amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

At this point, don't assume that it's a "failed card". It could be an incorrect camera setting, a failed memory card slot in the camera or something else.

I've had camera settings "change" mysteriously. Some years ago, shooting with three identical cameras that were all set up exactly the same way, the images from one suddenly started showing a magenta tint in every image. Turned out that somehow a tint bias had gotten dialed in. Yet, I'd never accessed that feature in the camera's menu, so I'm sure I never set it myself. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was happening before I finally looked at that setting and discovered it was incorrect. I know for certain I didn't change it.... my best guess was that it had somehow gotten changed during a firmware update or maybe just arbitrarily changed when I powered the camera up to start shooting with it. Camera are computers now... They're complex and mysterious stuff happens!

If there are no images on the card.... and the camera was set correctly to record to it.... it's just as possible that the memory card slot failed, as it is the memory card itself failed. I'd put another card in the camera and do some tests with it, to be sure, before trusting any serious work to it again.

A failed card reader is more likely than a failed in-camera card slot... But you mention can't see images on the card in the camera either, that rules out the card reader.... leaving just a failed card or a failed card slot in the camera as possibilities.

Another thing, since it's an SD card, was the little locking switch set correctly on it? When slid to the lock position, that prevents data from being written to the card. I would expect the camera to send a warning if that was incorrectly set, but who knows! Personally I'm tempted to glue those little locking tabs to the "off" position on all my SD cards. A couple times I've accidentally locked a card, popped it in the camera to start using it, then gotten a warning and had to remove the card again to correct the setting of the tab. That's a PITA when shooting action and trying to do a quick swap to a fresh card.

A final possibility... Maybe a long shot. By any chance is it a new camera and the software you are using is older and unable to read the RAW files? Have you successfully read RAW files from the camera previously?

Out of some 100 or 200 more memory cards I've used over the years, I've had exactly two of them fail. In both instances, they failed right out of the package. One wouldn't even format, never had a single image written to it! The other was fresh from the package, formatted and had RAW+JPEG images written to it once, then had the JPEGs downloaded using a card reader, but became inaccessible to download the RAW files and no longer could be formatted.

In over 20 years shooting digital (almost exclusively for over 15 yeas) I've never had a card fail that had completed it's first format/use/download/reformat cycle. All of them still work to this day (though some are no longer in regular use due to their small size and/or slower speeds). Some of my memory cards have been reused many dozens of time (I do format in-camera before every use). But, again, none that survived past the first use has ever failed. Even my very oldest memory cards from the 1990s were working fine, although the particular type of memory was no longer supported and other computer upgrades made it impossible to continue using them (no one made card readers for them that worked with MS Vista and later operating systems).

Try Sandisk or Lexar image recovery tools. They are free to try, though I doubt they'll work in this instance. They are usually able to recover images from memory cards that have been accidentally formatted, so long as new data hasn't been written over them. But in this case it doesn't sound as if there is any data on the card to recover, or what is there is corrupted to the point it's unreadable.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Photorec or testdisk from CGsecurity use the image creation option first and recover from the image.
Sometimes its the filesystem that is corrupted with blocks that can't be corrected (not being able to be written to). Oh and if you are on a mac you can double click the disk image and read it just like any other drive even thou its just a big file.

pshane

I just read an online article, (pop photo I think), about three days ago that covered that exact question, and YES, there is a way of recovering Lost/Deleted files on an SD card, but I'd Google it b/c I didn't save it.
Sorry for not being more specific, but Best of Luck to you.

jeffcisp

Try RescuePRO Deluxe; SanDisk is providing their software with some of their new SDXC cards.

11bravo

1. As others have said, try Recurva. If the basic wizard run doesn't work (I believe it just looks at the FAT or equivalent), rerun using the "deep scan" option checkbox. The deep scan takes a lot longer as it scans the whole card looking for files.

2. SanDisk extreme cards come with a 2 year license key (2 years from activation, not purchase). Can't say it's any better than Recurva (I have both), but can't hurt if Recurva is unsuccessful.

3. Testdisk/PhotoRec
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

might be worth a try, again, can't hurt, if the above 2 are unsuccessful.


You're a better man than I. All depends on your workflow/use.

In my single slot FZ1000, I shoot both. But then, I'm only shooting on a foreign travel 2 month holiday. After being out all day and into the night, my only workflow is to start the batteries charging in my dual charger and copy several hundred photos from my SD card, plus several hundred more from my travel companion's card, to an internal HDD with another copy to an external HDD. I only have energy for some mindless batch processing.

FOR ME, easier to select existing jpg's, then batch resize, for an email, rather than generate/export from a PP program. Periodically (read frantically the last couple of days of the trip), I'm copying existing jpg's to a couple of large capacity SD cards so travel companion can take back to her home to show friends. Again, simple batch processing with a simple review/delete duds. I save the RAW's for at home PP. That's just what works for me 😁

Hydro47 Loc: NW Indiana

I have used recuva to recover raw files after I accidently formatted the card. My first attempt, I asked to recover all pictures but found only jpgs. I ran it again and asked it to recover all files. That netted my .NEF files but it took quite a long time as it recovered stuff I didn't want or need.

Hydro47 Loc: NW Indiana

When your raw files have been recovered, they will have been renamed (000001.NEF) etc by Recuva. You will have to rename the recovered files if using LR because the parentheses won't be recognized by LR

chikid68 Loc: Tennesse USA

The third one is the one I use myself