27Dec Recovering Data from a corrupted SD or CF card.
Ironically, I have my first memory card failure right after writing a post about proper data management. The card, an Adata 16 GB SDHC, came out of the behind the scenes camera. When I placed it into my card reader and clicked on the drive a windows popped up asking if I would like to format the card. So tried it in 3 different computers with 5 different card readers and the results were the same.
The solution was actually pretty simple. I called up one of my friends and asked him what utility he used last time he had a card fail. He recommended a utility called DiskDigger and informed me that it’s a good idea to run the utility before you pay the $14.99 license fee. If DiskDigger can rescue your files, it will give you a list of data that can be saved, pay for a license and you can copy your files over to a hard drive. If it can’t save anything then no files will be shown in the list and you don’t have to spend $14.99.
The utility was able to save all but one of the video files and about three quarters of the stills. Not perfect, but it’s better then loosing everything. This is the first time I’ve needed data recovery for a memory card and DiskDigger worked surprisingly well.
December 28th, 2012 at 10:35 am
For any Mac users, I can recommend “Disk Drill”. I’ve recovered data from damaged cards as well as accidentally formatted or deleted data.
It also has a great feature of saving the state of the entire card to a file and allowing you to recover from the file, which then frees up the card for normal use.
December 28th, 2012 at 11:47 am
Great info, I currently have an old card that can’t even be seen by diskutility. I will try these both programs as a last resort before I recycle the sand and plastic back to nature.
December 28th, 2012 at 7:43 pm
About 6 weeks ago I had my main camera’s card fry. A 32 gb Lexar.
I had to deliver the job with B camera footage and audio.
I bought Sandisc, Lexar and PhotoRescue recovery software… no luck. All I could retrieve was some old RAW files. I sent the card off to Colorado (I’m in Philadelphia) to DataRescue Corp. They had the card for over 3 weeks and were unable to recover anything other than the same old RAW files I did. Apparently MOV files are much more difficult to recover.
I had to pay $125 up front, but that will be refunded when I get my card back in a few days. I also had to put up a $250 deposit when the card went to a “tier 2 recovery procedure”. Whatever that is. I won’t be charged anything because nothing was recovered.
My client was very understanding, and luckily my B roll was sufficient for their needs.
Lexar actually read my tale of woe on a forum I posted to and reached out to me and suggested I send the card to them for a replacement card under warranty and a free attempt at data recovery. Unfortunately this is an 8 week process… which I will do just for shits and giggles.
Oi!
January 1st, 2013 at 4:36 pm
I’ve had good luck using Piriform’s RECUVA software. It’s free and light on your system. I accidentally formatted a card during a shoot and was able to recover all of my lost shots. Just make sure if you format the card by accident that you then don’t use it until you can run the recovery software. Any additional data written to the card can overwrite your lost images.
http://www.piriform.com/recuva