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How do I recover photos from a SD card


ColinK
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Hi,

 

I've just tried to download my holiday photos off two SD cards onto my Mac.

 

The first card (Scandisc) worked fine.

 

The second card (Rossman store.it) failed.  The 200 or so photos were on the card as I checked them before removing it from the camera, but they do not appear on my computer screen and can't be downloaded.  I've put the card back in the camera and all I get is 'no image', I get that message when a card has nothing on it.  I haven't formatted the card or deleted the images, so is there a way of recovering them?

 

 

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I've had success in the past with Recuva but that is for Windows not Mac.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

Some Sandisk products also come with a free recovery utility Rescuepro which does have a Mac option.

http://www.lc-tech.co.uk/mac/rescuepro-standard-and-rescuepro-deluxe/

 

When/if you do get the images back, I'd suggest binning the offending card.

 

These days I tend to leave cards in-situ and transfer by cable.

 

Mark

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My only experience is with Windows products.  I use a program called "Dont Panic! Photo Edition" which mostly works well, though I got it from a Poundshop a while ago, so it's rather elderly!  The manufacturers current offering is ImageRecall 5 which retails at £25 and has a trial option to evaluate its suitability before forking out. They're at ( http://www.imagerecall.com/ ) Completely useless for Mac users, but its the best I can suggest!

 

I did google "sd image recovery mac" and got quite a few results - it might be useful to trawl carefully through them to see what is available.  Just make sure your AV software is up to date!

 

 

Not all SD cards have the capacity the label says they have, they may have a gigabyte or so of physical memory but actually report much more. Once you write past the physical limit, the card just rolls over earlier data, completly trashing it. You have to watch where you buy them from!

Edited by Hroth
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The problem here will be if no card icon appears on your Mac desktop. If the computer does not see the card then the file recovery software is unlikely to see it either.

 

If you do get an icon appearing then you should be ok with file recovery.

 

It worries me that the camera is now not finding the images, because it appears that somehow the directory on the card has become corrupt. You could try Disk Utilities (in the Utilities folder within Applications) but once again if the card icon is not present on the desktop, then DU will not recognise it either.

Edited by jonny777
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I'm not familiar with the Mac file system. Being "user friendly", is it stopping you from getting down and dirty with the files?

 

Might be worth finding someone with a Windows PC and using Recuva. You can download a "portable" version which won't need installingso it will leave systems unchanged after use.

 

Mark

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Two friends mentioned last weekend that they'd had same problem, one used a card reader and the other connected the camera to the computer to upload photos. I think they both use Macs  so wondered if the operating system had a glitch in it.

 

It probably won't help the OP  but, though I use a PC, I've started to lock the card so it's read only before inserting it in the card reader. I don't know whether that gives complete protection as I'm not sure what the locking tab on the card actually does but if the problem is housekeeping files that the computer writes to the card then this should stop it.

 

What sort of camera are you using?  I've seen reports that the Mac writes files to the card that help with indexing and file retrieval and Fuji cameras see these as an error https://www.slrlounge.com/psa-fuji-users-lock-your-sd-cards-when-accessing-files-on-a-mac-to-avoid-corruption/

Edited by Pacific231G
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Thanks for all the help and support, some success.

 

First I unplugged my back-up drive in case I got some malware.  I tried several 'free' programmes.  These all said that there was data on the SD card, but most just said 'files' then wanted me to purchase the full package to retrieve them.

 

I ended up using 'card rescue' as the free version showed thumbnails of the photos on the card, in most cases saying that the EXLIR data was missing.  I then paid the £30 and downloaded the photos in just a couple of minutes.  The photos were taken over 8 days and the photos first two days are not useable as part of the image is just grey.  The rest of the photos seem fine.  The unusable ones were all taken on Hoy, one of the Orkney Islands.  Ironically, these included all the train pics I took on holiday - I found standard and narrow gauge track and wagons at Lyness.

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Thanks for all the help and support, some success.

 

First I unplugged my back-up drive in case I got some malware.  I tried several 'free' programmes.  These all said that there was data on the SD card, but most just said 'files' then wanted me to purchase the full package to retrieve them.

 

I ended up using 'card rescue' as the free version showed thumbnails of the photos on the card, in most cases saying that the EXLIR data was missing.  I then paid the £30 and downloaded the photos in just a couple of minutes.  The photos were taken over 8 days and the photos first two days are not useable as part of the image is just grey.  The rest of the photos seem fine.  The unusable ones were all taken on Hoy, one of the Orkney Islands.  Ironically, these included all the train pics I took on holiday - I found standard and narrow gauge track and wagons at Lyness.

 

 

When you say part of the photo is grey, is that the downloaded photo or the thumbnail as well?

 

That problem is usually just  download error, and is a software problem when something has interrupted the download part way through.

 

 

I have had this happen on a few jpg files in the past. I think a lot of these problems stem from the Mac making extensive use of resource forks. If the thumbnails are ok then those photos should be recoverable, but you may need to borrow a different machine in order to check.

 

EXLIR is some commercial database indexing system, and not an Apple product - so I am not sure what is going on there.

Edited by jonny777
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Thanks for that jonny777.

 

I've had another go with interesting results.

 

I used CardRescue to try and find the files, which it did. It put all l the recovered photos in a new file I had created.  The first 40 images all had part of the image showing, and part just grey. I then changed the file names, so I could recognise them easier (and deleted some really old photos which it had found).

 

I then selected all 100 plus images (including those with the grey sections) and moved them into 'photos'.

 

I opened 'photos' and the recovered pictures all appeared in a new file; from the file name and icon, it looked like the Mac was reading them direct off the SD card.  When I viewed them, the grey sections had gone and the whole image was showing properly.  So, as you suggested, the whole image is there (phew).

 

Finally, as 'photos' asked, I imported them into the photos library - but the grey sections had reappeared.  Arrgh.

 

My Dad has a iMac, should I try putting the SD card in his computer?

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