Please help me stop feeling sick...

[cmwalker]

So today I tried to copy a load of data from a 32GB sd card to my computer, as I was working on a video I filmed of a friends concert. The card had been working and reading just fine. For some reason today it wasn't recognised in my mac by the SD card reader. So i tried again, and again and again. Then I tried it in the camera, and i got a load of errors. Something like ML/data/fonts.dat not found. Also the graphics on my Camera screen were screwed up. I have potentially lost hours of carefully set up filming work from when I was out in Spain, as well as the only footage in existence of my baby nieces christening. I am running a data recovery analysis on the card right now, because after placing the card in my computer a load of times, one of the times the data recovery software recognized the card reader. So far the analysis it is doing doesn't look good. I am creating a disk image through it, but apart from the first 'block' all the other 'blocks' are red, which means 'bad sector'.

I feel physically ill, first that I have let my friends down with their show, but also all my family with the footage of my niece Mollie.

Does this problem sound at all familiar to anyone else? Can anyone give me some re-assurance there is some way of me getting this data back? I don't want this to ruin my Christmas but this is seeming extremely likely...

Any help any of you can give will be massively appreciated.

[1%]

Sounds like card is failing. Try a different card reader and recovery. Buy a USB reader at walmart if you have to. After you get data off the card don't trust it again.

This is not really ML related, just SD cards wear out. My card got soft corrupted and I lost a bunch of videos too since I'm always slow to move them off. Videos didn't recover well for me, tended to get header and data separately. I suppose I could have combined the 2 with a hex editor but I didn't care enough to do it.

[cmwalker]

I have 2 usb readers and it works in neither. Tried reading it from the camera through my macbook also. It doesnt really recognise it when i plug it into my macbook, but about 1 in 10 times some data recovery software i have does recognise it. The diagnostics i have run on it really don't look good. I guess my question is, do you think a company will be able to retrieve the data? It's a 32GB card, and isn't that old at all. Thank you.

[1%]

They'll get some of it but it will cost a lot. Once flash memory goes, it goes.

[cmwalker]

   I must have really angered the gods some how. I was specifically putting it into my macbook to back it up so this wouldn't happen.

I had literally just told my uncle as I was doing it how some cards of mine had messed up in the past but I had managed to recover the data. Then this happened. Bah humbug.

Thanks for your advice anyway. If anyone else has any bright ideas i'm all ears.

Merry Christmas.

cmw

[phunkyboy]

Is it a standard sd card because I find the sdhc cards flakey ?. I also think Transcend cards arent the best cards tom use with the ML software.

[cmwalker]

It is a 32GB Sandisk Ultra SDHC class 10

[Datadogie]

Please let us know when you get success in recovering your files. Think positive.

[cmwalker]

I really feel like all 32gbs of Data is lost. I simply cannot afford to spend hundreds of pounds for a company to attempt to restore it. Just such a shame. I feel like i've just lost a load of paintings in a fire. I take such pride over every second of footage I take. I was really enjoying getting to grips with ML, and this happening has made me a little weary. I know it's unlikely it's actually ML's fault, and more likely the card...but even still.

[Francis]

It is unfortunate but it happens. My suggestion is to not put all your eggs in one basket and get a number of smaller cards. If you had the footage spread over 4 8gig cards it would be very unlikely to lose more than 25% at any given time. SD cards are not exactly the safest or most reliable media.

[Paul Abrahams]

Such a bummer to hear this. I haven't had a card fail but reading this makes me weary. It sounds like you have had issues before with cards. Find the best cards you can and take your laptop with you when you film in future and dump those files asap. For peace of mind.
Good luck.

[Paul Abrahams]

I just read a post on DSLR film noob about diskdigger.org they have a software program that can rescue files.
Its free to try out and only a small fee to keep. who knows might work for you.

[cmwalker]

Thank you all very much for your kind advice. I appreciate it.

Happy new year to all you lot!

CMW

[1%]

testdisk too if you haven't been trying that.

I try to use the highest capacity cards possible shooting video. Usually they fill up very quick. But if its not just messing about I get the video off pronto. I had a CF card de-format itself during a paid gig, I had several so I kept shooting but I had to recover everything from the card at the end of the day and lost maybe ~10%.. but this was stills. Very lucky, you can't reshoot an event.

[scrax]

I've lost 4 GB of still of an event cause the card (in my camera bag) get broke, probably a hit of something. The card plastic is now damaged and it's recognized as 1024MB card, unknown filesystem. All recovery efforts failed so far. Im keeping it just because maybe one day i'll figure out how to recover those files.

[cmwalker]

Well to somewhat dwarf the worry of my SD card loss, my 500GB external hard drive decided to give up on me. I think it might have been moved while writing. Or something. I don't know. Either way, it's gone! New years resolution: To look after technology better and hope it looks after me too!

[1%]

You need a backup solution. Tape isn't too bad and has high capacities.