Corrupted SD Card Photos: Grey Bands and Black Files, How to Recover?
I went out to shoot at a small gallery opening last month with my Canon point and shoot. Most of the shots are fine, but about 30 pics on the SD card are messed up — some show large grey bands, others open as totally black or with big pixel blocks. The card is a 16GB sandisk, been using it for a couple years. I didn’t drop the camera or anything, but I did accidentally eject the card once while copying files to my laptop (win11). I tried chkdsk and Windows Photo Viewer, and a free ‘repair’ website that only gave me previews with huge watermarks. I’m a freelancer on a tight budget, so I can’t just throw cash at every paid tool.
What should I try next? Is this likely recoverable, or is the card toast? I can attach sample images if that helps. Any step-by-step advice appreciated — I don’t want to make things worse.
All Replies
Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
Yep, that’s the way to do it. preview mode = biggest sanity saver. if the thumbnails come up in the trial, you know the repair is worth trying. if nothing shows, don’t waste money. I always test the 2–3 worst files first, then borderline ones.
Ahhh got it — they’re all .jpg, nothing weird. i guess the bad eject just messed with the file structure. I’ll try a trial first on the cloned image, see what previews show before spending anything. thanks for the tip about thumbnails — that could save a lot of headache.
I’d also check the file extensions — sometimes cameras write temp files or slightly different extensions. I once recovered 10 files by renaming .jpg to .jpeg after previewing them in a repair trial. weird but it worked.
For Windows, something like Win32DiskImager works. it’ll make a full image of the SD card. then you can run recovery on the copy. just make sure the destination drive has enough space — the image will be the full card size.
Thanks all. I’ll clone the card later today. didn’t know previews could show thumbnails — that sounds super useful. anyone know a reliable free tool for making an exact image of a card on Windows? i’m not great with command line.
Also, keep in mind some cards just start failing over time. 16GB Sandisk isn’t huge, but if it’s a few years old and had a bad eject, those grey bands could be unrecoverable. Always work on a clone first. Even a free trial that lets you preview recoverable images can tell you fast if anything is salvageable.
I had the exact grey band issue once after a bad copy. Cloned the card and ran a recovery tool that had a preview mode — the preview showed thumbnails for some images even though the full file wouldn’t open. That made it obvious which files were salvageable. Saved me from buying a full license for a tool that wouldn’t have worked. Worth trying a trial before paying.
Agree with Jace. also: try opening the files in irfanview or gimp — sometimes they can read images other viewers choke on. but if those show nothing, you’re probably dealing with file-structure corruption from that ejection.
Don’t use that card anymore — seriously. any write action can overwrite what’s left. clone the whole card to an image file first (dd or a Windows tool) and work on the copy. chkdsk can sometimes make things worse. If you want, upload one small sample so people can see what type of corruption it is.
Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Recent Topics
-
How to Fix Windows 11 PC Not Waking Up from Sleep Mode?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Fix Valorant VAN 1067 Error on Windows 11?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Fix the “Secure Boot Can Be Enabled” Issue?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Resolve the 0xc00007b Error in Windows?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Fix “Windows Can’t Communicate With the Device or Resource” Error?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
Makes sense. I’ll test a few of the worst files and see. will update once I try the trial — really appreciate all the advice here. Feeling a little less doomed already.