So I take hundreds of photos a day, 5 days a week for work and have never had this happen to me before. I was copying my work onto my computer after working all day and 3/4 of the way, my sd card got corrupted and lost the ability to view/download my photos. On my computer and even on the camera. It’s like the information was there, but my camera said “Can’t play back” or something when trying to view, and my computer just showed it empty.
Luckily it was my biggest client, so it was not an issue to go back to reshoot my shots needed. But I’m very worried it will happen again. I have a big shoot today, with a potential big new client, and can’t have this happen again. Do I need a new sd card? I only have another micro sd with the adapter, so I’m just debating going to get a new one right before my shoot.
Has this happened to anyone before? And how do I prevent this in the future?
Thank You
SD cards have a limited number of write cycles. Heavy use can exceed this and result in corrupted data. If this should happen again, instead of reshooting, first take a look at data recovery software. EaseUS and Recuva are two companies that have this software but there are others. I have used Recuva to recover photographs from a corrupted SD card.
Couple of questions — Do you always format cards In Camera? Also, do you Chimp? That is, deleting images In Camera on the fly.
Always format in camera, dont do deletions via computer. And don’t Chimp. Just about everyone I know that has had card complaints chimps like crazy. Just leave the trash on the card. They will be gone when you format. If you are shooting so much the card fills up, get more cards. Also don’t shoot to the brink, meaning don’t use cards till they’re nearly full. Give the data some breathing room.
I recently retired from product shooting, and memory had gotten so cheap for the smaller cards that we used a freshly tested card for each shoot. Part of our backup plan. We just charged the small archiving fee back to the client. Also, the comments here about dual slots should be considered for the future.
funny you should say that, i used mine about 3 weeks ago on a job only to discover that some of the first few images were corrupt. I did a full format of the sdcard and its been fine since so not sure what went wrong.
It’s how flash storage works. Bad blocks get marked and then the storage controller ignores those blocks when storing data. If you looked at the size of the drive before and after, you would notice the size has decreased. The first part of the drive is the most used and flash memory bits die after a lot of write cycles. Usually in the hundreds of thousands to millions of cycles, but not always. Depends on the quality of the flash memory, temperature, how they’re treated, solar flares, witchcraft, etc.
They can, tricky little shits.
Fortunately it’s rare, but it does happen.
I lost a full day of shots when I was on a cruise. Not a paid gig, but lots of shots of the boat, people, our excursion.
A few years later I found a tool that can recover files from a SD card. I was able to recover a few dozen, but I shot hundreds that day.
It was already abandonware and stopped working with some windows update.
This is why film is still better.
There are SD cards with built-in WiFi module to backup to external device, such as laptop or iPad.
If your camera is equipped with WiFi module or Bluetooth and it allows tethered shooting, you may save photos to your laptop or iPad when shooting. Or may be you may connect and download photos a bit later.
There are devices that allow a backup of SD card info. Such as external HDD or SSD boxes with SD card slot.
If your camera is equipped with dual SD card slots, you may use one of those modes: RAW to 1 card and JPEG to 2 card, or backup mode. In first case, even if one of your cards fails, you still have info from another card, and with modern cameras JPEGs are much much better than in elder times, especially if you have got Fuji camera from 2014 and newer. And backup mode is self explanatory. Make sure to carry a battery charger and several fully charged batteries with you, because writing on both cards drains a battery much faster.
If your camera has neither WiFi nor dual SD card slots, get a camera with both options.
Use SD cards from the best brands: SanDisk, for example.
As a part time professional photographer since 2010, I have yet to have a single card failure. I typically use my cards for several years, until the transfer speed is getting so behind par it seems foolish to keep using them.
Other than common sense stuff, I have one rule for them: Never ever delete a photo from the card in camera. In fact, I never “delete”, only “format”. Other working photographers I’ve talked to also practice this.
Yes, they have a write limit and heat can do them in.
I recently had a micro SD card fail after 3 years of use in a dashcam. So, continuous writing the card in hot and cold conditions, the card began to slowly failed. The dashcam was nice enough to alert me to the impending failure, which I confirmed with Blackmagic Speed test, which failed to write to part of the card.
Depending on the type of shoot, there are two tips:
Smaller size SDs so that even if one corrupts, itself not 500GB of images lost, but 64. Rather have your shoot divided into several 64GB lots.
Shoot tethered to a laptop/tablet/(and now the new iphone15) using capture one so it goes into your catalog as well as on your card if your camera does mixed output.
Is you available for an musician artist
SD cards can “wear out” since they have a limited number of read/write cycles.
I just replaced all my SD cards because they were failing randomly. They were all 10 years old, so they were due.
If format them often in the camera that you use them with they can be used for a long time.