but the camera has no issues at all.

If so, the reader failed mid read and as I forcibly ejected the media it's not hugely surprising the card was corrupted, I have seen similar effects when I just pulled a USB drive out once. I am going to run a diagnostic over the one that corrupted but I am now confident the issue is the reader and so will be replacing it.
 
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