[DEMUG] Camera SD Card Recovery Results and Compendium (long)
Maxwell Joy
maxs4 at verizon.net
Sat Oct 6 19:19:03 CDT 2007
I have not been involved in your problem, but have been following it
as I was not sure what to do. One thing I have always done is take a
photo first thing and see if my camera reads it, if it does it should
be saved o.k. and I do that as much as possible during the day. Jest
a idea a photographer gave me. I so glad you got your info. back and
I have bookmarked the software.
On Oct 6, 2007, at 8:03 PM, Dwight M. Lanpher wrote:
> 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 doesn’t 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 don’t 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 “properties” 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 that’s 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 I’m 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 didn’t 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 won’t read Sans
> Disk brand SD cards (I have tried several speeds and kinds). The
> Staples data “specialist” 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 couldn’t 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 I’m not entirely sure
> that I reformatted the card in my camera prior to use so that could
> very well have been the problem. I’ll 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? I’ve
>>> 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 don’t know whether Disk Warrior can deal with a SD Card.
>>> I’m using a
>>> PCMCIA card to read the disk and it mounts very nicely in Disk
>>> Repair.
>>>
>>> I’ve tried making a disk image but only the 71 files appear so I
>>> believe
>>> that I’m going to have to work on the actual disk and not a copy
>>> so I don’t
>>> want to make a mistake. I’ll probably have only one chance to
>>> recover the
>>> data.
>>>
>>> Fortunately I used several cards so that I’ve only lost one day’s
>>> 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 it’s 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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