I picked up two new cards, formatted them and shot a wedding, 2/3 trough the shoot I got an error on my 1DsM3 which read bad card, replace. Later when I tried to download the card on my Mac I got a message that it could not be read and needed to be initialized. I tried running Rescue Pro and Image Rescue and both locked up while trying to read it. Then I tried to format the card with Mac's Disk Utility and then with the camera, neither worked. I did a Google search and read where Sandisk recommends an app named Photorecovery so I tried it. It went through most of the card and didn't seem to recover any files, it did however start to do a backup but it's painstakingly slow just 52 kB/sec. I'm planning to let it try to copy the card and then run recovery apps again on whatever data it transfers.

Anyone else have a similar experience or have any ideas?

Thanks!

there are a lot of counterfeits sold.

What card reader are you using? Are u down loading straight from your camera? use the USB connection from your camera with the Canon utility software and try using a PC.


I personally shoot weddings exclusively with the 1D series with the duel memory card slot just for this situation. Did u use a backup SD card?

It's too late now, but you should always fully test each byte of a new card to ensure there are zero errors.

EBH

Using a Lexar Firewire 400 card reader, tried using the USB straight from the camera, the camera will not read the card and it fails when it tries to format. Never had this issue before but I definitely will start testing cards first. However it did format, save files and preview for several hours before it error occurred.

A photog I know just said that there are companies that will attempt to recover the data and bill Sandisk directly, anyone heard of that?

If you brought them from a reputable dealer, you should be able to take them back for a full refund. If you didn't, it's likely that they are fakes (Sandisk are the most commonly counterfeited). Haven't heard of companies that will retrieve data & bill Sandisk (which of course will only work if they are genuine) but if Rescue Pro & Photorecovery didn't work, then chances are slim.

I don't understand why you reformatted the card after the incident if you still wanted to retrieve the data. Any further writes to the damaged/corrupted card may make recovery less likely or complete.

Liability of a manufacturer is limited to replacing the card or providing a refund, not any amount over the purchase price.

EBH

good reason to not buy very large capacity cards :-(

Did you use a back up SD card

Bought them from B&H, only tried to reformatted the card after everything else failed since reformatting doesn't erase the data just the directory of file names, it's the new image files that write over the data. I read that reformatting can sometimes allow the images to become recoverable, it wouldn't format anyway.

bluefox9er wrote:
good reason to not buy very large capacity cards :-(

Why, do only large cards go corrupt? A loss is a loss whether it's 2 gigs or 16. Plus you are more likely to lose images by carrying multiple cards and misplacing one than it corrupting.

I think he meant it's more painful to lose 16 GB of images than losing 2 GB of images.

lpazxxsh wrote:
Did you use a back up SD card

A very good question...

funny, i had two kingston 16 gb pro elite cards go bad in a 1ds III.

I didn't use a SD card for backup but might have to think about doing that in the future, fortunately there was another shooter and I was also shooting with 2 cameras, luckily I was shooting more with my 1DsM2 that day since it had my 70-200, happens to be my fav lens for weddings, so I'm only missing 189 out of 1,300+ images, my 1DsM3 was shooting wide and those are what I might loose. Had some great 14mm pics of the couple in the vineyard with a mountain setting and very cool sky, those will hurt the most.

Napalm wrote:
bluefox9er wrote:
good reason to not buy very large capacity cards :-(

Why, do only large cards go corrupt? A loss is a loss whether it's 2 gigs or 16. Plus you are more likely to lose images by carrying multiple cards and misplacing one than it corrupting.


thats true but you will LOSE many more on a higher capacity card than you would on a smaller sized card if you encounter a card malfunction

Or one could lose their memory card wallet with 45 2-gb cards all loaded and left with only the images on the 2-gb card in their camera. It's a risk either way. I prefer to not have to change cards every 3 minutes, so I go with large capacity cards.