Reasons for camera memory failure

CnW Recovery software is normally very successful at recovering photos from camera memory chips. However, it is worth discussing a few of the reasons why the memory fails in the first place.

Physical failure

Physical failure of memory chips does happen, but is reasonably rare. Unfortunately, there are few ways to fix a chip without extremely expensive equipment, and often data is lost.

Deletion and formatting

Formatting and deleting is sometimes intentional. The photos have been copied off, and so the chip is cleared down, only to discover that the copy has not worked. Other times, it can be easy to accidentally press all the buttons on the camera, including the one confirming deletion, all all your photos have gone. As log as no new photos are taken, existing photos can be recovered. The only exception to this rule appears to be with some cameras and xD memory chips. We have seen several of these memory chips where while deleting the whole disk is cleared, and not just the directory structure.

As a precautionary piece of advice, it is not very good practise to delete individual photos. By doing so, the chip memory can become fragmented and this is harder to recover. Though with the latest CnW Software, fragmented jpegs can often be recovered.

Corruption

The most common reason for for losing photos is undefined corruption of the memory chip. This is often caused when chips are moved from camera to PC, or as just a malfunction within the PC or camera. Typical symptoms are when a photo overwrites critical areas of the memory chip, in particular the FAT and the directory. The PC then sees the chip as Unrecognised format, do you want to reformat. The answer is no, but plug it into CnW Recovery software and the photos should be recoverable very quickly.

There is probably no way to prevent this random corruption, so when ever possible, download your photos onto a different media as soon as possible. At all times, you should try and have multiple copies of all of your photos