Damaged/corrupted images...Pls help me recover them to original form

Vijay Kr · Sep 20, 2014

Dear forum,

I have been facing a problem with my saved images for a while now. I could open the images, but they are found to be in disorted and corrupted form. I have attached a sample image of the same.

I tried to figure out, if the problem is due to any specific SD card/Cam, however, found that many images corrupted to this form, irrespective of which camera/SD card I used (different years/different cams).

I hope you guys have a fix for this. I would be grateful, if any one can help me sort out why this happens and possible remedy to this. I have many of my important images at stake due to this.

Awaiting a solution and thanks in advance.

Best,

Vijay

bratkinson · Sep 20, 2014

3+ years ago, I built a new computer and really loved the high speed photo editing capabilities. Unfortunately, it would lock up or give me the blue screen of death every now and then and I spent several weeks isolating the problem. Problems similar to yours were happening in my edited photos as well.

I copied the photos from the memory card to the SSD drive, and edited from there in Lightroom, and outputting the files as JPGs. Only after looking at the edited photos did 1 in 5 or so have screwy colors/washed out areas, etc. So I went back to the original RAW files and re-edited them in LR and -different- edited photos were corrupted. That proved it was in my computer, not the camera or the memory card(s). Replacing one component at a time (including memory stick swaps and remove one stick, etc), narrowed it down to BOTH sticks of RAM were defective. New RAM solved the problem. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to send the Corsair RAM back to China and get it replaced. I bought new RAM and had it overnighted. Problem solved.

I've encountered defective RAM issues on a number of computers I've built for myself and others computers, including one of my computer geek friends. Just about every time, the problems could not be reproduced 'on demand' - eg, do this, then this, then that and that...boom. The problems surfaced at different times. I think that's one of the 'keys' to determining it's a RAM problem...inconsistent failures.

So, start the process of elimination. If you don't already have a bunch of pictures...maybe 25 or so...on your camera memory card, start taking some fresh shots. Review on the camera to ensure all the shots taken are OK. If not, then it's the card or the camera. If everything is OK, copy the pictures from the camera to a separate folder on your hard drive, and check those when done. If OK, it's probably NOT the hard drive. That could be a problem, too, by the way. If everything on the hard drive looks OK, copy them to still another folder on the HD and check them...just as verification it's not the HD. Then edit them and save them to still another folder and review the results. If that's were the problems show up, then it's most likely a defective RAM issue. If you have 2 or more sticks of RAM in the computer, remove one and try the experiment again. If the problems do NOT recur, then the stick you took out is the bad one.

KmH · Sep 20, 2014

Deleting images from a memory card to make room for more photos while the card is in the camera often causes corrupt image problems.

Image content effects image file size.

A photo of a forested landscape will be a bigger image file than a photo of a blank single color wall.
If a photo of the wall is deleted and a photo of a forested landscape is written over the same location in memory the smaller wall image file was, the memory space available is to small for the larger landscape file and the landscape photo will be corrupted.