SD Card Failure – Anyone else?

CY
Posted By
curt_young
May 7, 2008
Views
454
Replies
13
Status
Closed
I had one of 3 Transcend 1G cards result in complete failure, loosing about 400 pictures of Costa Rica birds. Neither the camera nor computer would recognize card after the shoot. Disk Doctors disassembled the card and hooked it up to test modules and ran multiple 5-6 hour tests to try to reconstruct data. Nothing worked as they said all the files were corrupted. This is the one disk that I shot until full with a Nikon D40X camera. Card was formated before use. I reviewed pictures as I shot and all seemed right.

They theorize that perhaps the card and camera did not communicate, but I shot only a couple of RAW format pictures over the capacity, so to me that does not seem logical it would corrupt everything. But not an expert.

The technician said not to fill up the card and use smaller cards so you don’t have all the shots in the same basket. I know there are a lot of professional photographers out there that read this forum, has anyone else run into this kind of problem before?
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G
gowanoh
May 7, 2008
It is not clear how long you have had this card and if it has worked for you in the past.
400 pictures, even in jpeg, is a lot of data for a one gig card. If you were able to see the images in the camera but not after you put the card in an external reader the latter may be the culprit. In the future you can try putting the card back in the camera and see if you can download directly from the camera, although you may have tried that. Flash memory cards have a limited number of write cycles which you may have exceeded.
Transcend is sort of a second tier card that vendors sell at a lower price point. There may be a reason to buy "name brand" memory cards. I say "may be a reason" as counterfeit cards are manufactured by the truck load in China, where they are available at astoundingly low prices. Sandisk is a particular favorite label stuck onto counterfeits.
DR
Donald_Reese
May 8, 2008
I Have never run into that,but i use recognized names when buying compact flash. i have also seen guys format their cards and use recovery software to retrieve those files after the fact, but maybe yours is a hopeless case. are you sure you didnt drench the card or accidentally format it? i guess your disk doctor people know what they are talking about. the link below is the type of product i referenced.

< http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/529187-REG/Prosoft_401 00_Klix_Digital_Picture_Recovery.html>
G
Greg
May 8, 2008
wrote:
I had one of 3 Transcend 1G cards result in complete failure, loosing about 400 pictures of Costa Rica birds. Neither the camera nor computer would recognize card after the shoot. Disk Doctors disassembled the card and hooked it up to test modules and ran multiple 5-6 hour tests to try to reconstruct data. Nothing worked as they said all the files were corrupted. This is the one disk that I shot until full with a Nikon D40X camera. Card was formated before use. I reviewed pictures as I shot and all seemed right.

They theorize that perhaps the card and camera did not communicate, but I shot only a couple of RAW format pictures over the capacity, so to me that does not seem logical it would corrupt everything. But not an expert.

The technician said not to fill up the card and use smaller cards so you don’t have all the shots in the same basket. I know there are a lot of professional photographers out there that read this forum, has anyone else run into this kind of problem before?

What exactly did you mean by ‘I shot only a couple of RAW format pictures over the capacity’? The camera should have said the card was full and refused to write any more shots, I would have thought. But doing so would certainly screw up the FAT data.

Were you shooting raw or jpeg for most of your shots?

A check of the D40x specs suggests a jpeg file size of about 4 MB per shot (from Dpreview sample shots), which implies about 250 shots on a 1 GB card, if you were shooting at full resolution, which I expect you were. If you were shooting raw, I would still doubt you could get 400 images onto a 1 GB card, and certainly not if you were shooting raw plus jpeg.

400 images on that card would suggest that the card was corrupted, allowing the camera to continue writing images to the card after it was full, or somehow the camera firmware screwed up allowing 400 shots to be written to the card.

The bottom line is that the images are lost, so commiserations on that.

From a pro point of view, most pros use a laptop to download and check the images before moving on. Taking the cards home before looking at them leaves one open to this sort of disaster. There are ‘image tanks’ available to download cards onto, but I don’t know that many of those can read a raw image. The safest way, considering the time and expense of a trip such as you did, is to use a laptop.

Colin D.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
CY
curt_young
May 8, 2008
In order to use those products you first have to have the card recognized by the computer. This one had a chip failure that prevented either the camera or computer to see it. Card was in camera or protective case at all times.
DR
Donald_Reese
May 8, 2008
I guess you are right. i would try anything within reason if i had that many shots. maybe dropping a line to the company would help.
DM
dave_milbut
May 8, 2008
I would talk to the company before anything else if the shots are really important. don’t run any utilities on it or anything unless the company says so. you could screw up data that might be recoverable.

Disk Doctors disassembled the card and hooked it up to test modules and ran multiple 5-6 hour tests to try to reconstruct data.

oops. nevermind. 🙁

those programs are baaaad if you have critical stuff to recover. great if you just need to get up and MAYbe need MOST of the stuff…
CY
curt_young
May 8, 2008
Just for your information the sales rep for the memory card company was in the camera store when they initially tired to read the card. He said they do not work on their cards, but would be glad to replace it. Not much help there.

The main purpose of putting my problem online here is to alert users that card failure is always a possibility and to keep that in mind when shooting. Just like a hard drive, they will fail at some point, usually at the most inappropriate time. Don’t fill it up, and use multiple cards.
DM
dave_milbut
May 8, 2008
The main purpose of putting my problem online here is to alert users that card failure is always a possibility and to keep that in mind when shooting.

true curt. and good advice.

my main purpose for posting was to remind users that if the data’s that important, don’t mess with it. there are data recovery services that can and will usually get the data back when disaster strikes.

I nearly used one last year when a hdd crashed with about 7 years of personal digital images on it. in most cases i would say forget about it and get a new drive, but these were irreplaceable pics of my kids growing up! i finally was able to get the data read off it after freezing it for a couple days. (and it’s now backed up several times! 🙂 ) but next step was to send it to a recovery service ( from seagate, the drive maker, which would have run me about a thousand bucks.)

I knew enough from being involved w/systems for the last 20+ years that running almost anything on a drive you need to recover data from lessens the chances of being able to recover that data. all i tried was reading. with the freezer trick, i finally got it to work.

it all depends on how much value you place on the specific missing data.

recent extreme data recovery example:

Data Recovered From Space Shuttle Columbia HDD
<http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/07/1834224>
JJ
John Joslin
May 8, 2008
I shot at most only a couple of RAW format pictures over the capacity, so to me that does not seem logical it would corrupt everything.

To me that seems like courting disaster!
DR
Donald_Reese
May 8, 2008
Also, i dont give much weight to the multiple card idea. what if you lose the cards not in the camera,etc etc. i would rather change cards less and keep one in the slot than have twenty seven stray cards sitting somewhere.
G
Greg
May 8, 2008
wrote:
Also, i dont give much weight to the multiple card idea. what if you lose the cards not in the camera,etc etc. i would rather change cards less and keep one in the slot than have twenty seven stray cards sitting somewhere.

Perhaps one should use a Canon 1-series camera, which uses two cards at once, an SD and a CF card as insurance

If you are ever required to hand over your card to the law, you still have the second card intact. Way to go for important work.

Colin D.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
CS
Clarissa Schmied
May 9, 2008
Colin_D schrieb:
wrote:
Also, i dont give much weight to the multiple card idea. what if you lose the cards not in the camera,etc etc. i would rather change cards less and keep one in the slot than have twenty seven stray cards sitting somewhere.

Perhaps one should use a Canon 1-series camera, which uses two cards at once, an SD and a CF card as insurance

If you are ever required to hand over your card to the law, you still have the second card intact. Way to go for important work.
Colin D.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Why would you have to hand the card to the law? I never even thought of that! Out of pure interest: What are you taking pics of to make that cross your mind?
G
Greg
May 10, 2008
Clarissa Schmied wrote:
Colin_D schrieb:
wrote:
Also, i dont give much weight to the multiple card idea. what if you lose the cards not in the camera,etc etc. i would rather change cards less and keep one in the slot than have twenty seven stray cards sitting somewhere.

Perhaps one should use a Canon 1-series camera, which uses two cards at once, an SD and a CF card as insurance

If you are ever required to hand over your card to the law, you still have the second card intact. Way to go for important work.
Colin D.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Why would you have to hand the card to the law? I never even thought of that! Out of pure interest: What are you taking pics of to make that cross your mind?

You might not in Germany, but there are other countries where you may be well advised to cooperate.

And you have the sense of my remarks wrong; there is no implication that I am taking any sort of photographs at all; that originated in your mind, not mine.

Colin D.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

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