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I'm fairly certain I know the answer to this but I wanted to reach out to get opinions from those who know more than I.
I got married last weekend. Rather than hire a videographer we decided to purchase a camcorder and have a friend film it.
Everything seemed to be recording fine (as it did when I was using it a few days later) but when we went to watch it back, one of the clips stops midway through and won't play. Every file after that one will not play either. I can see them on the card taking up between 3mb-400 mb each. I have spent a lot of time the last few days looking for a solution and have tried just about every solution I could find but no luck.
When I open the files in a hex editor I see a whole lot of "FF"'s.
Attached is one of the smaller files.
Hoping someone tells me that I'm not SOL and will never have a copy of my wedding video but I think we are screwed.
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Looks like you're right, it contains x"FF" all the way through, no valid data unfortunately.
Did something happen to the camera at the time it all went wrong? -
I can confirm there's nothing useful in the file. It's 0xff all the way through.
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Balls...That's what I was afraid of. So just to verify, I am 100% SOL on these files, right?
I'm not sure if anything went wrong. I put a call out to the guy who was behind the camera. I can't imagine anything odd happening other than maybe a dead battery?
It's rough losing a 64Gb card but I can't trust it anymore. Can anyone here shed any light into the possibility that it is the camera and not the card that caused this? I know anything is possible but I'm leaving on our honeymoon to Belize next week and if I drop a new card in it and this happens again, I'm going to lose it on Canon.
That's what I get for trusting a Transcend card with irreplaceable video.
I'm new to all this but is SanDisk the way to go for a reliable card? I know that any card CAN fail but I would like to pay more to reduce the risk
Thanks for all the help! -
Files? Yes. If you still have the flash card and haven't overwritten or formatted it you might still be able to recover the real video data.Originally Posted by relentless_d
Losing power is often the cause of this type or problem.Originally Posted by relentless_d
If you got the card from a questionable source it's possible it's not really a 64 GB card. It's quite common for crooks to take smaller cards and fake-format them to appear as larger cards. There are utilities that can detect that.Originally Posted by relentless_d
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Interesting. I still have the card as it was when we realized what happened. Is this sort of thing a pro needs to do or is there some sort of software I can buy/download to look into it? I'm an IT guy and VERY comfortable digging into this stuff, I just need to know which direction to look in.Originally Posted by jagabo
Files? Yes. If you still have the flash card and haven't overwritten or formatted it you might still be able to recover the real video data.Originally Posted by relentless_d
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There are many threads here that discuss recovery of files from SD cards. Some of them mention some web sites and software that can be useful. But you may end up having to pay a professional recovery service.
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While there could be another reason for the problem, the symptoms you have match this scenario perfectly. It'll be a smaller card, pretending that it's bigger. You "see" the files and their file sizes because the file allocation table lists these, but the part of the card the table points to doesn't really exist. Everything beyond the real capacity of the card doesn't not exist. There is nothing to recover.Originally Posted by jagabo
Beware that the programs which test cards to see if they are fakes WILL WRITE DATA TO THEM - this will erase everything on there. You don't want to do this if you think there's any chance of recovering something. You should use these utilities on brand new cards to check they're legitimate, not after you've written valuable data to the card.
There are fakes available pretending to be every brand, including SanDisk, including fake but convincing packaging. Avoid to-good-to-be-true offers. Read the sellers feedback (noting that most people will leave good feedback before they find there's a problem). Avoid any sellers offering "up to" 64GB cards, "upgraded" cards, or "reformatted" cards.
Google eBay fake SD cards
http://www.jacobtomlinson.co.uk/2014/01/23/should-i-buy-a-cheap-upgraded-reformatted-s...-card-on-ebay/
http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/Detecting-fake-flash-memory-on-e-bay-/10000000013353853/g.html
http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/Micro-SD-cards-32gb-fakes-/10000000177186560/g.html
etc
I hope this isn't what's happened to you, and it's "just" a real card with a problem, because at least then there's some hope of recovering some data.
Cheers,
David. -
Thanks for all the help. I haven't had much luck searching around for recovering the video off the card so I have contacted a few data recovery places. Hopefully they can help.
I talked to the guy who did the recording and he says that the camera never died on him...Just kept chugging along all night and the available space kept going down like normal. He turned it off at one point and swapped the battery (much later than the videos stopped recording).
It's tricky because at this point I am thinking it may be a bad/fake SD card but I can't test the card at all without losing any chance of recovering data (> . <) -
What you have not stated in your thread is what software you have used in an attempt to recover the files (if indeed they are recoverable)
Data Recovery places could well use software you are capable of using yourself but would charge $$$ for the privilege -
TBH, I have spent the last 2 days searching around and trying every bit of software I could find (Stellar phoenix, photorec, video repair, EaseUS data recovery, seagate recovery, Zero assumption recovery, Card Recovery, Panasonic's AVCHD recovery tool, many many more).Originally Posted by DB83
CArd recovery was the only one so far that I have paid for and they refunded my money quickly when it didn't work. Again, if something works, I am HAPPY to pay for it.
Any and all suggestions are welcome
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Also, does anyone know of any non-destructive ways to test the actual capacity of a memory card? Since we now need another card or two I may just go to best buy and buy them. I figure those should be reliable.
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Well the only one I have used, and successfully, was ZAR (Zero Assumption Recovery) but you appear to have tried that.
Not sure if the trial has some limitations but if it did not work.......
Another that gets good reviews on here is GetDataBack.
I guess you are now ruing the decision to save some cash and do this video yourself than engage a pro. At least then you would have had someone to sue had it then gone pear-shaped -
No doubt it's the pro wedding photographers selling fake flash cards on ebay.Originally Posted by DB83
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Yeah, hindsight being 20/20 I should have tested the equipment before or hired someone but no going back now.Originally Posted by DB83
You guys have been a lot of help here.
My last question is if anyone knows of a way I can test the actual capacity of the card without risking whatever data might be on it. Looking around, it seems like everything I have found is either destructive or doesn't mention whether it is or isn't. -
Have you tried Bad Copy Pro? I have used it on and off for several years, with some success. Says it does not write to media and there is a trial download. http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/digitalphoto.asp.
Loko
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