Lost SD photos: I had taken a bunch of cool photos of the Pirelli World Challenge cars and teams last Friday night. I made a mistake, which will never happen again. I inserted the...

JBGLADSTONE Loc: Oregon

I had taken a bunch of cool photos of the Pirelli World Challenge cars and teams last Friday night.
I made a mistake, which will never happen again. I inserted the camera card into my laptop. Then I opened the laptop, it had a virus and it wiped my card clean. Yup lost over a 100+ photos from that race day.

"Just make sure your computer is safe and secure before inserting your SD card."

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Ouch!

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

JBGLADSTONE wrote:

I had taken a bunch of cool photos of the Pirelli World Challenge cars and teams last Friday night.
I made a mistake, which will never happen again. I inserted the camera card into my laptop. Then I opened the laptop, it had a virus and it wiped my card clean. Yup lost over a 100+ photos from that race day.

"Just make sure your computer is safe and secure before inserting your SD card."

I certainly hope you've reformatted your HD down to bare metal and started over again, since something that extreme is going to hide itself deeeeeeeeeep in the OS where no antivirus can find it.

PLUS, if you're SD card's been erased, don't try file recovery since it will recovery the virus and reinfect your newly formatted drive.

It sucks to be you, Dude.

TBerwick Loc: Houston, Texas

Another reason to shoot RAW + JPG, if possible. Most of the virus', particularly the encryption style, look for JPG, DOCX, etc. I don't think that RAW files are included in their file search algorithms but I could be mistaken. Always keep an up-to-date AV program running though they don't always stop the newest iterations of malware.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

Not disagreeing with any comments here so far but thinking the photos may still be there, just were unable to be seen. Viruses seldom go after SD cards or thumb drives, except to transmit the virus, but may affect any hard drive program or viewer or software that can read or transfer them. If photos are important to you I would suggest taking the card to somewhere that fixes computers, etc. They usally have a computer set up to check for a virus and can see if card is truly wiped. Make a couple phone calls.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Are you sure the card is wiped, and if so, how? If you haven’t already formatted the card, I’d download a copy of Recuva and give it a try. There’s a difference between wiping out the file allocation pointers and actually erasing all the data by writing zeros to every location (which is unlikely). And have you tried to read it both in-camera and via the SD reader? If via the SD reader on the computer (assuming you’ve cleaned it of the virus), does it show up as a drive letter (does the computer recognize that it’s attached)? If you haven’t formatted the card, I wouldn’t give up quite yet unless you’ve tried the above.

Joe Blow

TriX wrote:

Are you sure the card is wiped, and if so, how? If you haven’t already formatted the card, I’d download a copy of Recuva and give it a try. There’s a difference between wiping out the file allocation pointers and actually erasing all the data by writing zeros to every location (which is unlikely).

To add,, if you isolate the virus on your computer, you can also scan any cards and thumb drives too.

I fully agree that Recuva will recover any files that are still there. They may be out of order, but you can recover them unless they were written over.

NOTE: The major cause of SD card failure is removing them from the camera and putting them in a computer or card reader. That causes wear on the contacts and may result in failure. It is safer to use a USB cable to d/l the files. The bonus is most cameras won't allow an outside source to write to the card, which would prevent your current problem.

I don't want to suggest never pull the card from your camera. Just keep in mind that it is safer to use the USB port whenever possible.

User ID

Joe Blow wrote:

.............

NOTE: The major cause of SD card failure is removing them
from the camera and putting them in a computer or card reader.
That causes wear on the contacts and may result in failure.
.................

I found this advice provokes an idea. So I began a
new thread to ask for advice and comments about
the idea. Please take a look:

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-543023-1.html#9209119

Thank you.

JBGLADSTONE Loc: Oregon

Hello Guys & Ladies,

A big thanks to Trix and Joe Blow for telling me about Recuva.
I download the free recovery program. Holly Molly, I had re-formatted two different SD SanDisks cards and I was able to recover files from several years ago when I was using a Canon T3I plus the photos I thought I had lost from last weekends PWC & SCCA SRF3 races.
All were retrieved by Recuva.
I am Happy again and may even kiss the wife of 50 years LOL !!!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

JBGLADSTONE wrote:

Hello Guys & Ladies,

A big thanks to Trix and Joe Blow for telling me about Recuva.
I download the free recovery program. Holly Molly, I had re-formatted two different SD SanDisks cards and I was able to recover files from several years ago when I was using a Canon T3I plus the photos I thought I had lost from last weekends PWC & SCCA SRF3 races.
All were retrieved by Recuva.
I am Happy again and may even kiss the wife of 50 years LOL !!!

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Joe Blow wrote:

img src="https://static.uglyhedgehog.com/images/s... (show quote)

I've neither read nor experienced that having shot over 200,000 images on digital cameras over the past 18 yrs. Contacts on SD cards don't seem to wear much, but pins bend or break on CF cards, and mini or micro USB jacks are pretty fragile. I have broken a couple of jacks over the years, and I had 2 SD cards physically break - the plastic part - but not the contacts. Sandisk replaced them free of charge under their lifetime warranty. Good card readers are reliable but the $10 ones aren't.

http://www.eprovided.com/data-recovery-blog/broken-sd-card-recovery/

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

JBGLADSTONE wrote:

Hello Guys & Ladies,

A big thanks to Trix and Joe Blow for telling me about Recuva.
I download the free recovery program. Holly Molly, I had re-formatted two different SD SanDisks cards and I was able to recover files from several years ago when I was using a Canon T3I plus the photos I thought I had lost from last weekends PWC & SCCA SRF3 races.
All were retrieved by Recuva.
I am Happy again and may even kiss the wife of 50 years LOL !!!

Excellent news (depending on your wife’s reaction 😳). Now, just as good practice, after you’ve made at least two (and preferably a third off-site) copies of your photos elsewhere AND checked those copies for viruses, AND made sure your computer is cleaned of viruses, do a full (not quick) format of each of the suspected cards in your camera before reuse. The object being not to propagate any potential viruses that might have infected your storage media. From your description of the issue, it isn’t clear to me that you actually had a virus, but you can’t be too careful, and formatting the card in camera will insure the proper file system and allocation table is in place on each card so hopefully the problem won’t recur.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

Glad they were still there, I assumed they were. Lesson learned after dealing with computers over 30 years is 98% of "computer problems" are operator error.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

Joe Blow wrote:

NOTE: The major cause of SD card failure is removing them from the camera and putting them in a computer or card reader. That causes wear on the contacts and may result in failure.

You are correct on cause, not on reason. Studies have shown it is the handling & bending of them not wear on contacts. How many of us have tried to insert wrong direction or slightly twisted during removals & insertions, etc.? That, along with extreme temperatures, causes vast majority of failures, which are still rare.