Corrupt CR2 files

We just bought a new PC and hooked up our external hard drives to it. They have been operating error free for 12 months connected to the old computer.

Once connected to the new one (Vista Business, Dell Vostro 420), we started noticing problems with all of the CR2 files in Digital Photo Professional. The preview thumbnails look correct but opening a file in the larger window would display random lines, pink colors...etc. Some of the files don't open at all and DPP states that "The image is corrupt".

We noticed the problem after going through all of the files and making minor adjustments in DPP. When we ran the batch process to convert them to JPG, we got error messages stating that "Decoding failed". Any attempts to reopen the files would then give us the corrupt error.

I checked the hard drive via the Check Disk utility and it states there are no errors. I really have a hard time believing it is the drive since the problem began as soon as we started using the new PC.

HELP!?!?!

Have you tried to uninstall/reinstall DPP. Is the copy of DPP that you have Vista compatible?

Thanks for the advice! I was thinking that it might have been DPP since we upgraded it on the new PC to the latest version. . . However, when we first noticed the problem we were actually looking at the files on a different computer over the network.... using an older version of DPP.

Regardless, I still think it might be something with DPP so I uninstalled and downgraded the copies on both of our PCs to the version that came with our 40D. I guess only time will tell?

I just really have a problem believing that it could be the hard drive going bad since the problem started at the same time as our switch to the new PC.

Try that drive with different software on another PC.

You have a backup of all the images on the drive, right? If you don't now would be a pretty good time to do it - hopefully it's not too late.

Tim - thanks for your reply. I tried accessing the photos on the drive from DPP and Photoshop from another PC over our network..... same results.

Fortunately they are backed up in two different places but it scares me a little.... If I hadn't noticed them, the corrupt files would have been copied to our backup drive.... resulting in corrpt files there as well... Then, again if I hadn't noticed, at the end of the month they would have been copied to our monthly backup drive...

Anyway, is there a more extensive test that I can do to check the drive since it is looking like that is the problem?
Also, what can I do to prevent future corruptions from trickling down our backup routine?

Don't access it over the network, access it directly.

mminnig wrote in post #7413560
Tim - thanks for your reply. I tried accessing the photos on the drive from DPP and Photoshop from another PC over our network..... same results.

Fortunately they are backed up in two different places but it scares me a little.... If I hadn't noticed them, the corrupt files would have been copied to our backup drive.... resulting in corrpt files there as well... Then, again if I hadn't noticed, at the end of the month they would have been copied to our monthly backup drive...

Anyway, is there a more extensive test that I can do to check the drive since it is looking like that is the problem?
Also, what can I do to prevent future corruptions from trickling down our backup routine?

Try to convert one to a DNG and see what happens. They don't sound corrupt, they seem to be in a format that cannot be read - or locked by another program.

Ok.....
1. Tried accessing the corrupt files with the drive plugged directly into another PC. No luck. The files are still corrupt and either garbled when opened in DPP/Photoshop or they won't open at all.
2. Tried converting a corrupt file to DNG format and the process worked but the file had the same garbled portion when opened in Photoshop.

So.... obviously the files were corrupted at some point. The question is:
1. What did it?
2. How many were corrupted?
3. Will it happen again?

Card readers are often the culprit when this sort of thing happens. If you've processed them succesfully before what where/how have they been copied since?

There's probably not much chance of recovery

I think the files were actually fine on the hard drive until something happened when retouching/adjusting them with DPP. I can't say for sure though.

When I noticed the first one, I corrected it by going to my backup hard drive and restoring the file from there.... it worked perfectly.

Then, I started noticing more and more corrupt files but by then the backup had already run and the corrupt files were written to the backup drive. The odd thing however is that when processing them to JPG files it gave me 14 errors. I then restored those 14 from the backup drive and all but one of them were corrected.

UGH. I have no idea where to even start because I can't pin down a single cause or limit it to a particular set of photos. The only constant is that the problem began occuring right after I switched CPUs.