Compact Flash image recovery? Very odd problem...

photogmomma

Okay, I'm in the middle of trying to recover some images I took at a wedding over the weekend. Needless to say, I'm completely freaked out.....

Here's what I did:
Took photos on card 1. Looked at card 1 several times throughout the evening and looked at all the photos - or a good portion of them - from the wedding and reception. Noticed I was running low on images so i switched to a new card. Only took a few images on that one.

Then this morning I was downloading and only 25% of the images were on the first card! When I put it into my camera, it still only says a few images are left (where there should be a LOT more images left if the card is truly mostly empty).

I did not erase or format.

My camera: 5D
My card: Transcend 8gb 120X card.

I always format the card after download and backup.

What could have happened? Has anyone had this happen before? It's a newish card (5 months) with enough use to know it was a GOOD card and I've NEVER had issues.

Any ideas? (I'll have to let you know if I recover them. If you hear a loud scream of agony, you'll know I didn't.)

ziggy53

photogmomma wrote:

Okay, I'm in the middle of trying to recover some images I took at a wedding over the weekend. Needless to say, I'm completely freaked out.....

Here's what I did:
Took photos on card 1. Looked at card 1 several times throughout the evening and looked at all the photos - or a good portion of them - from the wedding and reception. Noticed I was running low on images so i switched to a new card. Only took a few images on that one.

Then this morning I was downloading and only 25% of the images were on the first card! When I put it into my camera, it still only says a few images are left (where there should be a LOT more images left if the card is truly mostly empty).

I did not erase or format.

My camera: 5D
My card: Transcend 8gb 120X card.

I always format the card after download and backup.

What could have happened? Has anyone had this happen before? It's a newish card (5 months) with enough use to know it was a GOOD card and I've NEVER had issues.

Any ideas? (I'll have to let you know if I recover them. If you hear a loud scream of agony, you'll know I didn't.)

It could be a problem with your card reader/computer side. If you have access to another computer/reader, try that first. Your camera should tell you how many images "it" thinks are on the card, so use that for your benchmark total images.

Can you attach your camera via USB and see if you can get them off that way? (Experiment with a test card, just in case.)

pathfinder

Lexar and Sandisk have Image Recovery software available as long as the card has not been overwritten. RAW files from a 5D may be recovered as TIFF files, but not as RAW files. That was my experience when I had a Kingston 4 Gb card go whacky.

I said in previous post that I am limiting my choices of solid state memory to Sandisk and Lexar because of this kind of problem. I have an 8 Gb Transcend card and have never had problems with it. But I have 2 Kingston 4 Gb cards that I would not trust to shoot a wedding.

Good Luck.

ziggy53

ziggy53 wrote:

It could be a problem with your card reader/computer side. If you have access to another computer/reader, try that first. Your camera should tell you how many images "it" thinks are on the card, so use that for your benchmark total images.

Can you attach your camera via USB and see if you can get them off that way? (Experiment with a test card, just in case.)

To be specific, some card readers cannot read 4G and 8G cards, because they are in FAT32 format.

If your camera still recognizes the images as OK, then the problem is almost certainly the reader. Attempting recovery in that circumstance could do more damage than good.

photogmomma

There is definitely a problem somewhere as I could not SEE the 400+ missing photos on the camera NOR with the card reader. Unfortunately, i couldn't find my cord, but all is well.

I purchased PhotoRescue Expert PC and it recovered ALL of the files and a few more that hadn't been overwritten before. It recovers all the original CR2 files and they look fine. (It even gave me a preview, which I wasn't expecting, so I knew I had gotten all the files before downloading.)

I tried using my Lexar software, but i would have had to rename 400+ images to CR2 before using them. YIKES! (I'm sure there's a tool to do that, but still...) I also wasn't 100% sure about it so I got this other one.

I am still VERY concerned about why this happened. Why were 25% of the images still there? Why did the other 75% disappear? What caused that? Camera? Card? Something else that I did that I didn't realize? That's my biggest concern now.

Any insight?

I'm going to run the Lexar diagnostics on this card and see what it sees. Maybe it's just a bad card.

As a side note, I've filled it up several times and never had any inkling of a problem....

Now.... should I mention to the bride (who is a GREAT sport) what almost happened? Maybe not!

Thanks SO much for the feedback! I really appreciate it!

ziggy53

photogmomma wrote:

There is definitely a problem somewhere as I could not SEE the 400+ missing photos on the camera NOR with the card reader. Unfortunately, i couldn't find my cord, but all is well.

I purchased PhotoRescue Expert PC and it recovered ALL of the files and a few more that hadn't been overwritten before. It recovers all the original CR2 files and they look fine. (It even gave me a preview, which I wasn't expecting, so I knew I had gotten all the files before downloading.)

I tried using my Lexar software, but i would have had to rename 400+ images to CR2 before using them. YIKES! (I'm sure there's a tool to do that, but still...) I also wasn't 100% sure about it so I got this other one.

I am still VERY concerned about why this happened. Why were 25% of the images still there? Why did the other 75% disappear? What caused that? Camera? Card? Something else that I did that I didn't realize? That's my biggest concern now.

Any insight?

I'm going to run the Lexar diagnostics on this card and see what it sees. Maybe it's just a bad card.

As a side note, I've filled it up several times and never had any inkling of a problem....

Now.... should I mention to the bride (who is a GREAT sport) what almost happened? Maybe not!

Thanks SO much for the feedback! I really appreciate it!

I usually hear about this type of problem when the card is too full, and the FAT table becomes corrupted. You might want to contact the "PhotoRescue Expert PC" folks because they knew enough about the problem to be able to correct it.

I do love a happy ending, so I'm glad to hear this was happy for you. I would not tell the bride, or anyone else, of the problem. It does nothing for your reputation to tell anyone that you had a problem, even though you had a prefect resolution to the problem. Rumors can spread quickly and change to the point that the "potential" problem becomes reality in the rumor. It is always to your advantage to present "perfection" as much as possible to your public.

Best,

Art Scott

I had a prob a month or so ago and used my lexar rescue to first rescue my mrw files (minolta raw) and then the jpgs.....for some reason I decided to do them separately and just renamed the files with the area I was shooting in (ie Lawrence Kansas and it numbered them from 00 to 375)....but it was good to know that the lexar software worked great...as I had called Transcend and they emailed me a rescue software...but it only rescues jpgs (really tiny jps to boot) and that is no good as I was shooting just raw at that time now I am back to shoot both raw+jpg so I can do a little evaluation of the files and magnify them in camera.

Glad your had a happy ending also.

I agreee with Pathfinder on the Kingston cards....not that I don't trust them but my 7D will not recognize them.....now they have merged with Lexar.....wonder if they will keep the 2 lines separage or will they be branding as Kinston/Lexar???

pathfinder

If all the images are there and are undamaged, I would not discuss this with the bride. Why confuse her with something that will not affect your results? Just my 2 cents, others may disagree. But professionals are wise not to introduce new topics to discuss that do not affect directly what you are doing. It makes you look less professional in my opinion.

Now - if all the files are not there and you have to explain their absence - that would be different. But even there, blaming it on a card failure still looks like an excuse, not a reason.

I know there are folks here who use all kinds of CF cards without APPARENT problems - but for me, if I made my living from the images I captured, I would want the most reliable cards I could find. To me, that is Sandisk and Lexar. I get more and more careful about this as I have learned through my experience and the experience of others.

As for why this happened, I do not know, but I suspect the card is flaky. Did you change lenses on the camera without powering down? Did you remove the card with the drive light still on? Static electricity?

Ziggy is right that some card readers won't always read a card particularly if they are FAT 32 vs FAT 16. But if the images are not seen in the camera on its LCD, something very bad is afoot in the land. And it is not the computer or the card reader.

photogmomma

Thanks SO much, all!

Ziggy, I've had the card be completely full with no problem. i also ran the Lexar diagnostics and they found nothing... Maybe it was the Fat32.... Regardless, I'm going to be changing up my process immediately. With the money from this wedding, I'm hoping to get a laptop. Since it'll be my secondary machine, it doesn't need to be amazing.... But I'll download every 75-100 photos so I can SEE if there is a problem immediately. And if restaging is necessary, I'd rather do it immediately than later or not at all.

I think you're right about not telling the bride. She's quite a wonderful person (purchased the house we used to own) and is very kind and understanding, but I would hate to unnecessarily cause undo stress. No one needs that - not even a brand new bride! (I was more teasing than anything...)

Art, Transcend sent me the same software - I think. I didn't actually try to use it to see what the result was. I was happy they were so quick, but since I'm leaning towards it being a card issue and not a camera problem, I'm getting a little leary.....

Thanks for the secondary heads up about Kingston. I'd heard mediocre things about them....

Pathfinder, no worries - wont' be telling the bride.... While I dont' really expect to get referrals from her (because of the location), you never know!

Also, I'm starting to rethink my cards. I haven't been able to find anything bad about Transcend in spite of searching diligently (several months ago) so I thought i was safe. I've had issues with one of thoes before (Sandisk or Lexar), but I can't remember which. I think Lexar, but I'm sure if I look I'll figure it out. (High speed good card failed completely and was unrecoverable.) So I think no matter where you go, you'll find good and bad. You just have to figure out good vs. bad.

I'm pretty good about being careful about the lens/card removal. I wasn't in the past and have never had a problem, but read about others that did.... So I'm pretty careful now. But who knows. It was about 99% done with the night (I had 8 photos on my other card) so I may have been careless. I'm going to try my best to create the problem again in a better circumstance so I *know* what happened.

Thanks again for all the feedback, comments and information. VERY helpful as always. I'm SO relieved that I got everything back. (The ONLY photos that didn't restore fully had been deleted and were partially overwritten.)

Art Scott

I was able to recreate mine and it was not the card...it was me changing the batteries with the switch turned on and that did corrupt the file even tho battery was supposedly dead....and I had corruption probs on a Lexar and that also was actually my fault but Lexar sent another one fast when i expalined I had ordered a back up but it would not arrive in time for shoot....I got the replacement the next day....of course that was before they off loaded their customer service to India or Bangledesh...where it is over in that region now.....

photogmomma

Art Scott wrote:

I was able to recreate mine and it was not the card...it was me changing the batteries with the switch turned on and that did corrupt the file even tho battery was supposedly dead....and I had corruption probs on a Lexar and that also was actually my fault but Lexar sent another one fast when i expalined I had ordered a back up but it would not arrive in time for shoot....I got the replacement the next day....of course that was before they off loaded their customer service to India or Bangledesh...where it is over in that region now.....

Thanks for the heads up. I never had to change a battery so that's not it, but I *know* I switched lenses a million times that night... I try to turn off the camera, but who knows... long night. I'll *try* to recreate it. I would actually be HAPPY knowing it was me that did it, as odd as that may sound! (Only because I got the photos back, of course.)

Thanks again!

Art Scott

Please do let us know the outcome......and if the card is terminal from experimentation, remember you have a warranty...and you are not obligated to give details of how it became terminal.

Good Luck