Corruption shows itself in many different ways. It may display messages such as “card error”, “needs formatting”, or show all of your files as nonsense characters, or when you open a folder it appears to be empty. Depending on how your corruption is displaying, the course of action may vary greatly. Below outlines the steps we take to determine which type of corruption you have, and the order of operations we use to protect your photographs while correcting the corruption.
With rare exception, all methods used to correct corrupted memory cards function in exactly the same manner: they rewrite the structural elements within the memory card that contain your images. Therefore: recover the data first. Fix the damage second. Never do them out-of-order.
There are four presentations covering almost all of the corrupted cards we see.
‘You need to format this card.’ It looks friendly, but it’s one of the most dangerous prompts you’ll ever see. The card’s file system is now making little sense to the device and the device wants to erase it. Do NOT let your device do that. Take your card and put it into a computer using an external card reader. Then use PhotoRec to recover your pictures. Corruption will break the index which points to where each picture lives. And since PhotoRec does not rely upon an index (it simply reads through the whole card looking for what appears to be a picture), it can find and recover your pictures regardless of how many times the index has been destroyed by the corruption.
Shows as RAW, 0 bytes, or a wrong size. We’ve seen this before... same thing different symptom... there is something wrong with the card’s structure (the directory entries that point to the location of the pictures) and the actual picture data itself usually remains intact. First carve, then format. If Windows asks if you want to ‘scan and fix’ when you plug the card into your computer tell it NO! Any tool that repairs or fixes files writes information onto the card.
Files present but broken. A photo may display half greyed out, video may freeze in the middle of playing, etc., and filenames are represented as symbols. At some point during its creation or reading process, the card was experiencing problems due to either a card being yanked during writing or a low-quality fake card reaching the end of its available storage space. Copy off all files that open normally, carve for those that don't, and retire that card.
Not detected at all. Nothing shows up in your camera or external card reader. No sound comes out of Windows. That’s not corruption; that’s failure of the card’s controller or physical damage. Unfortunately, there is no software solution to correct issues related to hardware. For example, Monolith type cards (which are typically single-chip based cards) must be physically removed from their casing and read directly at the chip level on a testing bench. Our memory card recovery is fundamentally about working with individual chips (and sometimes boards).
Once you have confirmed your data through a test using an image editor, the process of repairing your card is straightforward: simply use the “Format” option in your digital camera’s control panel. This function will completely reformat the entire card, rebuilding all structures from scratch. If your reformatted card becomes corrupted again soon after, do yourself a favour and avoid giving it another chance; like other forms of flash memory, it also degrades over time. In addition, most repeat visits to recover corrupted cards occur because two behaviours were ignored by the user during previous uses: do not remove a card while the device is actively recording to it and treat your cards primarily as a method of transporting data instead of archiving it. Photos are best stored on a card for no longer than a few days, rather than a few months. Formatted it already and remember what was on it? That is a different problem than what we just discussed above and that is due to the same physical properties we described previously. Our formatted media recovery service has addressed this exact type of situation, provided you did not fill the card with new information after formatting it.
There is probably nothing more frustrating than when you get an error message on your digital camera indicating that a card error occurred during the middle of an event you were covering. Here is how to handle the crisis situation: don’t format from the camera menu, even though it may offer you a very appealing way to attempt to correct the problem; swap to a spare card and continue taking pictures (you can deal with the problem later, but you cannot afford to lose coverage of the ceremony); power the camera off before removing the card from the camera and lock the removed card by pressing the small slide button located on the side of the card (this is only found on full-size SD cards); finally, once you have completed these steps place the removed card in a secure location away from your working cards. At this point everything contained on the removed card remains intact and has been preserved for later analysis. At this point in time, there is no better time to implement one additional behaviour into your workflow: cards fail during active usage much more frequently towards the end of their life cycles, therefore many professional photographers routinely rotate their cards out of their primary position well before they reach the end of their life cycle.
First things first: restore first, fix second. In other words, most “solutions” (formatting, error checking software, etc.) do nothing but rewrite the structure of the memory card. That’s where your photos’ last remnants reside. Get those images/ carvings off the memory card using something like PhotoRec first. Once the images/carvings are saved safely to another storage medium, you can reformat the memory card without worrying about losing your precious photo(s).
A common reason for this situation is when the memory card’s directory (table of contents) no longer makes sense to the device because the memory card was removed during a file transfer (e.g., pulled while saving), used across multiple computers/devices, or when the controller on the memory card starts to fail. When prompted to format the memory card, what you’re being asked to do is essentially ask the device to create a new blank directory on the memory card. The photos that are located behind the “unreadable” directory are generally still intact. This is why you need to decline formatting the memory card.
Generally speaking, recover the contents of the memory card first, then throw it away. We recommend this course of action for most situations involving random corruption. Corrupted data that occurs randomly is often indicative of a failing memory chip or a failing controller. And remember, a memory card that lies to you once does not warrant being trusted with your wedding pictures. Memory cards are inexpensive. Your wedding photos are priceless.
It’s very possible if the memory card is brand-new, purchased as a discount through a marketplace seller and you have corrupted it after filling it beyond a certain threshold. Counterfeit products contain small amounts of flash memory that has been repurposed to lie about its actual capacity; therefore, every single time you fill beyond the legitimate capacity of your counterfeit product, you unknowingly destroy older files. There are many free programs available for testing your memory card’s legitimate capacity in an hour. Reputable vendors sell authentic products that rarely corrupt. Counterfeiters produce products that will corrupt repeatedly.
We offer complimentary diagnostic services at our lab in Belfast. We will analyse your memory card for signs of failure and advise you as to whether attempting to carve the information from the memory card yourself would be safe. In addition to our complimentary analysis, we provide written quotes prior to performing any work.