What's happend here? Unreadable files on mem card?

MikeHunt79 · 26 Jun 2009 at 18:58

I went out today to get a few photo's, and when I got back I found quite a few unreadable files on the card... Why did this happen and how can I stop it from happening again?

Screenshot:

Can I recover these files somehow?

FreeStream · 26 Jun 2009 at 19:09

Well the only reason I can see of this happening is the card is corrupt.

Put the card in another reader/in the camera and see if it will read them?

MikeHunt79 · 26 Jun 2009 at 19:31

I've got an Acer Aspire One which has an internal card reader, I'll give that a go.

MikeHunt79 · 26 Jun 2009 at 23:19

Tried it in the Acer Aspire One, I get exactly the same results. It turns out the mem card itself is bad... I bought 2 x 16gb cards, and I still had the other blank one.

I copied across a 6gb *cough* file, split into 50mb chunks. with PARs... PAR files basically verify the 50mb chunks using CRC values.

I then tried to verify the files from the SD card, it turns out this "16Gb" card runs out of space once it hits the 2Gb. You can see where the card runs out of steam:

I'm normally quite a laid back sort of person, and I'm a little annoyed at the fact I now have to return the cards and get a refund, but I'm more annoyed that I lost around 50 shots today simply due to a crappy card! :mad:

Luckily I was just wandering around shooting random things around Bristol, but if I had lost shots at an event I would have been livid!

Next time I get a few card, no matter the brand ot the source, I'm going to completely fill the card using a card reader, then verify the contents to actually check the card does what it says on the tin.

Has anyone else had this happen to them? I guess my tip of the today is to check your card before leaving the house...

Tooks · 27 Jun 2009 at 00:17

What brand are these cards, and where did you get them?

I've never had this happen to me, but then I stick with Sandisk/Lexar/Kingston from the big e-tailers.

I have had what looks like failed images, but then that's usually when I've done some processing in camera post shot, and for some reason it's not viewable in preview mode. (That was a long time ago though!)

turtle1000 · 27 Jun 2009 at 00:34

If the shots are important maybe you could try some recovery software?
Sandisk do one called rescue pro. The last time I bought some Sandisk cards it came free on a mini CD.

FreeStream · 27 Jun 2009 at 00:36

16gb cards?

God I'd never go that big.

4Gb max for me atm (300-350 shots @ 12-14Mb each) on my 40D.

Even that to me is too much to loose. Who cares if SD can get better capacities, I aint buying it.

These huge cards are stupid IMO. One goes duff you loose the lot!

Personally I'd send it back and get 4 4Gbs, might be more expensive but I'd rather not loose 1200 shots

Edit: And what are you doing with a Snow Leopard build eh?

olv · 27 Jun 2009 at 00:47

Was it from ebay? I'd never buy a memory card from ebay simply because so many of them are fake, lower capacity cards reprogrammed to appear larger in capcity and then sold on.

MikeHunt79 · 27 Jun 2009 at 01:40

turtle1000 said:
If the shots are important maybe you could try some recovery software?
Sandisk do one called rescue pro. The last time I bought some Sandisk cards it came free on a mini CD.

Well, I did try Recuva and even with the deep scan it found sweet FA. I think I'd be wasting my time trying to recover the shots and I can get them again as all I was doing was wandering around town grabbing a few shots.

Concorde Rules said:
Personally I'd send it back and get 4 4Gbs, might be more expensive but I'd rather not loose 1200 shots

Edit: And what are you doing with a Snow Leopard build eh?

Well it takes ages to build your own PAR files and I'm impatient.

I think 4 x 4GB cards would be a better option now that I think about it. I guess a 16GB would be useful if you were on holiday and you needed 1000+ raw shots. I normally transfer the photos to my PC whenever I can anyway.

olv said:
Was it from ebay? I'd never buy a memory card from ebay simply because so many of them are fake, lower capacity cards reprogrammed to appear larger in capcity and then sold on.

Yep, ebay. Nail, head. I guess I learned the hard way. I've already asked the seller for a refund, the worst thing is that they already have lots of positive feedback for these cards so I thought they'd be ok.

I guess these people have yet to use more than 2GB of the card, and when they do they're going to lose photo's.

The worst thing was the camera did not show any error messages when saving the photo's, it wasn't until I hooked it up to the PC I just found a load of blank files. If you open them in a hex editor it's just a load of zero's.

Tooks said:
What brand are these cards, and where did you get them?

synapsespro - I guess if this thread stops someone else getting conned then it's al good. I'll order some sandisk card from somewhere that isn't ebay!

Snapshot · 27 Jun 2009 at 20:01

Did you format the card in the camera before using it? The 2GB limit sounds rather like it was formated in FAT16, possibly in something that couldn't handle SDHC, instead of FAT32 that would let it use the whole card.