Preventing Data Corruption in Flash Memory Cards
There's nothing more frustrating than receiving a corrupt data error message during digital camera usage. This happened to me the other day, and it rendered my card useless. It may very well happen to you too if you are not careful with your flash memory. If you'd like to limit the number of "worst days of your life", I suggest reading on.
New York Institute of Photography's Fred Wertheimer offers an excellent in-depth article on digital media card corruption. I definitely suggest reading it when you get the chance, but for now, I'll give you the basics.
Wertheimer lists a whole slew of reasons (physical and data-loss related) why a digital media card can become corrupt, but he says the top two are "turning your camera off while the buffer is still writing to the flash media card" and "removing the media card from the camera while the buffer is still writing to the flash media card".
He also lists a slew of subtle and not-so-subtle symptoms of data-card corruption. In my case, the symptom was not so subtle. In all the cases, it has something to do with the card acting funny or not work properly. Read the article for the specifics.
Onto prevention . . .
Obvious: Wait for your card to finishing writing the files before turning off the camera, removing the card from the camera, or removing the card from your PC-connected card reader.
Not-so-obvious: Save your images often to your computer or CD/DVD and then reformat your memory card with your camera, not with your computer. All cameras that rely on flash memory should come with reformatting instructions.
Reformatting will empty your flash memory card, so make sure you save your images first.
What if, despite your best efforts, your card becomes corrupted? If you are interested in trying to save the images, Wertheimer recommends using a data-recovery program. Here's his list of "top rated data recovery software" packages:
• Data Rescue's PhotoRescue
• PhotoOne Recovery
• Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery
• Media Undelete
• Digital PhotoRescue Professional
If you don't care about the corrupted data, try to reformat the
card. If that doesn't work, it's time to get a new card.
I hope at least a few of you found this post and Wertheimer's article valuable. With me, it was the loss of about 100 recreational images. For you pros out there, it could be days worth of timely and expensive photo shoots.
Good luck!
Recently, I was "reading" my memory card with my computer. I changed a photo from horizontal to vertical on the memory card. Then, I got a read error!
Then, I tried another thing. One the computer hard drive, I changed a photo from horizontal to vertical. Then I saved it back to the chip on my Sony Mavica. Same error message. So, I learned that it does not like for me to do that...and I won't do it again on the memory chip in the camera.
Next time I have the disk empty, I will reformat it again. That should be a big "cleansing factor" to the system and the acceptance of new photos should be as good as new.
Samething has happened to me. I won't touch an image, until I take it off the card.
It happened to me yesterday! It was a brand new Sandisk Ultra 2 512 mb card and I have only taken about 160 pictures with it on medium quality. As far I know I haven't done anything specifically except for shooting the pics like I normally do. I only discovered this when I was opening the folder with the supposed photos in it on my computer but a few came out as 'corrupted data'. Didn't noticed it before as I still can view the pics on my camera.
Lee, if it continues to happen, I'd exchange it for a new one if it's still under warranty. Otherwise, I'd download the images to your drive and then reformat the card.
Good luck!
This article is very informative indeed. I had a Nokia 6630 mobile which i used to take pictures and then upload them into my pictures and then used to submit it to my superiors. I used to carry it all along with me whereever i go and often used to take pictures and upload but this also lead to a lot of my Memory cards being corrupted and i used to throw them back. I did not know that the data in the memory cards can be recovered and all the bit can be used back. Recently when i was browsing net i came across a site which offered Memory Card Recovery and also the digital media recovery. This site was Disk Doctors labs Inc. Some of you who would like to visit the site then the link is http://www.diskdoctors.com/. It has many other Data Recovery Services apart from Digital media and Memory Cards. Thus now i can use this service to recover my data if it is of high importance.