SD Card Disaster!

After weeks of rain, freezing Southerlies; we were given a sunny Saturday! Le general and I decided to soak in the late afternoon sun along our Overseas Terminal.

After a nice cup of Flat White and banana-white-chocolate muffin, we took a stroll along the marina... I was attracted by the hundreds of sea gulls along the shore. I had my Olympus E-P2 with me, I took some shots.

Back home I plug the 8 gig SDHC card into the card reader and open this shot in Photoshop.

Shot with E-P2 and a Leica Elmarit 28mm f2.8 lens.

And before I can say "gull", the SDHC card crash! I was "told" the card has not been ejected properly and all that rubbish and it promptly disappear from the desktop! Arrrrrrr!


I managed to get the card to mount after unplug and replug the reader back. I thought I am able to copy the two folders of images to the desktop, the copying went smoothly; so I thought.. then seconds before the completion, the copying crash! Arrrrrrr!

I force mount the card again, this time I copy ten images a time. It seems to work until one of the corrupted image bomb the copying! Arrrrrrrrrr!!

A quick view (a Mac OS X 10.6 feature) of the enlarged image icons in my copy folder tell me some of the images are totally buggered!

Can you spot the corrupted image file?

My last resort is to recover what I can with the ScanDisk Rescue Pro!

After selecting "Recover Photos"...

And the "8B" SD card, I hit "START"...

Here you can see Rescue Pro showing me the recovered image files.. that birthday cake was taken during our office 20th anniversary celebration two weeks ago!

Then it dawn on me why the card get corrupted!

1. The anniversary pictures were shot with my Canon G9.
2. The sea gulls were shot, same card; with my Olympus E-P2.

It is a known fact that you should not use the same card with different cameras, yes; yes; I know the camera manufactures should comply with official SD memory card requirements.. but often Mr Murphy interfere ;)

Was there a happy ending? Duh! I lost about 15% of the shots, in digital photography it pays to stick to this golden rules:

1. DO NOT mix same card with different cameras.

2. DO NOT delete image file/s while connected to PC or Mac.

3. DO NOT format card using PC or Mac.

4. ALWAYS eject card before removing from reader.

5. ALWAYS format card IN CAMERA after files are transferred.

Famous Last Words:

When I try to format that SD card in the E-P2, it failed!

I try it with the Canon G9 and it format without a hitch! The same card was then put back in E-P2 and this time it was able to format!

One that DID NOT get (corrupted) away :)