Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

Several of us have accidentally put SD cards through the washing machine and found they had not been damaged.
Often we are warned about salt when taking photos on seaside.
How about when you get shipwrecked and your camera sits in salt water for two years?
Yes! the photos were still there on the card. The camera did not fare so well.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

Oh, I guess it might be helpful if I told you where to find the story:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/shipwrecked-camera-found-underwater-after-2-years-with-photos-intact-1.2651173

waremick Loc: New Hampshire

Lately I have had pictures lost because of a software "bug" involving SD media becoming "read only". All of my efforts to find a repair so far is only hot air.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

If the card is "read only" what happens if you slide the little white thingy on the side to the other position?

Have you tried to pop the card into a reader and look at it (you should be able to see your images even if they are 'read-only), the right-clicking each image, from the pop-up select Properties, in the next window look at Attributes and un-check Read-only?

Or even copy and paste the images from the card to your hard drive? If they're still read-only, the computer will aske you if you really want to move them. Say Yes!
Then, when your photos are safely moved, make sure the card is not locked with the little slide, then format it in-camera.

waremick Loc: New Hampshire

Yes I have downloaded everything that I can to external hard drives. Formatting is not an option and Yes I do know about the lock switch. Even the camera sometimes will not format these sd cards. I need an extreme nuke method that so far I have not found. Sd media seems to be extremely unreliable.