Ah…just thought I’d share this scary experience with you in case something similar happens to you…Got back from a 2 hour photo shoot with a client…lovely couple, 2 beautiful yellow lab dogs, 350 pictures…you can imagine the gymnastics we went to getting them in the same place at the same time looking at me…took loads of nifty pics, all were on my memory card. Got home, put the card in my card reader, plugged it into my IMAC…NO FILES! Nada! I was numb with shock. These were real live people and animals who’d turned cartwheels for 2 hours!! How could I tell them? Thought maybe I’d put in the wrong card. Nope it was the right one. Put it back in my camera. NOW IT SAID “NO IMAGES!”
In my 10 years of digital photography, this NEVER happened to me before. How did plugging it into my MAC erase all my images? I’d been reluctant to download anything to my MAC since I got it the past year because once it mysteriously erased the contents of a storage drive, never knew why or how. But my old Toshiba is full. And the past 2 weeks, I’ve been transferring my photos to my IMAC using the same card and card reader no problems. Now last night it happened again!
So I googled “deleted memory card” and was relieved to find they are often recoverable. I downloaded a free version of “card rescue” which is a recovery software from BlueSnap. Here’s the link if anyone ever needs. http://www.cardrecovery.com/order.asp
The trial download was free and told me I had 350 files it could recover. On the off chance they were right, I gladly paid the $39.95. Ten minutes later I had all my files back. WHEW!!! (Geek Squad charges $200 for this)
I called Apple support afterwards to ask how it could have happened. Many reasons. Could be the memory card went bad while exiting the camera but I doubt it. The other reason is that Apple’s software is much more finicky with external hard drives and memory cards and you have to be really careful exiting properly when you take one out. Could be I didn’t properly eject the last one.
Moral of the story:
Don’t Panic! This IS software available to “rescue” deleted files from memory cards if this happens to YOU!
Apple to my experience is much more finicky than Windows…if switching from Windows to Apple be careful to eject everything “by the book” – strange things can happen if you don’t! My old Toshiba and previous HP PC were not so sensitive to this.
If your camera has the option, it may not be a bad idea to use two cards, in the primary and back up slot:
Any other comments on similar experiences always appreciated!!!