When Your Memory Fails Don’t Lose Your Mind

By Peter Kotsinadelis

What do you do when you return from a wedding, special event or a shoot only to find that when you plug your memory card into a reader it has failed? With hundreds of images kept on just one device these days it is probably one of the worst things that could possibly happen to a photographer.

Two of my photographer friends went through this same experience. Both returned after a long day of shooting only to find they were unable to retrieve their images. Although they tell me they are now better off having gained a better understanding of what to do from the experience, it was far from painless with many sleepless nights.

Reliability

While a number of photographers may say to themselves, “This will not happen to me,” think again. All devices fail from one time to another. As reliable as they may be, electronic devices such as memory can fail and it may happen when you least expect it. Every memory card has a life expectancy, or a certain number of read/write cycles that it is benchmarked against. The better, and often more expensive, memory cards have a life expectancy of 100,000 Read/Write cycles. Many of the less expensive have a lower life expectancy of only 10,000 Read/Write cycles. Before you become concerned about this, please note that memory cards use something called wear leveling. This distributes the reading and writing of information over the entire amount of memory and even if you shot an event each day for a year with the same card it would still take more than 20 years before there would be cause for concern.

Types of Failure

There are times when a memory card may simply fail. When this happens it is either a failure of your software or hardware. For example, a software failure is typically when the card may work in your camera but is not recognized when you place it in your card reader. This particular issue happened to a colleague of mine, who then simply connected the camera to a computer using a USB cable and copied the images to the hard drive. Afterward the card was reformatted and it worked fine in both camera and card reader.

Another type of software failure occurs when cards appear to be missing some or all images. You know the images are there but for some reason they do not show in the camera or when using your computer. Should this happen, a data recovery program such as SanDisk’s RescueDisk, Lexar’s Image Rescue or FileRecovery Pro (a program recommended by Hoodman) should be able to recover your images. This may occur because of a corrupt File Allocation Table (FAT), something very much like the table of contents in a book. The images may be there, but the card will only see them if they are listed in the table. If the images or files are not listed then the card does not know where to go to retrieve them. This is what happens when you format a card: It clears the table and then when you take an image it writes over whatever may be in the memory. Recovery software searches through all of the card’s memory and retrieves whatever files it finds regardless of the card’s table of contents. You then copy them to your hard drive and if you reformat the memory card it should be ready for use again. If you test it after formatting it and find the same thing happens, you should replace the card as there is something else failing inside the card.

Hardware failures are the most difficult type from which to recover. This is where the card is not recognized by the camera or computer. In some cases, it can be something as simple as a dislodged connection inside a CompactFlash card that may have occurred when inserting it at an angle too quickly into a card reader. Or it may be a component failure inside the card itself. Regardless of what may be physically wrong with the card, in either scenario recovery programs will not be much help since they require the card to be recognized by your computer so the recovery program can read it and try to retrieve the missing files.

If you have a hardware failure and images on your card are critical to your business and/or reputation, you can do one of two things. First, contact the manufacturer as they will generally assist with data recovery. Lexar, for example, offers a recovery service exclusively for its memory cards that are still under warranty. SanDisk provides a similar service through a partnership arrangement with Florida-based LC Technology International, the company that developed SanDisk’s RescuePro software and one that specializes in data recovery. Both will troubleshoot down to the component level in an effort to retrieve your images, but should this fail and components need to be removed, this is where they stop.

If this should happen you will need to use the services of a data recovery company that can remove the memory from inside the card and then read and retrieve your images using specialized equipment. Two companies that offer this type of service are Kroll Ontrack Inc. (www.krollontrack.com) and WeRecoverData.com. Both companies offer a full range of data recovery services for any type of disk drive or memory card including CompactFlash, SONY Memory Stick, SDHC, MMC-SD, miniSD and USB Flash Drives. While Kroll Ontrack charges an evaluation fee, WeRecoverData.com does not. Once the memory card is evaluated, each company then provides you a price quote detailing the probability of retrieving the data/images and estimated time required.

Although the memory in each card is exceptionally reliable, other components inside the card may not have the same life expectancy. Some photographers believe the best way to prevent failure is to replace or upgrade memory cards every few years. A new card gives you the benefit of resetting the odometer for read/write cycles and also will generally have larger capacity than the one it replaces. Considering newer cameras typically produce larger image files, a larger card will also ensure that you will be able to store the same number of images as with your previous camera and memory card combination.

One of the photographers I mentioned at the beginning of this article had a CompactFlash that completely failed after shooting a wedding. The card was not recognized by his camera or any of his computers. With his reputation at stake he contacted the manufacturer, but when there was no guarantee for recovery, he opted to use WeRecoverData.com. Although he was thrilled that the service was able to retrieve every single one of his wedding images, he learned an expensive lesson when he was billed more than $1200. Still, he considers himself lucky since he was to make it up in part with added sales to the client, something he could not have done otherwise. He now uses a camera that has dual-memory slots and has it configured so the same images are written to both memory cards. This way he has a backup should this ever happen again. He has also replaced his memory cards with high- performance, professional-quality cards. To paraphrase an old television commercial, sometimes it’s better to pay a little now to avoid paying a lot later.

Peter Kotsinadelis a writer/photographer who lives in Pleasanton, CA. He may be reached at peterk727@gmail.com.