Corrupted Flash Cards
Corrupted Flash Cards
- You are in the middle of taking pictures and suddenly, as you press on the shutter button of you camera, nothing happens.
- You just connected your flash card to your computer and none of your photos are there.
- You get the error message: card needs reformatting or...
Your worst nightmare! All this hard work is gone, lost for ever! Almost! Time to panic!
- 99.9999% of the times, it's the fault of the operator!
- 0.0001% of the times, it's a hardware fault1.
- This applies to both CF cards and SD/SDHC cards
Why do flash cards crash?
The technology business is a business where everybody is smarter than the average bear! The main problem facing computers and therefore cameras has been speed. How do you speed things up? The main solution has been to: delay hardware moves. The slowest operation of the camera is the writing of the photos to the flash card.
So delay the writes to the card when time is available. That's not when you take the photo, but then it either has time or has to because the memory buffers are full.
Flash cards file system
All the flash cards are formatted with FAT2 from the time of the old DOS that was created in the early 1980s. Which FAT is used depends on the size of the flash card:
- Up to 2 Gb, the flash card is formatted with FAT16. The same FAT as DOS 2.0 from 1983.
- Above 2 Gb, the flash card is formatted with FAT32. The same FAT as Windows 98 2nd edition in 1999.
So how do you prevent this?
- Always shutdown the camera before taking the flash card out.
- If the card is full, turn off the camera, before replacing the card. You will have lost the last picture but…
- Never fill the card to the last photo.
Recovery
- There are many software programs available, everyone has their favorite. You can Google under: corrupted flash card. Some of are even free.
- This may not recover all the photos, but these programs will recover most or all of these photos.
1 i.e.: it's a bad card ↑
2 FAT: File Allocation Table ↑
Corrupted Flash Cards
- You are in the middle of taking pictures and suddenly, as you press on the shutter button of you camera, nothing happens.
- You just connected your flash card to your computer and none of your photos are there.
- You get the error message: card needs reformatting or...
Your worst nightmare! All this hard work is gone, lost for ever! Almost! Time to panic!
- 99.9999% of the times, it's the fault of the operator!
- 0.0001% of the times, it's a hardware fault1.
- This applies to both CF cards and SD/SDHC cards
Why do flash cards crash?
The technology business is a business where everybody is smarter than the average bear! The main problem facing computers and therefore cameras has been speed. How do you speed things up? The main solution has been to: delay hardware moves. The slowest operation of the camera is the writing of the photos to the flash card.
So delay the writes to the card when time is available. That's not when you take the photo, but then it either has time or has to because the memory buffers are full.
Flash cards file system
All the flash cards are formatted with FAT2 from the time of the old DOS that was created in the early 1980s. Which FAT is used depends on the size of the flash card:
- Up to 2 Gb, the flash card is formatted with FAT16. The same FAT as DOS 2.0 from 1983.
- Above 2 Gb, the flash card is formatted with FAT32. The same FAT as Windows 98 2nd edition in 1999.
So how do you prevent this?
- Always shutdown the camera before taking the flash card out.
- If the card is full, turn off the camera, before replacing the card. You will have lost the last picture but…
- Never fill the card to the last photo.
Recovery
- There are many software programs available, everyone has their favorite. You can Google under: corrupted flash card. Some of are even free.
- This may not recover all the photos, but these programs will recover most or all of these photos.
1 i.e.: it's a bad card ↑
2 FAT: File Allocation Table ↑
