Corrupt Photos

[platypus63]

Hello

I've started to notice that pictures on my mac slowly corrupt for some reason. I am 100% positive that these pictures were fine when I put them on my computer, and in fact I have intact copies of them on my external. But every so often a couple of pictures get screwed up. I've put an example of what happens. In almost all of them, bottom 3rd of the photo gets discolored and shifted over. I've cropped the heads in this photo and only the problem area is shown.

Has anybody had this same experience? Any clues to fix further corruptions?

Thanks

 

[cschreppel]

That's pretty loony. Have you considered removing iPhoto and reinstalling? What about moving the photos to another Mac (or PC) and viewing them. Still having the problem?

 

[ziwi]

is it the photo as it displays or the actual files being corrupted?
Are you only viewing through iPhoto? If so try opening up the file in a browser to see if it appears correctly. I have never heard of this issue before, modifying and saving .jpg's will reduce quality, but going bad with no manipulation is odd.

 

[platypus63]

That particular photo was not in iPhoto, it happens to pictures both in iPhoto and out of it. It shows up like that in iPhoto, finder, preview, photoshop, etc. The files seem to be totally corrupted, when I transfer them to my iBook, they show up the same way. Could some jpegs be inherently corrupt? It's weird though since it happens over time

 

[cschreppel]

Hm. Just a thought - can you check the import date and the approximate date that they began to become corrupted? Maybe it's a time issue.

All in all - still unacceptable.

 

[platypus63]

I don't know how to check the import date, but one picture was "modified" in 2002 and the one i posted was created/modified in 2004. These are from different camera's (one from mine and one from a friends) so I do not think its something resulting from camera encoding. I can't tell for sure when the files went corrupt, since I do not look at them all the time. I have noticed this happening since this past spring though.

Perhaps I should reinstall the os?

Thanks a lot by the way

 

[garfield2002]

While it is certainly possible that the OS is corrupting files, and you may want to do a reinstall anyway if your first install was an upgrade from a pervious version of OS X instead of a clean install, it might be a hardware problem. I'm glad to hear that you've backed up the images on an external drive. I would however take the time and burn some DVDs for safe keeping as well.

Before reinstalling the OS, my two suggestions are to look at your RAM and HDs. I would first use disk utility to check the HDs for bad sectors and repair any errors if present. If a significant number of problems are found you should probably replace the drive. Second I would use memtest OSX to check your RAM for errors. I recently had a problem with corrupted files due to a bad ram stick. As time went on these errors multiplied and eventually brought down the system. You can test one stick at a time to isolate the bad stick.

Just some ideas to find the problem. Unfortunately you won't be able to repair the corrupted files. Good luck.

 

[platypus63]

I just ran "verify disk" on disk utility (not permissions), and it gave me an error . The button for repair disk is grayed out though.This is the error:

Volume Header needs minor repair
The volume The volume sh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

Doesn't sound so pretty. I guess I'll check my ram out and see what that does too.

Thanks garfield

 

[Shadow]

I just ran "verify disk" on disk utility (not permissions), and it gave me an error . The button for repair disk is grayed out though.This is the error:

Volume Header needs minor repair
The volume The volume sh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

Doesn't sound so pretty. I guess I'll check my ram out and see what that does too.

Thanks garfield

You either need to a) Boot off the OS X Install Disk 1, and repair the HD then, or b) Boot into Single User mode (command-S) and run fsck (how-to on Apple support site).

 

[garfield2002]

Yep, it sounds like the drive at best needs to be repaired and at worst replaced. The repair button is greyed out because you will need to run disk utility from the OS X install disc to do an actual repair. Start up your mac with the install disc in the drive and hold down the c button. Here is a website with information on what to do and what to look for.

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html

There is some other information here that is probably not be pertinent to your situation. You are right that the ram should also be checked just to be sure, however I think you've found the main reason for the picture corruption. If your drive has failed and you are still under warranty (1 year for Apple, longer from the drive manufacturer some are as long as 3-5 years check on their website) it can be replaced for no charge.

 

[platypus63]

Well I booted up from an external firewire drive, repaired the internal volume, and disk utility says all is now well with my hard drive.

Now I just cross my fingers hoping that I don't see any more corruption...

Thanks a lot to all of you.

 

[wimvandijk]

Hi,

Hello

I've started to notice that pictures on my mac slowly corrupt for some reason. I am 100% positive that these pictures were fine when I put them on my computer, and in fact I have intact copies of them on my external. But every so often a couple of pictures get screwed up. I've put an example of what happens. In almost all of them, bottom 3rd of the photo gets discolored and shifted over. I've cropped the heads in this photo and only the problem area is shown.

Has anybody had this same experience? Any clues to fix further corruptions?

Thanks

I do have the same expirience and problem and i am also looking for an answer for this problem.

 

[wimvandijk]

Hi,

Yep, it sounds like the drive at best needs to be repaired and at worst replaced. The repair button is greyed out because you will need to run disk utility from the OS X install disc to do an actual repair. Start up your mac with the install disc in the drive and hold down the c button. Here is a website with information on what to do and what to look for.

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html

There is some other information here that is probably not be pertinent to your situation. You are right that the ram should also be checked just to be sure, however I think you've found the main reason for the picture corruption. If your drive has failed and you are still under warranty (1 year for Apple, longer from the drive manufacturer some are as long as 3-5 years check on their website) it can be replaced for no charge.

I also do have corrupter photo's and it seems te become more and more.
My Mac is only 4 weeks old. So i suppose there will be no problem with my harddisk.
I thought it is a virus. So i did install Avast as a scanner but Avast does not fing any virus at all. The corrupted files al both jpeg and CR2 files.

Thanks for try to help.

Wim

 

[hotoru]

Same problem

I am having what sounds to be the exact same problem. I have a small number of my photos with the same color shift problem on the bottom 1/3 of image. I found a blog online a few months ago where someone mentioned the same problem that he was able to fix by editing what may have been the metadata of the image but the process was above my technical level and he did not have a downloadable tool. I do not know when this occurred so I am unable to say if happened during any of my prior mac hardware changes or the past few OS upgrades. Sadly the changes have propagated across all my backups :-(

 

[crosswordsteve]

Same problem

I am having what sounds to be the exact same problem. I have a small number of my photos with the same color shift problem on the bottom 1/3 of image. I found a blog online a few months ago where someone mentioned the same problem that he was able to fix by editing what may have been the metadata of the image but the process was above my technical level and he did not have a downloadable tool. I do not know when this occurred so I am unable to say if happened during any of my prior mac hardware changes or the past few OS upgrades. Sadly the changes have propagated across all my backups :-(

[doublepost=1495964790][/doublepost]I have the same problem using the Photos app. For images I make NO edits to then this corruption does not occur. But if I make any edits then the corruption is most likely to occur. The original image is never affected but the edited version will continuously show a problem. Makes using Photos unusable.

 

[MacForScience]

This is not RAM issues, this is not virus issues. This is plain and simple directory problems, or bit rot. Yes Macs get bit rot. No Time Machine doesn't save you from that.

I would use Disk Warrior to repair the drive, and SMART Utility to verify that the disk is not going bad. I would also start backing up with something better than Time Machine ASAP. Carbon Copy Cloner and/or CrashPlan come to mind.

Cheers