Camera memory card corrupted, fixable?

8 years ago

Today I'm just going through my camera memory card using my card reader and Windows Media Gallery and all of a sudden it freezes up. After a while, I close out the program. When I go back to try finishing up my photo deleting and editing, I get a screen telling me the drive cannot be read, needs to be "reformatted." I ejected the card reader and tried the memory card in my camera, same problem, needs "formatting." So somehow this card has become corrupted. I backed up a lot of what was on there but I would like the photos I was working on. Quite a few and I kinda need them. Any way I can recover these photos? I had only used about 1G of 4.

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Comments (5)

zep516
8 years ago
You maybe able to use recuva to get the photos.

http://recuva.en.softonic.com/download
User
8 years ago
There are lots of Free, Trail and Pay Programs out there that say they can get you files back for you. I've never had a problem like that so I've never tried one. I just Googled "SD Card says need to be formatted, any way to save my pictures"!
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Lazypup has the right idea for long term storage - use hard drives. Do not depend on camera memory cards and thumb drives for permanent storage. These eventually go bad with age. Do not trust any that are more than 5 years old. The end life may be 10 years. These cards and drives contain a 'keep-alive battery' and when the battery dies, so does the card. If you have cards that are more than 5 years old, its a good idea to replace these. A solid state memory junction is good for about 10,000 writes and rewrites. That is what kept this technology our of 'hard drives' for so long. Improvements and techniques have come along such that computer makers are beginning to place solid state drives (SSD) into lap tops. However, these are not perfect. A gamer might reach the life limit of a SSD due to his thousands of rewites to the disk. The average used probably will not reach this limit before the computer conks out or a replacement is bought. I had a bunch of photos stored on CDs, but I was warned by a genealoguy instructor to switch because the technology is changing and CDs will go the way of tape and floppy disks - these will be obsoleted in favor of DVDs. In the not too distant future, manufacurers will stop making CD drives and disks. Personally, I prefered CDs over DVDs for photo storage due to the larger spot size and separation compared to a DVD. But this won't matter in the future if no drives exist to read the CDs. As far as I can see, storage of digital photos and genealoggy files are a huge problem for me. Right now, I hobble along by moving these files to a external hard drive and that drive runs only when making backups. The rest of the time, it is off. (A purist would rightly claim this is not safe; Its much better to have a second backup copy on a another drive.) This leads to setting up a RAID array to improve relaibility. I have not done so since I am not well schooled about the features and behavor of RAID arrays. That is something I should learn.
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chas045
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
I had a similar issue and was able to recover my pics. I tried three programs. I first checked one from SanDisk. It showed that it could recover some of my files but it was going to cost ~$32 to keep any, and I passed on that deal. I tried Recuva and another program (edit: it is called RescuePro). One worked and one failed with my card. I don't recall which one worked. I still have both on my then win 8.1 netbook computer, but I saved these recovered pics on an old Win xp computer.
l pinkmountain
Original Author
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
Yes, I can google it, but I posted here wondering if anyone had this happen to them and what their first hand experience was. It is a "PNY Optima S-something-or-other, HC 80x 60+ HD" card. I can't read the other figure next to the "S" it is worn off. I guess it is sort of lucky that this past weekend I downloaded about 2/3 of the photos onto my laptop because I wanted to do a little videoing. It's hard to believe it just went ptoooey like that. I wasn't doing anything unusual with it. I guess I need to come up with a good and reliable and easy way to save my photos. Even having them on my laptop is risky. I just lost my backup memory stick with all the stuff from my old broken laptop on it and if I don't find that, I am out a lot of memories too! Also I need the photos. Can I live without them, yes, but I was going to use them to illustrate a project for work. Also some rather priceless family stuff on there, although I also have a few copies saved of some of that stuff.

Not sure how to go with the backup memory, lots of options with lots of pros and cons. A "cloud" solution would suit my lifestyle right now, but I'd really like a combo of methods. Don't really have room for an external hard drive and am going to be moving a lot in the future so don't want just one more thing to pack . . . Anyway this is moot until I recover what I lost . . .

Post script: The "Recuva" didn't work. I still got the formatting message/window. Can't read drive, needs to be formatted. Oh bother!

Post, post script: "RescuePro" in the "Evaluation" mode could read the photos, but the process for buying it online was too cumbersome. It wouldn't accept my laptop serial number. So I guess I am off to try the local computer repair shoppe.
User
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
No form of Backing up your Photos is 100% reliable. First you have Floppies (IMO junk). Next you have Tape Drives (obsolete), well, enough said there! Next there are Zip and Jaz Drives (Obsolete), a little more reliable then a Tape Drive. DVD's, IMO a much better option then anything out there today, but DVD's do have their problems (they can Warp, Get Scratched, etc...). Flash Drives and Flash Cards (CF, SD, Mini SD, Micro SD, etc...) (for Cameras) tend to become corrupted (like the situation you're having).

I have my photos backed up on a Laptop Hard Drive that isn't plugged in. I only plug it in externally (USB) when I want to add photos to the Drive. This should help with the life of the drive not having power to it all the time. A External Hard Drive would be the same thing as what I'm using but I had a few spare Laptop Hard Drives Lying around! I use the laptop hard drive with a Rosewill SATA / IDE 3-in-1 (5.25", 3.5", 2.5") to USB Cable Converter Adapter to hook up the hard drive! I also do have them backed up onto DVD's.

Sorry, I just don't trust THE CLOUD for important things, and my Photos are important to me like yours are to you!

Camera memory card corrupted, fixable?

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zep516

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Camera memory card corrupted, fixable?

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zep516

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chas045

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l pinkmountain
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