Sandisk Ultra II Missing Images

[Mark_48]

Over Saturday I did a wedding with a 20D and Sandisk Ultra II CF cards and 580EX Speedlite. All went well with no errors on the camera reported or at least noticed. Thus far with the camera I have been error free. I primarily split up the shooting with (4) 512MB cards and finished at the reception with a 1GB. Camera was set to large JPG. I did the shoot at the brides home and finished up the first card at the church doing the shoot of the groom, best man, etc., and people entering the church. Plenty of time for the card to write between shots. Not sure what the card had left on it for counts. I have the feeling it may have indicated around 30-35 shots left, which would have been incorrect as the card was only about half used, at least with the images that were on it. At this point I changed the card out just prior to the ceremony. Finished all shooting OK.

Downloading Sunday morning with a Sandisk reader to PC(WinXP Pro) copying card files to separate folders noticed the first CF card had 84 images and seemed to be missing some I had shot of the groom, best man, etc., and people entering the church. I backed up all the cards to the PC and CD-R and another PC as well and ran Digital Image Recovery and Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery which found the original 84 images and that's it. Also performed a check with WinXP's file/disk checker. The images I seemed to have lost weren't super important, but could have been which really bothers me. I put the card back in the camera and still 84 images. This morning I randomly shot some more on this card to make sure it would write properly which it did.
All the cards had been camera formatted the previous night and set aside until the event.

I had the cards numbered and I'll probably use this card for something non-critical to see what happens.

Any similiar experiences with this?

I was debating whether or not to put this in the Lexar Disappearing Image sticky, but this may be a different issue and not related to firmware in the card.

Mark...............

[Barb42]

Did you turn off the camera while it was still processing? Open the CF slot area while the camera was still on? Those actions can damage images. Just a thought.

[DocFrankenstein]

I have the same issue.

win xp
unnamed card reader
300d + wasia hack
ultra II 1gb

The card reader won't recognize the pictures, even though they're on the card.

The solution is to connect the camera to the USB port and then download. Takes a long time with the rebel... not so long with the S1 IS...

Both cameras recognize the card and the images. I don't know what the issue is now, before this I was thinking of changing the cardreader to sandisk.

[Mark_48]

Additional notes:

I've gotten into the habit of checking the histogram after a shot. There were images present post shot.

I don't fill a card to capacity, I try to leave about 20 shots or so on each.

On a card change I do turn the camera to off. A fair amount of time elapsed after the last shot and when I powered down. There is a possibity if when I powered down, if it was on the second on position (wheel) and I clicked once towards off thinking one click to off, that it could have been on during the change.

Doc,
I had checked the card in the camera and it did not display any images after 84 and only one folder. I'm assuming since it didn't display there probably are no images on the card.

As I said, fortunately the images weren't real critical, but it scares the bejeezus out of me to think they could have been. This is one reason I've hung with smaller capacity cards thinking my odds are better of not losing as much if a single card should fail.

Mark..........

[MTalley]

Maybe this is obvious, but of all the images you did download to your PC, were there gaps in the sequences of the file numbers?

I have a couple of fairly new Ultra II's (512 MBs) that have worked fine in my 300D so far, even after filling one to total capacity while in the field and swapping cards afterwards.

[Mark_48]

Maybe this is obvious, but of all the images you did download to your PC, were there gaps in the sequences of the file numbers?

I have a couple of fairly new Ultra II's (512 MBs) that have worked fine in my 300D so far, even after filling one to total capacity while in the field and swapping cards afterwards.
No gaps and file numbering is consecutive. Just didn't capture the shots at the end.

When using the recovery programs, the last file that they recovered was sized at the JPG file size plus what the "empty" remainder of the card was - Image84.jpg = 260,611Kb. Is this unusual or typical ? The recovery programs appear to work well as I've tried them on cards I've camera formatted and they brought back images that I thought were long gone.


Mark......

[MTalley]

So, the missing images were the last ones you took, then? It almost sounds like the camera just quit writing to the card, perhaps. Not sure, though. OTOH, it just may be possible you have a bad card. You might test it by shooting a bunch of throwaway images, use RAW to fill the card up quicker, and see if all of them are written to the card until it is full. Might have to keep track of the file number and count the images you shoot.