[DEMUG] Camera SD Card Recovery Results and Compendium (long)

[Dwight M. Lanpher]

Dear Michele and all:

Success! Thanks everyone for all of the help. I went with PhotoRecovery for
Digital Media 3.5.2.7 by LC Technology International
<http://www.lc-tech.com/>. I found this during a Google Search for Rescue
Pro recommended by Michele. I decided to use this product because it had a
free demo download to allow seeing what would be recovered (The demo package
doesn¹t save any files, just displays a listing.) Since it displayed 391
files instead of the 71 that I was able to copy using the finder, I decided
that was good enough. Most importantly, I was able to fully recover 9 of 10
.AVI video clips with sound recorded using my Canon SD 700 camera. These
were videos of operating fountains and water falls at the Château de
Versailles that only run once a month. None of these AVI files appeared
previously. Along with other photos at Versailles I was also able to recover
many missing photos from the Musée du Louvre. And it also recovered my
photos from the Paris Apple Expo which was the official purpose of my trip.

Considering that the .AVI files utilized most of the memory space on the
card and were all recovered except for one, it would seem that the directory
was probably corrupted. If it was the main data space that was bad, I would
have expected more of the AVI files to be corrupted. Of the 391 recovered
files, 154 were corrupt and displayed as blank images. The files sizes for
these were typically 60 Kbytes instead of the regular ~2 Megabytes for the
resolution that I was saving. I don¹t believe that I took anywhere near that
many photos on that card so I suspect that some were just assumed to be data
by the recovery program. No photo  ³properties² were displayed for these
files by the data recovery program. I am extremely pleased with the results
as the $39 recovery program seemed to get all of the important images of the
places that I remember photographing. There are only two missing photos that
I can specifically remember.

Thoughts: There really is no way to backup a camera other than downloading
the card as soon as practical and that¹s when I discovered my problem. The
one trick that I do use is to buy several smaller cards rather than have all
of my photos lost on a single card. I use the 1 Gigabyte cards because I
often take video clips with audio that take up a lot of space. 512 Mbyte
cards would be safer still; but would be a pain because they would need to
be changed too often.

 I carried the cards with me in my carryon bag and I¹m wondering if the
Airport Security X-Ray has enough energy to change the state of the flash
memory? (I highly doubt it unless the card was defective to begin with and
had only marginally recorded memory states. Besides, the other cards were
not affected.)

To answer several other questions:

I tried using both a SanDisk 6-in-1 PC Card Adapter (PCMCIA or Cardbus) in
my G4 laptop and an Olympis USB 1.1 multi format card reader on my G5
Desktop Mac with similar results. I seldom connect directly to the camera
because of the slow download speeds. When the card was in the camera it only
displays the first 71 pictures. Hence, I didn¹t try to download directly
from the camera as it would only download the photos it knew about.

The card that was corrupt was a new pq1 High Speed 60 SD. For some reason
these are the only cards that my Sans Disk 6-in-1 PC Card Adapter will read
(my desk top reader works fine with other brands.) Interestingly, this Sans
Disk card reader won¹t read Sans Disk brand SD cards (I have tried several
speeds and kinds). The Staples data ³specialist² tried to tell me it was
because I used a Mac. <groan>  I asked him why the Sans Disk reader could
read pq1 cards in my Mac just fine... he couldn¹t explain that. As an
electrical engineer I only believe 2% of what these store personnel claim.

 I suspect that I just got a bad card; but I¹m not entirely sure that I
reformatted the card in my camera prior to use so that could very well have
been the problem. I¹ll retire the card and keep it locked and try some other
data recovery programs to see if I can get some more data back if there is
any. The card only cost $11.00 online. Two other identical units seem to
work just fine.

Again, thanks for the help.

---Dwight Lanpher


On 10/6/07 5:18 AM, "Michele Stapleton" <Michele at MicheleStapleton.com>
wrote:

> Rescue Pro and Image Rescue are both Mac compatible and marketed
> specifically for recovering photos from cranky media. I'd be very
> surprised if you need anything else.
> 
> It is possible that your card is fried, but I wouldn't ditch it for
> just one bad act. I'd download the images, reformat the card in the
> software, then reformat again in the camera, shoot some test frames
> and if it works fine, declare your problem a one-time problem.
> 
> I'm a pro photographer, It's not unusual for me to record 3,000 files
> a week on my cards, and when I do have problems with a card--and it's
> rare-- it's usually something I did wrong (formatted the card in one
> camera, then used it in another camera). Been shooting digital since
> 2000 and have thrown away only one card, and it was a microdrive
> which I had dropped.
> 
> Michele

On 10/6/07 4:50 AM, "Alex Gocze" <agochi2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It sounds as though the flash memory may be failing or have failed. I've been
> told that most flash cards and or usb memory sticks have a limited life span.
> Apparently after a given number of read/write cycles the chips become no good
> and are no longer reliable to read or write data from. I would imagine that
> the card must be fairly new, so you might want to contact the manufacturer for
> a warranty replacement. Otherwise, I found this site:

On 10/2/07 8:50 PM, "Harry Freeman" <harry at gifutiger.com> wrote:

> Greetings ( + )!( + )
> 
> When the card is in your camera does it see any or all of the picture?
> 
> 
On 10/2/07 8:39 PM, "James Baranski" <jim at shalomorchard.com> wrote:

> Data Rescue II is very good at retrieving files from corrupt media...
> 
> On 10/2/07 8:35 PM, "Michele Stapleton" <Michele at MicheleStapleton.com> wrote:

> More background: I'm not sure if you use a card reader to download
> your cards, or hook up a cord directl to the camera. I use card
> readers, one of mine is USB, another is firewire. For some reason the
> Lexar software won't work unless I have THEIR card reader hooked up
> via USB. So, I recommend going the Rescue Pro route first to see if
> that will work.
> 
> Lately San Disk has been bundling the Rescue Pro software (for free)
> with their Ultra and Extreme Compact Flash Cards. So, maybe instead
> of coughing up $$$ to buy just the software, maybe you can get lucky
> and spend the same amount on a card that has the software thrown in
> for free.
> 
> Michele
> 
On 10/2/07 8:28 PM, "Michele Stapleton" <Michele at MicheleStapleton.com>
wrote:

> I have used with success on compact flash cards. I don't see why SD
> cards would be any different:
> 
> Rescue Pro, http://www.lc-tech.com/software/rescueprodetail.html
> and  Image Rescue, http://www.lexar.com/software/image_rescue3.html
> 
> Both are fairly reasonable considering the alternative. (You don't
> have to match the brand of the image recovery software to the disk
> brand.)
> 
> I wouldn't try Disk Warrior.
> 
> 
> Michele
> 
> On 10/2/07 7:55 PM, "Tim Smith" <tsmith at midmaine.com> wrote:

> Check the card mfg.'s web site for free downloadable utilities to rescue
> corrupt discs. The better disc makers usually supply a utility that helps
> recover files. If yours doesn't, there are lots of software solutions like
> : http://www.gorecovery.com/digital_photo_recovery_for_mac.asp if you're
> wiling to pay. A more thorough search is likely to turn up shareware that
> could do something similar. 
> 
> Good luck!
> Tim
> 
> On Oct 2, 2007, at 7:32 PM, Dwight M. Lanpher wrote:
> 
>> Dear Group:
>> 
>> I have a 1 GB SD Camera disk that is partially corrupt.. probably a bad
>> format or a bad section of memory. This disk contains the last day of a
>> vacation in Europe and I would very much like to recover the data.
>> 
>> I am able to see and copy the first 71 pictures off the card but Disk
>> Utility indicates that there are 512 files on the disk: Get Info indicates
>> 817.8 Mbytes of data on the SD Card but it also indicates that the one
>> visible folder only has 160.2 MB of data.
>> 
>> Format :     MS-DOS File System (FAT16)
>> Capacity :   962.4 MB (1,009,128,448 Bytes)
>> Available :  144.3 MB (151,339,008 Bytes)
>> Used :         817.8 MB (857,522,176 Bytes)
>> Number of Files :  512
>> 
>> Disk Verify indicates many errors of the type:
>> 
>> Extend? no
>> /DCIM/102CANON has entries after end of directory
>> Truncate? no
>> 
>> Does anyone have suggestions for specific recovery software? I¹ve used Disk
>> Warrior on hard disks and think that it might be a good candidate for
>> recovery as it recovers the actual data files and reconstructs the
>> directory. 
>> 
>> But, I don¹t know whether Disk Warrior can deal with a SD Card. I¹m using a
>> PCMCIA card to read the disk and it mounts very nicely in Disk Repair.
>> 
>> I¹ve tried making a disk image but only the 71 files appear so I believe
>> that I¹m going to have to work on the actual disk and not a copy so I don¹t
>> want to make a mistake. I¹ll probably have only one chance to recover the
>> data.
>> 
>> Fortunately I used several cards so that I¹ve only lost one day¹s pictures.
>> But it would be a major expense and another trip to reshoot the pictures and
>> video so I would be willing to spend some money to recover the data. I
>> believe it¹s still there and with the right software it should be easily
>> restored. I would even consider sending out to a data recovery service.
>> 
>> Any suggestions?
>> 
>> ---Dwight

> 
> 

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