I recently returned from a vacation in Poland. I shot close to 1000 shots on my Sony A7RIII and I had no problem viewing them in camera. I returned home excited to see what I shot. I inserted the Lexar SD card into my computer and saw the jpegs and the RAW in the folder. I took a quick glance of 3 or 4 of the jpegs and I was excited to work on them. I then took the card out of my computer. I returned to the disk after a day and I inserted the card so that I could do my back up then start to edit the work.... "Disk Unreadable; Do you want to initialize?" No way, what happened, where are my images. I spent 6 hours of various programs on MAC and PC, it is not readable. I tried 3 camera also, Sony, Fuji and Nikon, "Do you want to format this card?"
Noooooo, WTF! Anybody have suggestions? Please help, this was not a paid gig but I want to make an exhibit from these shots. Please help.
It is a Lexar 64GB 1667X 250MB SD card. I tried in my MacBook Pro and my wife's Dell Laptop both computer's SD slot as well in my Apple SD card reader. Does not show up on the desktop of the Mac or on Disk Utility and on the Dell does not come up as an external drive. On the Fuji X-H2, Nikon D7100 or the Sony A7RIII they all ask if I want to format the card. Anything?
The Sony that I shot it on does have two slots; I know and will in the future to make sure that I shoot using both slots. I have learned about about this from my friend who is a wedding photographer.
That's a pretty average review score TBH and nothing that would raise any flags for me -- almost all memory cards get a 4.5ish score on the B&H site, regardless of the brand.
Sadly for the OP cards do sometimes just fail for myriad different reasons and there's pretty much nothing you can do except be sure to have some redundancy by using two cards with simultaneous recording (why I always buy memory cards in pairs). After a failure like that, however, I'd definitely not use the card again.
I say "pretty much nothing you can do", but it might be worth trying some of the recovery software out there, which essentially creates a disk image from the offending card from which you can sometimes extract some data. One I've heard about in the past is called R-Photo but I've not used that or any similar apps myself so have no idea how good they might be.
Damn Ed, I really feel for you — that’s a tough break after all that shooting. Here’s a straightforward plan since I don’t have all the details:
First, don’t format or initialize the card no matter what it says. Try a different card reader and plug it directly into another computer (avoid USB hubs). Sometimes the reader or port is the problem.
If the card still shows up in Disk Utility (Mac) or Disk Management (Windows), even as “RAW” or “unreadable,” there’s still a chance to recover your files.
Use recovery tools like PhotoRec (free, good for deep scans), Disk Drill (user-friendly), or R-Studio (paid, powerful for file recovery).
If possible, make a full image or clone of the card first (using dd on Mac/Linux or Win32 Disk Imager on Windows) so you don’t risk damaging the original.
Since you’re in Glenside, PA, a good professional recovery service nearby is DriveSavers. They offer free evaluations, have a “no data, no charge” policy, and a pickup option near Philly. Here’s their website: https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com/
Losing the images upsets me but what I saw I will never forget. It was a trip that had meaning for me and the images of Auschwitz and Budapest will stay in my head and hopefully one day I will go back. And when I do; it will be shooting on 2 cards and not with Lexar.
