Card Corruption-It's Been A While

[bunnspecial]

I've mostly been using my D850 recently(which I've now had a little over a month). I had ordered several CFExpress cards through Amazon, but I've been having issues with Amazon deliveries in my area lately and a package that had 4 never arrived. So, I've basically just had a 128gb Sandisk CFExpress along with a 64gb UHS-II SD living in the camera. As is my custom for my other cameras, I put JPEGs on the SD card and RAW files on the other.

I've been sloppy about not wiping the card after pulling photos off of it, but a little earlier today pulled it out of the camera to pull off some photos I took yesterday.

The only CFExpress reader I have now is a little USB-C dongle which so far has worked fine.

I have a bit of a new set-up, though. Last week I got a new desktop(or new to me)-a 2019 27" iMac. I have an eGPU on it(makes a noticeable difference in Lightroom). The other TB port runs to an OWC TB3 hub(bought to dock my M1 MBP, and rarely used for that purpose for a variety of reasons) then on to a 27" Thunderbolt display.

In any case, I plugged the card and reader into the USB-C port on the front of the hub, then proceeded to import the photos. The card mounted, but Lightroom didn't see any photos on it. A bit more juggling around and I didn't find photos anywhere on it(even putting it back in the camera), but eventually the card wouldn't mount on my iMac. It would on my MBP, as well as if I put the reader directly into one of the TB ports on the back of the iMac.

I remembered that all the high end Sandisk cards come with a key for recovery software, which I'd never used, but figured now's my chance. I downloaded it, and the software was able to pull everything off the card with no trouble(it took about 10 minutes).

To cap it all off, though, I stuck the card back in the camera and just as a bit of an experiment found that new photos I took would appear on the card just fine.

Whatever the case, I formatted in camera and will be watching it carefully now.

 

[mollyc]

I've mostly been using my D850 recently(which I've now had a little over a month). I had ordered several CFExpress cards through Amazon, but I've been having issues with Amazon deliveries in my area lately and a package that had 4 never arrived. So, I've basically just had a 128gb Sandisk CFExpress along with a 64gb UHS-II SD living in the camera. As is my custom for my other cameras, I put JPEGs on the SD card and RAW files on the other.

I've been sloppy about not wiping the card after pulling photos off of it, but a little earlier today pulled it out of the camera to pull off some photos I took yesterday.

The only CFExpress reader I have now is a little USB-C dongle which so far has worked fine.

I have a bit of a new set-up, though. Last week I got a new desktop(or new to me)-a 2019 27" iMac. I have an eGPU on it(makes a noticeable difference in Lightroom). The other TB port runs to an OWC TB3 hub(bought to dock my M1 MBP, and rarely used for that purpose for a variety of reasons) then on to a 27" Thunderbolt display.

In any case, I plugged the card and reader into the USB-C port on the front of the hub, then proceeded to import the photos. The card mounted, but Lightroom didn't see any photos on it. A bit more juggling around and I didn't find photos anywhere on it(even putting it back in the camera), but eventually the card wouldn't mount on my iMac. It would on my MBP, as well as if I put the reader directly into one of the TB ports on the back of the iMac.

I remembered that all the high end Sandisk cards come with a key for recovery software, which I'd never used, but figured now's my chance. I downloaded it, and the software was able to pull everything off the card with no trouble(it took about 10 minutes).

To cap it all off, though, I stuck the card back in the camera and just as a bit of an experiment found that new photos I took would appear on the card just fine.

Whatever the case, I formatted in camera and will be watching it carefully now.

crisis averted!! but a good reminder

 

[kenoh]

I've mostly been using my D850 recently(which I've now had a little over a month). I had ordered several CFExpress cards through Amazon, but I've been having issues with Amazon deliveries in my area lately and a package that had 4 never arrived. So, I've basically just had a 128gb Sandisk CFExpress along with a 64gb UHS-II SD living in the camera. As is my custom for my other cameras, I put JPEGs on the SD card and RAW files on the other.

I've been sloppy about not wiping the card after pulling photos off of it, but a little earlier today pulled it out of the camera to pull off some photos I took yesterday.

The only CFExpress reader I have now is a little USB-C dongle which so far has worked fine.

I have a bit of a new set-up, though. Last week I got a new desktop(or new to me)-a 2019 27" iMac. I have an eGPU on it(makes a noticeable difference in Lightroom). The other TB port runs to an OWC TB3 hub(bought to dock my M1 MBP, and rarely used for that purpose for a variety of reasons) then on to a 27" Thunderbolt display.

In any case, I plugged the card and reader into the USB-C port on the front of the hub, then proceeded to import the photos. The card mounted, but Lightroom didn't see any photos on it. A bit more juggling around and I didn't find photos anywhere on it(even putting it back in the camera), but eventually the card wouldn't mount on my iMac. It would on my MBP, as well as if I put the reader directly into one of the TB ports on the back of the iMac.

I remembered that all the high end Sandisk cards come with a key for recovery software, which I'd never used, but figured now's my chance. I downloaded it, and the software was able to pull everything off the card with no trouble(it took about 10 minutes).

To cap it all off, though, I stuck the card back in the camera and just as a bit of an experiment found that new photos I took would appear on the card just fine.

Whatever the case, I formatted in camera and will be watching it carefully now.

That had me tense reading it. I had a panic on my Z6 previously because I was daft in that I deleted a few images from the card while it was attached to my ipad - by not using the Z6 to delete them, it got itself in a bit of a tiz when I started taking images. It would take an image but then on play back the images werent there. Bit of a heart stopping moment however it mounted fine when home and the images were there. Lesson learned always format in camera and only selectively delete in camera.

 

[someoldguy]

Been a LONG time since I had a card go bad . You got lucky and dodged the bullet ! If it was me in your situation , I don't know if I'd ever fully trust that card again .

 

[mollyc]

I've only ever had one card go bad (knock on wood). And I only lost one image. I have been using some of the same cards for years and years, but I do only format in camera and only very rarely delete in camera.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

So glad you got the Sandisk software and it allowed you to recover the images after all that. Scary!

You mentioned that Lightroom wasn't seeing the images on the card. Do you usually import directly from the card into your LR library? I wonder if that's part of the issue with LR not seeing them this time. I import from a card into a folder on my iMac or Powerbook, and then add them from there to a LR catalog. Then afterwards the entire folder of images and XMP files and the LR catalog all go together into my archive HDs.

I don't know if that makes a difference, but if it happens again that may be worth trying. Good luck!

 

[mollyc]

I have always imported directly from a card and I've been using LR since version 1. 🙂

 

[bunnspecial]

If it was me in your situation , I don't know if I'd ever fully trust that card again .

I admit to being a bit gun shy, but also I'm sort of stuck as this is the only one of these cards I have now and they're expensive!

I guess it is worth an email to Sandisk as the card is barely a month old(I apparently received it August 1st) and I've put less than 1500 or so images on it.

Not too fond of cycling any card this new out, especially when it was $140, although this is definitely a reminder that I need to reorder the ones that Amazon never managed to get to me the first time around.

 

[r.harris1]

I've sort of stuck with XQD cards for my d850 for whatever reason, I think because I have several of them laying around. I did the firmware upgrade for CFExpress and used one a few times to try it out, but use the card elsewhere (without issues so far). It's a Delkin I believe. Sorry to hear - very scary! I also import directly to my raw processor.

 

[bunnspecial]

I've sort of stuck with XQD cards for my d850 for whatever reason, I think because I have several of them laying around. I did the firmware upgrade for CFExpress and used one a few times to try it out, but use the card elsewhere (without issues so far). It's a Delkin I believe. Sorry to hear - very scary! I also import directly to my raw processor.

I had a couple of Sony XQDs when I still had my D500. At the time Sony was the only one making those(Lexar was gone) and I don't THINK Nikon had released the CFExpress firmware for them when I was first buying them.

After I sold those and then had to shop/rebuy cards, I decided to go CFExpress for forward compatibility and at this point not needing XQD for backwards. Prices are also all over the place, and most of the time XQD is more expensive for a given capacity(and the big brands for CFExpress are decently comparable on price). I ALMOST bought one as B&H had I think 60gb XQDs on sale when I was looking, but didn't.

BTW, to answer, I pull straight into Lightroom off the card also.

 

[Clix Pix]

I never import directly into any software editing program; I always use the card reader (A Sony dual one which handles both SD and CFExpress Type A cards) and send the images right to the desktop, and then after that am free to decide what I want to do next. I also always format in-camera, NEVER on the computer. Even if I only shoot a few images on a given day or a lot on a given day but know that I'll probably only be interested in processing a few of them, I still send all of the images to the desktop, then put the card back into the camera and format it (only after I've made sure that everything is fine, no corruption or other issues).

Glad you were able to rescue your images!