In contrast to a dying hard drive, nothing is degrading itself while it is sitting in a bag. The only thing that can destroy what is on a corrupted memory card is writing — and your camera writes each and every time you shoot a photo. If the memory card was healthy and if the photos simply got deleted, then recover deleted photos will be the guide for you.
When cameras, phones or Windows see a corrupted memory card they generally try to fix the problem with an option labelled "repair" which really just means format. The act of tapping once formats the card and turns a straightforward structural recovery into a "carve", and sometimes there is nothing left.
One instruction — more important than all of this below.
Corrupted memory cards do not deteriorate on their own. In contrast to a failing hard drive, nothing is deteriorating/being destroyed itself while it is sitting in a bag. The only thing that can destroy what is on the card is writing — and your camera writes each and every time you shoot a photo.
Take the card out before your next shot. Don't wait until you've taken a few more photos to see if things will sort themselves out. When you do your next photo shoot, the new images go into the place where the missing ones were located, and on a burst that can be dozens of files in seconds.
Decline all offers made by the camera. Cameras routinely give an option to fix/erase a memory card upon turn-on; so many photographers have been trained to accept the offer as standard procedure — both options write to the card.
Memory cards fail in a very limited amount of ways. Most of these failures result in nothing being lost except possibly some directory information.
The battery ran dead or the memory card was removed prior to completion of the buffer dump. An incomplete, partially written allocation table was left behind — the image(s) are good but the allocation table for those images is not.
All in-camera formats are considered to be "quick" formats as they require that the card be able to be used in less than a few seconds. Each image is also still physically present behind a new blank index page.
Most cheap card readers and built-in laptop slots can cause card corruption upon ejection more frequently than the cards will actually fail. It is worth trying a different card reader before assuming that anything has failed.
A card which claims to hold much greater storage than it does. This type of card works exactly like you expect until your actual data exceeds the true storage limits of the card at which time every piece of information you have stored beyond that limit will be lost forever.
This is why a card will become corrupted due to some form of interruption that would never affect a hard drive connected to a computer.
Cards over 32 GB will use exFAT which has been designed to be lightweight. exFAT has far less redundancy than NTFS or ext4. exFAT is very fast and is supported by almost every camera, phone and computer. This is why exFAT is used. However because exFAT does not have a log, there is not much to go off when a problem occurs and it cannot recover from interruptions.
This design is correct for removable media. For removable media, "speed" and "compatibility" are far more important than "resilience". This also explains why exFAT performs poorly when interrupted. With a journal, a device will either be able to replay an incomplete operation or roll-back that same operation on its next mount; in contrast, exFAT will end up with an allocation table that no longer reflects reality and once it does the file(s) will disappear from your listing(s) or appear as unreadable even though the content remains intact in the flash.
All three are free, and together, they will help resolve a fair proportion of issues.
Faults in readers are more frequent than faults in cards. Using one of these tests can separate whether the issue lies with either the card or the reader in two minutes. If you can, use a decent standalone reader instead of a laptop slot.
If the card claims to be 512 GB or 1 TB, then there is a genuine possibility that it is a counterfeit. Writing from end-to-end for hours on a large card with a free tool, and reading the entire card back, is absolutely worth your time. No one recovers lost data that was never saved.
Recovering photos using carving signatures from an otherwise mechanically functional card that still has an operational controller is something most free tools will do. Always recover files to another hard drive; never recover files directly onto the original card.
When a card fails to detect, that typically indicates failure of the controller, not just the file system. Because flash memory cards are monolithic, recovery means reading through test points on a sealed unit. Software is unable to access it and repeatedly attempting to access the controller does little to nothing.
Usually not. The most common reason for this is an interrupt during a write process which leaves the allocation table partially updated – the images themselves are fully written but the record describing those images isn’t. Remove the card and cease shooting.
Yes, provided you haven’t shot anything since. All cameras use fast formatting processes to ensure that the memory card can be used again within seconds after each use – therefore the physical presence of all existing images is maintained behind a new empty index. It’s these frames shot afterwards that will cost you.
No. Most cameras allow you to repair or format the card at start-up time and both will write to the card. Refuse to repair/format at startup, take the card out and don’t touch it again until you’ve made up your mind about how to continue.
Because exFAT, the format used by those cards over 32 GB, is intentionally as lightweight as possible in order to be compatible and fast. There is no journal to log transactions or maintain consistency when a transaction has been partially written. Therefore an interrupted write will result in inconsistencies that a more robust file system would recover from automatically.
Perform a write across the entire claimed capacity, then perform a read-back, compare the results. A legitimate card should provide the complete image. A counterfeited card will provide the correct portion up to its real size, and rubbish beyond it. Worth performing on any suspiciously low-cost, high-capacity cards.
Starting price from £250 plus VAT for memory cards and USB media, fixed after a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic. Most jobs will be completed with nothing due or payable by you if the recovery doesn't work. In cases where a diagnostic identifies a counterfeit product we will inform you as opposed to charging you to discover whether it's counterfeit.