Recovered my wedding shoot from a corrupted SD card but some CR2 files still won
Shot a small wedding last weekend and my SD card suddenly started throwing errors while copying files. I managed to recover most of the data using recovery software, but now around 40-50 CR2 files either won’t preview or Lightroom says they’re corrupted. Some show gray thumbnails, some don’t open at all.
Anyone dealt with this before? Are these RAWs completely dead or is there still a way to repair them?
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Another thing worth trying: use a healthy CR2 shot from the same camera as a reference file. Sometimes repair tools work better when the file structure matches.
I’ve repaired partially corrupted CR2s before using photo repair software. Didn’t recover every file, but enough to save the important shots. Worth trying before giving up.
Also check file sizes. If some CR2 files are unusually tiny compared to the others, those are usually harder to save because the image data itself is incomplete.
Biggest mistake people make here is continuing to use the same SD card. Hope you already stopped using it completely. Every overwrite lowers the chances of recovering intact RAWs.
Had this happen after an interrupted transfer. Weirdly enough, some files only had broken previews while the actual image data was fine. ExifTool helped me check which files were truly damaged.
If the RAW structure itself got damaged during recovery, regular photo apps won’t help much. In that case a file repair tool is usually needed to rebuild the corrupted sections.
Try opening them in different apps first before assuming they’re gone. A few of my “dead” CR2 files actually opened in RawTherapee even though Lightroom refused them.
If the files were recovered but corrupted, there’s still a chance. I had something similar with Canon RAWs after a bad SD card. Some files opened after re-copying them through a different card reader.
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And honestly, if these are super important client photos, make backups of the recovered files first before experimenting. Some repair attempts can make things worse if you overwrite anything accidentally.