Help! CF reader, bent pins, corrupted images..

Bryans12v

Hello all..,

Last week I noticed while editing a recent wedding that some images would turn green in LR4 while viewing them. The thumbnails would appear fine I brought up the 1:1 then 90% of the image would go green. I'm afraid to even edit anymore.

I just shot another wedding last night with formatted cards and during the wedding, about 300 images into the card, it just went haywire and said CF card cannot be formatted with this camera. Wouldn't let me even view the images any longer. Then, it did it again with another card. Both 8G Lexar cards. Its a 5dmkii. I cannot retrieve the images normally.

Today, I noticed two of the outer pins (one on each side) of my CF reader are bent over. I don't know how long it has been this way. I'm almost certain that this has something to do with the two cards being corrupt or even all of my cards now being corrupted. The first I've ever noticed anything strange with corrupt images was last weeks wedding with the green frames in LR.

I don't know what to do. I'm afraid now to shoot with any of my cards. To make matters worse, I just bought three more before this for $150. So now I have 9 8G cards I'm afraid to use.

All the other cards can be read and display on the camera. I'm trying to get software to retrieve the images that I cant see. If this fails, who or where can help me get them back? They're someone's wedding images.

ziggy53

Are you saying the the CF socket of the camera has bent pins, or is this a card reader in your computer or an external card reader to the computer?

Bryans12v

ziggy53 wrote: »

Are you saying the the CF socket of the camera has bent pins, or is this a card reader in your computer or an external card reader to the computer?

Its an external Rocketfish CF card reader. Camera pins are in good shape. Thanks for the help Ziggy.

perroneford

Bryans12v wrote: »

Its an external Rocketfish CF card reader. Camera pins are in good shape. Thanks for the help Ziggy.

Have you considered perhaps transferring your images via USB to the computer for now. Or maybe buying another $20 card reader? That's probably the FIRST thing I would have done.

ziggy53

I would seriously recommend replacing the external card reader ASAPractical. While you might be able to use your camera body to transfer the files, I've had enough problems with that method to not recommend it unless there is no other method available. (Plus, if the pins get bent in a camera body it's a fairly serious and expensive repair, not to mention putting the body out of service for the duration of repairs.)

Since the cards still read properly and display the preview images in camera, I suspect that the files are still OK on the cards, so don't do anything further with the cards until you have a working external CF card reader for your computer.

I highly recommend inserting the card lightly into the new reader, then stroke the back of the card until the card is properly aligned and seated, and you can see that it's aligned in the reader, then push it home in the socket. If you have any suspicions that the card is not properly aligned, don't force the card in. You don't want a repeat performance of the bent pins.

Once you get the files safely into the computer, and backed up with two other technologies, you may have to do a "complete" computer format* of the cards which showed the "green" problem, followed by a camera format of the cards. Test the cards thoroughly before using them for another paying gig.

*(The computer format needs to be done carefully, using the same format structure as the camera format structure. If you're not sure how to do this, find someone who does know how to do this.)

Bryans12v

I immediately threw the reader in the trash and will pull the images through the camera via usb. My concern now is retrieving the images on the two cards that went haywire. They were formatted in camera, before use. My second shot a lot of great images on them. We were able to view and browse them in camera playback normally when all of the sudden she couldn't shoot any longer and the screen read "CF card cannot be formatted with this camera". I even tried the card in my 5d body but the message appears immediately and will not let me view or shoot. Tonight and tomorrow Ill be trying recovery software to see if I can do this manually myself. If not, do you know who or where I cand send them to? Ill pay.

My other concern is that I believe the last wedding I shot may have corrupted images from these cards. I only noticed today that the pins were bent on the external reader so this may have happened when uploading my last wedding. I shot both the last two in NY and live in NC. I got home from the first and imported the shots into lr4. I started culling and viewing 1:1 for sharpness when I noticed some of the imaged turning green after 1:1 preview, where its stripped of its jpeg preview. As soon as I noticed this I stopped editing, backed up the entire day manually onto an external. I didn't want to loose and more images. Ive read a couple places that there is software out there that may be able to fix this.

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Im so scared at the moment.

perroneford

There is a disconnect here for me. I don't understand how bent pins on an external reader would affect a card being used in the original camera or another camera. Something here doesn't compute.

Bryans12v wrote: »

I immediately threw the reader in the trash and will pull the images through the camera via usb. My concern now is retrieving the images on the two cards that went haywire. They were formatted in camera, before use. My second shot a lot of great images on them. We were able to view and browse them in camera playback normally when all of the sudden she couldn't shoot any longer and the screen read "CF card cannot be formatted with this camera". I even tried the card in my 5d body but the message appears immediately and will not let me view or shoot. Tonight and tomorrow Ill be trying recovery software to see if I can do this manually myself. If not, do you know who or where I cand send them to? Ill pay.

My other concern is that I believe the last wedding I shot may have corrupted images from these cards. I only noticed today that the pins were bent on the external reader so this may have happened when uploading my last wedding. I shot both the last two in NY and live in NC. I got home from the first and imported the shots into lr4. I started culling and viewing 1:1 for sharpness when I noticed some of the imaged turning green after 1:1 preview, where its stripped of its jpeg preview. As soon as I noticed this I stopped editing, backed up the entire day manually onto an external. I didn't want to loose and more images. Ive read a couple places that there is software out there that may be able to fix this.

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Im so scared at the moment.

ziggy53

Bryans12v wrote: »

I ... will pull the images through the camera via usb. ....

Be "extremely" careful putting those cards into your camera. The pin connection header of the CF card may be scuffed or gouged from the pins of the card reader during the misalignment which caused the pins to be bent. If a pin on your camera connector gets caught on the gouge it can bend that pin as well.

ziggy53

perroneford wrote: »

There is a disconnect here for me. I don't understand how bent pins on an external reader would affect a card being used in the original camera or another camera. Something here doesn't compute.

I'm getting ready to leave just now, so I can't leave a detailed description of the reason for data corruption from a CF card reader in read-only mode, but I have heard of this happening.

The reason will take some explanation, which I'll try to provide later.

Bryans12v

I wont put the corrupted cards in my camera any longer. I cant retrieve the images off of them so it wouldn't do any good anyway.

There is a disconnect here for me. I don't understand how bent pins on an external reader would affect a card being used in the original camera or another camera. Something here doesn't compute.

If the cards were read from the reader from a previous wedding while the pins were bent and then shot on afterwards, the cards themselves can be corrupted. This is obviously the case here. Ive shot close to 200 weddings on my older cards and never, ever had this happen before or have I seen any corrupted or defragmented images. The two cards that are bad were brand new before I shot these last two weddings. They were formatted in camera both times before they recorder any images. I was able to pull the images off of them without a problem for the first wedding but for the second, they gave me error messages for formatting after shooting 300+ images on them.

I don't know, Im lost here. This has never happened to me before and I want is to be able to retrieve my images. Who or where can I send these? Anyone?

Bryans12v

Just got off the phone with Lexar. I installed their image rescue software with no luck. I can read one of the cards but its all images from the previous wedding. The other, nothing.

Anyone know of any third party help I can seek, would be greatly apprectiated.

Art Scott

This may help: google search: CF Card Data recovery services
http://tinyurl.com/kcd26x3

ziggy53

Bryans12v wrote: »

... Anyone know of any third party help I can seek, would be greatly apprectiated.

Do check with:

http://www.tallyns.com/datarecovery.htm

http://www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery/

Both are very good and both are expensive, but worth it.

ziggy53

The following is partly researched and factual, and partly conjecture.

On a compact flash (CF) card, Pins 1 and 50 are the "Ground" pins but, I believe that they are also often used for the card shields. The shields are effectively two metal plates, on either side of the card, which prevent the card from field interference from other high-frequency circuits in the host device. (Normally grounded, the shields form a simple "Faraday Cage" for the flash control circuits of the card.)

Each manufacturer is free to design the electrical and electronics of each card as they see fit, meaning that the exact internal wiring, shielding and components of each card vary by manufacturer, card model and even individual card version design. Sensitivity to ground and shielding failure varies by the same differences of manufacturer, card model and individual version.

(This part above is completely factual.)

(The following is partly conjecture, but based on facts as I know them. I cannot find any studies on causality which relate to this discussion.)

I believe that with certain card constructions, when the shield ground is lost, the shield plate may actually capture and hold a charge similar to a simple plate capacitor. That charge may be enough, coupled with the shield no longer protecting the underlying circuits of the card, to allow data corruption even though the card is not in a write state.

CF cards hold both the controller electronics as well as the flash memory. The flash memory is organized not only through an allocation table (FAT, LBA and similar), but also through a write-leveling (wear-leveling) scheme, designed to distribute writes throughout the flash memory since flash memory has a much lower erase/write durability cycles rating compared to disk storage (for instance).

This combination of allocation table "plus" write-leveling table makes CF cards vulnerable to shield-failure data corruption, with some cards more vulnerable than others, and with the host electronics playing a part in both data corruption magnitude and sensitivity to corruption.

---

All of this could explain why bent outer-most pins on the card reader (which could have affected, and even nullified, one or both card shields) could cause flash card data errors, and why some cards are more vulnerable to the data loss (each being a different internal design).

angevin1

Bryans12v wrote: »

Just got off the phone with Lexar. I installed their image rescue software with no luck. I can read one of the cards but its all images from the previous wedding. The other, nothing.

Anyone know of any third party help I can seek, would be greatly apprectiated.

Czech these folks~http://www.grauonline.de/cmsimple2_6/en/