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01/12/2007 09:28:11 AM · #26 |
| I found a windows memory diagnostic test through another forum and let it run. All the tests are coming back failed....This seems to hint at the problem. I didn't know memory could change your pictures when copying but somehow it might. Do a search for mem test 86 then make a bootable .iso cd to run during startup. It should tell you whether your memory is good or not. |
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01/12/2007 11:06:29 AM · #27 |
Hey there...
We seem to have stopped the corruption for the moment. At least we haven't seen any new corruption since the rebuild - We completely rebuilt my computer, and this is what we've got:
NEW:
motherboard
memory
video card
2 hard drives
From the previous setup we kept:
External hard drive
I put a DL DVD into the drive yesterday to find some old photos, and in viewing the photos in PS CS2, all the files looked fine - then I clicked on one and it turned black. Then I started seeing other files become corrupted. It looked like it was actually happening ON the DVD as we watched. My husband thinks not - he thinks that it just took a while for all of the data to load since it is dual layer.
Our conclusions:
1. We believe that it was a RAM issue for two reasons: a well respected computer builder we know told us he thought it was most likely a RAM problem; THEN, when my husband took the RAM out and tested it, one of the sticks tested bad.
2. It was NOT a problem with CF cards. Files always downloaded intact with NO corruption from the cards EVERY time. We kept a close watch on that after the problem started.
3. It was NOT a video card issue. We took that card and put it into another computer where it is functioning perfectly.
4. It was NOT a motherboard issue for the same reason as the video card.
5. It was NOT a hard drive issue as all 4 hard drives are still in in one of our 3 computers and we are having NO corruption issues.
6. Don't believe it was an OS issue since we reinstalled it on the new build, and it is working just as perfectly now as it was then. I don't think the reinstall "fixed" anything, I think it was fine all along.
I'll update if we have any further problems, but hope this is a help to someone!
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01/12/2007 11:21:31 AM · #28 |
Scary stuff in this thread. Glad to hear that you have it sorted out, and that you had backed up files.
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08/12/2007 01:45:33 PM · #29 |
Just a quick update on this issue...
We have started seeing images become corrupt again. Not often, but often enough. I looked in two folders today to view some old shots, and an image in each folder became corrupt right before my eyes!!! I was thinking about opening one up, and BOOM, it just corrupted!
The only change we've made to the system was to add more memory.
I've searched the internet on this issue, and whereas the last time this was happening in 2006 we could find almost nothing about it, NOW I see that loads of people are having the same problem and it is happening on PC and on MAC.
If anyone hears any news on this front, please pass it on!
Thanks! |
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08/12/2007 02:04:58 PM · #30 |
Back in the days when I used windows.
I had a problem while transfering perfect pics from 1 drive to another and it drove me crazy, did what you did and replaced almost everyting.. Ironically enough the problem with me was that I was using a 200W power supply and I has a few fans going 2 drives 2 hard drives a video card that needed power and the poor thing had simply run out of juice and it was pulling power away from the MB to power the drives thus resulting in corrupt files..
Change the PSU for 1 of at least 450W up depending on your specs now. I would suggest a decent make 500W unit.
The only other option is a fried CPU but then it would be doing it with most every program. When under stress, they get hot, when they get hot the bugger about, when they do not have enough power they bugger about. Eliminate these problems starting with good solid POWER then add coolers to taste.
Good luck, this was another reason I ended up going with Mac.
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08/12/2007 02:37:06 PM · #31 |
Already running a 700W PS.
We have considered going to MAC, and probably will at some point, but MAC users are experiencing this corruption problem at pretty much the same rate as PC users, so it wouldn't "fix" this particular issue for us. |
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08/12/2007 03:04:31 PM · #32 |
I've had this problem with all the different digital cameras I have owned. Whether downloading via camera with dedicated software or card reader, makes no difference. It appears to be a random thing as I can save a backup copy and it is not corrupted, yet when viewed in Windows Viewer, it is corrupted. I have even deleted them and copied over from backup, and they still show as corrupted.
I accept it as part and parcel of Windows XP Pro/98SE whatever. I got round the problem by creating a copy into a new folder, renaming the photo and then transferring it to the folder I want.
Not much help really, but I haven't rebuilt or replaced anything in the PC, as it works fine with everything else and photos most of the time. This new laptop I'm using may be a different kettle of fish tho as it is running Vista Premium and has already managed to lose the DVD-RW. This entailed deleting files from Registry to get the DVD-RW recognised again. I'll keep you posted about corrupted photos on this machine.
Message edited by author 2007-08-12 15:05:24. |
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08/12/2007 08:43:48 PM · #33 |
| I've had this problem too when I transfered everything from my computer to an external hardrive (both JPEG and RAW). The external hardrive is an old hardrive that my cousin gave to me, it was salvaged from an old computer. There are two causes of this problem: 1st I think it's the old hardrive, 2nd I think when I transfered a large batch of files, the files get corruped during the process. So I think the best thing is get a good hardrive for both your main drive and back up, and back up your files regularly in small batches. Anybody with a different solution please let us know, thank you. |
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04/13/2008 03:30:15 AM · #34 |
Hi,
I only have experience about repairing pdf files. The tool I tried is called Advanced PDF Repair. I have used it to repair many corrupt PDF files on my damaged disks successfully. Its homepage is //www.datanumen.com/apdfr/
Maybe this will help.
Alan
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04/22/2008 12:04:07 AM · #35 |
Hey guys I've been having the same problem. I googled "randomly corrupting files" and this site was near the top.
I have a Dell Dimension 3100 and its a few years old now. The problem started about 8 months ago (after installing Windows Vista). I've since gone back to XP via a complete formatting of the hard-drive. Unfortunately, the problem started happening again. So I basically have to keep 2 copies of everything...
The problem used to only be isolated to picture files but a few video files have been corrupted in the past few months too. One video will not play at all and the other has bright magenta portions in it at one spot.
In the past month MP3 files have taken a beating too. The files that are corrupted will NOT PLAY AT ALL. So now I need to keep two copies of those as well.
I cannot burn cds on this computer anymore either. I gave a client a photo shoot on disk but about 20 came up corrupt so I have to bring the files to another computer to burn them.
I had to DL a program for my uni study a month ago. I downloaded 31 rar files each 100MB in size but when it came time to open them several were corrupted... I tryed DLing a few of them again and they were not corrupted. Therefore my computer was corrupting them too. It seems that the bigger the file, the more likely it is to become corrupted.
The computer also corrupts other small text-based files too but this is VERY rare... only has happened once so far luckily I was still working on the file so I just had to resave it.
I rang up Dell customer support and they suggested I use their dianostics tools to check for errors in the processor or RAM, but nothing failed. When I called them back they concluded that it was the old version of Limewire that has some major vulnerabilities and can permanently corrupt the XP operating system and the only way to fix the problem is to re-format the computer. No patches or updates can reverse such damage. He said the newest version of Limewire released in Feb/March 2008 will not do this. I wonder whether Limewire is the common link between us. Anyone...? I am interested in whether you tryed installing limewire before your setup started failing. If so then that could be our problem!!
Message edited by author 2008-04-22 00:06:59. |
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04/22/2008 12:15:06 AM · #36 |
| Did you recently run a scandisk or defrag? If so that might be the problem. On a drive which was working fine btw, except had a mishap with windows. A scandisk fixes a lot of problems most of the time, so I ran it. Besides if it fixed the problem or not, after I ran it I had a lot, I mean a lot of corrupt jpg's. I'm still finding new ones as I look through my archives on this drive. They are more prone to corruption than other files. Seems that hard disk wasn't 100% in tact but if I hadn't run it I could've safely kept those files. I do have a backup on another drive. |
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04/22/2008 07:11:51 AM · #37 |
An update from our experiences with this:
No Limewire here, so that's not the base cause of our file corruptions.
Not a scandisk or defrag issue.
We've never had a file download from the CF card corrupted (we only download via cardreader). It only happens later, at some random point.
We are STILL experiencing random corruptions, though not at the rate that it was happening originally. Just as before, I was recently going through some folders and a number of photos corrupted literally right in front of my eyes.
It is definitely NOT a PC-only problem. We have friends with Macs who are experiencing the same thing.
Overall there seems to be no common denominator. I have talked to Lexar and SanDisk techs, all of whom are aware of the problem, but no one seems to have any idea about why this happens.
Our conclusion at this point is that it's a mystery! |
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04/22/2008 09:38:46 AM · #38 |
hmm this is rather odd. I thought mine was an isolated case that one time. I haven't noticed corruptions during any other time.
Do you folks have some sort of raid setup ? or have autorotate turned on? If you check the file stamp of a recent file you found corrupt does the time last modified match those of the files around it? perhaps the OS is doing something in the background we dont know about. |
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05/08/2008 12:42:13 AM · #39 |
I recently had this problem and I am completely baffled. Fortunately it only happened to 2 folders (containing both raw & some JPEGs together) which I had on an external drive (a fairly new 750 GB Seagate drive). I had gradually been moving a lot of stuff over to the drive with no apparent problems. Then I noticed when I tried to open a folder I got \"no preview available\", and just X\'s instead of thumbnails in the browser - the photos are just gone. I have several different externals, and these photos were originally on a different drive or maybe on my main HD, and they were fine before. I had edited some of the images. So this problem occurred after they had been around for several months. The thing that really confuses me is that I had burned these folders onto DVD\'s to back up (thought I was being smart!), and when I tried to retrieve it, all the data on the DVDs is also corrupt. I am almost 100% positive this data was fine at the point I made these back ups, and I believe the data was burned from another HD. I am wondering if Nero, which I used to burn them could have caused the problem? But everything else I burned is fine.
I am running various data recovery programs in hopes of retrieving the folders, but so far they just retrieve the corrupt data. Does anyone know of any programs that repair corrupted photo data? At least I have JPEGS of the contents of one folder on Flickr, so I can retrieve those, but I have no working back up of the other, which was 100\'s of photos. :(
I use XP pro on a 3 year old HP desk top. There is no virus, no RAM problems, or anything else I can think of. I wish I knew why it happened so I can prevent it, but I\'ll just make lots of back ups.
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05/15/2008 12:56:08 AM · #40 |
Thanks for ruling out Limewire... I think it is a bit dodgy that Dell would blame a Java program for their hardwares faults. Their diagnostics tools are probably programs to say "ERROR FREE!", when no doubt the opposite is probably true. Cinnabon, I think you have the best general solution for everyone. Backup. I think we all seem to be doing that anyway. I can't count the number of times a back up has saved me.
Also I used to leave my computer on for extended periods of time because the internet was too unstable after reboots. Now tho, (having fixed the network settings) I have started turning off my computer more often and noticed that I haven't had the problem occur as often.
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05/15/2008 01:39:45 AM · #41 |
This is sort of a temporary thread hijack, but may save any lurking Mac users a little grief.
After 3 years running about 4 hrs or more per day, I finally found a glitch with my G5 Mac. I saw a program with a fix, but I didn't want to jump thru the hoops to get it installed.
I found that video files from my P&S Fuji in AVI format cannot be put in subfiles, but only into files that are in the primary folders (First level under the hard drive icon.) Since getting the little Fuji, I have been keeping images filed by month, and then by camera. I found that I could not put the AVI files from the P&S in a sub file for that camera. It hangs up the OS in a loop so badly that I had to shut down the APC (kill AC power to the computer) and reboot to get things back to normal.
I first thought that the SD card had been corrupted, but that was not the case at all. The files were fine.
Ok, back to your reg ul arrrrrrry scheduled PrograMing. : ))
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05/20/2008 09:50:11 PM · #42 |
Just a bump to see if there are any updates on this issue.
No problems here yet about corrupted files.
One thought that no one seems to have mentioned yet is this. I wonder if your UPS is catching the little power glitches that occur more often than we want to think about, when the power company is shifting loads from one grid to another. A half cycle glitch in the feed from the line power could be causing a blink that you are not aware of while the files are being accessed or moved around, resulting in the shift. I used to hear my UPS beep every morning at 8:00 AM when the power company shifts loads around on the lines and generators, but I couldn't see that blip in the lights in the house.
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06/13/2008 08:31:42 PM · #43 |
I have had the same problem: selected images split and shifted, usually with some color change in the shifted section. It seems to occur in most of the photos in selected files, but not at all in other files. Evidently, the problem is commmon enough that at least one company (hketech.com) has developed recovery software. Unfortunately, I tried the software and it did not work for me at all. But possibly I just didn't play with it long enough to figure out how to use it properly; perhaps you will have better luck.
Other sites indicate that this occurs because only very few (or even just 1) pixel gets corrupted and then all pixels following that are shifted. Theoretically, if you can identify and then correct the corrupt pixel you can fix the photo.
Still no clue as to the cause, which appears to be completely random. Any other insights? |
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07/21/2008 01:06:34 AM · #44 |
I'm a newcomer to this discussion. Been suffering the same problem now for a while myself (found this discussion thread after a Google search). I don't have a solution either, but I'll throw my two cents' worth into the discussion to help the process of elimination.
My camera's an Olympus C750. My PC's a 4-year old Packard Bell (embarrassing to admit). I don't take a lot of photos, just family snaps etc - so I'm only downloading a batch every few months.
In the early days, I'd saved photos on the hard disk with no problems, both from the Olympus C750 and also my previous Canon camera. I first noticed the corruption problem a couple of years ago. When it happened, I assumed it was a problem with the Olympus or its memory card (because I noticed the problem immediately after having downloaded the photos). Then one day I noticed the first instance of a file which had previously been ok on the hard disk now being corrupted. I dug out my CD-ROM backup of the photo and confirmed that the original was ok. So this was the first clue: obviously nothing to do with the camera because the camera was completely out of the equation when the corruption happened on the PC's hard disk.
After that, the problem seemed to happen more often. Most times when I download a batch of photos now I get at least a couple of corrupted photos - sometimes more. The photos still look ok on the camera and the thumbnail on the PC, but when I view them (mostly with Windows Picture & Fax Viewer), they have the corruption. The corruption is random. If I delete the corrupt photos and download them again from the camera, invariably they are ok the second time. However, I have to do a little trick first, which is to power off the camera first before re-trying, as otherwise it seems to remember the corrupt version somehow and repeats the corruption (my theory is that there must be some caching going on somewhere in the copy process).
So I can say that I definitely have the corruption happening in two ways: (1) randomly in the copy process of downloading photos directly from the camera; and (2) randomly on the PC's hard disk when there is no camera anywhere near it.
For me, the likelihood of corruption is highest when downloading the photos or shortly afterwards (i.e. the first few times of viewing the photos on the PC). Once I've been through the agony of fixing the corrupted ones after download and initial corruption, the incidence of further corruption is quite low. Strange.
Once I realised that the PC was implicated in the corruption (rather than it being the camera's fault), I just put it down to having a crappy PC. However, I'm still curious as to where the problem is occurring. I've considered all of the following as potential causes:
- I added an extra 1GB RAM chip
- I added an extra internal 200GB hard disk and external USB hard disk
- I've had various other additions to the PC (new power supply, extra USB ports, TV tuner card, wireless card, DVD burner)
- I don't worry too much about viruses and spyware, clogged registry etc. I just wait till the PC becomes unstable or crashes a lot and then re-install it all from scratch
- My teenage daughter uses the PC for chatting and peer-to-peer programs and downloads all sorts of stuff
- It's a Packard Bell!
I noticed something which caught me by surprise a couple of days ago. I had downloaded a batch of photos from my son's camera and, sure enough, a bunch got corrupted on my PC's hard disk. So then my son downloaded them onto his own PC. All ok. Then he copied them from his PC onto a memory stick for me. All ok. Then I used the memory stick to copy replacements over onto my PC for the corrupted photos. All ok. Then, the next day I was looking at the photos again on both my PC and the memory stick and this time some of them were corrupted on the memory stick but not on the PC! (So I did the reverse action and fixed the ones on the memory stick from the PC!).
So obviously it's something to do with the process of playing around with photos on the PC (viewing/copying), not the hard disk itself.
Whenever a file is corrupted, there is no change to its file size or date saved. I even tried the suggestion somebody made in this discussion thread - of setting the files to read only - but that didn't protect them from becoming corrupted.
So my conclusion from all of this is that the cause of the corruption must be something to do with whatever the PC is doing behind the scenes whenever it displays a photo on the screen or a photo is being copied. It must go to where the JPEG is located on the disk, suck the contents off the disk to render the picture on the screen (or to copy it to other media), there must be some in/out processes going on, probably some caching, and if the media that it's sucked the JPEG off is writable, then somehow it stuffs up one pixel of the JPEG during the process and leaves that pixel stuffed on the original disk location. Well, that's my layman's theory anyway.
So I reckon the only solution for us hapless lot who've got this problem is to buy a new PC and keep our fingers crossed that we don't get unlucky twice in a row. Or as a workaround, just be diligent with backups to media that is not re-writable (good old closed-off CD-ROM or DVD).
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10/01/2012 01:48:24 PM · #45 |
So I read throughout everything in this thread and it sounds like I'm screwed either way. But I've been having file corruption problems as well.
I've been shooting images in RAW and changing them to JPEG after editing in Photoshop Elements 9. I was able to edit multiple photos and post them onto Facebook for my senior photo clients to view their images. Just recently I did a session with someone and half of their files came up on two different CDs I gave them as corrupt. And another image I edited for an art class came up as "file not recognized" when I tried emailing it and using a flash drive. It also showed me that popup when I tried to open in back up in photoshop. At first I thought it was my photoshop elements that was the problem but when I just got this macbook pro I had transferred all of my old images off of my Windows HP Laptop and when I tried taking those images and emailing them they came up as corrupt as well and they had never been touched or tampered with through my MAC. I took my MAC into my local Apple store and the guy couldn't figure out what was wrong; he said he hadn't seen this before and was completely stumped. We ran a check on my computer and hard drive and we couldn't find anything wrong with it.
I'm very confused and frustrated! Does anyone have any suggestions? |
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10/03/2012 11:31:29 AM · #46 |
Can you verify that the data is not corrupted during transfer?
The reason i ask is because I came across something similar once upon a time. It was a card issue. If theres wires/ram/HDD involved, i assume any of these can also be considered culprit.
Message edited by author 2012-10-03 11:33:02. |
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10/04/2012 11:14:14 PM · #47 |
| Glad to find this thread! I've been having this exact problem for 3-4 months and have been at my wit's end! Will be trying some of these suggestions. |
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