Help Corrupted images on SD card

[me10lee83]

My Galaxy S5 has started corrupting every photo taken and saved to the microSD card. When I take a photo I can see the thumbnail in the corner of the camera app, however when I open the image or go to Gallery (or any other app) the image is blank. When I try to view the files on my PC they can't be viewed (says it's not supported, invalid, etc).

The files are all the right size for an image so there is (or was) some data there. I tried a file repair program, https://online.officerecovery.com/restore-corrupted-photo-file-online/, but it says no recoverable data detected. I tried to attach one of the corrupted files here but it gave an error that it was "not an image as expected".

Two questions here, first anyone have any other suggestions of how I might be able to potentially recover the images.

Second, any ideas why this is happening/how to stop it. This is a fairly new microSD card, 64 GB. When I first inserted in the phone I was having this problem too. Taking photos to internal memory works fine, just not to the SD card. I formatted the card in the phone before and it started working, worked fine for a couple of weeks before this issue started. My only other idea is to reset the phone but I'd rather not do that unless necessary.

 

[mikedt]

Sounds like your SD is a counterfeit, there's a lot of them around, especially from online sources. You can check its integrity with SD Insight.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.humanlogic.sdi

 

[Hadron]

Yeah, afraid so. My first thought when I started to read this was "is this a new card?". It's a very common scam, and the only advice is to be careful where you buy cards from (never eBay or similar), check the card after purchase anyway, and if a deal looks too good to be true it probably is.

 

[me10lee83]

Yup, SD Insight says invalid. Bought from a 3rd party seller on Amazon, but one with good reviews. About to get a bad review...

Any chance the photos might be recoverable? I've tried a few free sites/programs and all say nothing found. I'm willing to buy software (up to like $50 maybe), but want one that has a free trial or like the ability to scan and then just pay for recovery, I don't want to pay if it's not going to work. Anyone have a suggested program that might work?

 

[El Presidente]

You could try recuva, but if the card is counterfeit, there's very little chance you're going to get them back, sorry.

Fwiw, the seller may not have even known he was selling a fake.

In future, you're better off buying directly via Amazon and not their market place.

Also, Sony cards are on sale at the moment if you're looking for a replacement: http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/1...-on-amazon-today-including-128gb-for-only-43/

 

[Hadron]

Yeah, Recuva is free so worth a shot, but the problem with fake cards is that they are lower capacity than the phone thinks they are. What happens is that newer data overwrite older stuff, and file recovery software is designed for when you have deleted the file (removed pointers to the data) but the data themselves have not been overwritten. So I don't think it's worth spending money on this because I don't think there's a realistic chance of success.

 

[tube517]

Just out of curiosity, what was the brand name of the sd card?? Some brands don't play very well with Samsung phones