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I’ve copied pictures from my faulty SD card. Most of the photos seem to be ok, but some have big gray parts where originally the photo was.

How can I make sure that all the photos that seem to be ok, are really ok?

Can it be a problem to have damaged .jpegs in the same folder as the correct pictures?

What can I do about that? I want to lose as little as possible.

inkista
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SwingNoob
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    Possible duplicate of Is there a tool to check the file integrity of a series of images? – mattdm Jan 12 '18 at 01:32
  • SD cards internally implement error correction codes. A side effect is that when an error that isn't correctable is made it is spread out over a larger area so errors are typically quite apparent and not subtle small changes. – doug Jan 12 '18 at 03:25
  • @doug Yeah, but if some of the files are coming back definitely corrupt, as described here, it's beyond that. – mattdm Jan 12 '18 at 03:27
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    @mattdm yep. If an image appears OK it is highly likely to actually be OK. If not it is usually obvious. – doug Jan 12 '18 at 04:52
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    @doug Possibly, but not necessarily true. I had a MTP implementation bug which caused the last bits of files to be lost, This resulted in corrupt data at the end of the file which I didn't notice and which worked fine in my normal viewer but which caused Facebook to flip out. I had to go through and crop them all. It's worth using the tools in the other answer to check. – mattdm Jan 12 '18 at 04:54
  • With some photos only the last "lines" are missing. Sometimes 2/3 of the picture, sometimes only a few pixel lines.

    So these files cant corrupt the other files in the same folder, but they can make software viewing this folder crash, right?

    So as long as I dont encouter any softwareproblems it is safe to keep corrupted and non corrupted files in the same folder?

    I think anyway, after copying from SD card files themselves arent corrupted anymore anyway. All corrupted areas were replaced by grey areas as mentioned before and afterwards the file should be ok again?

     – SwingNoob Jan 12 '18 at 13:40
  • Also copying the files from the SD card to the computer was a problem, but copying them again is no problem at all. Really seems like defects are replaced automatically while copying. Still, this leaves a bad feeling ... – SwingNoob Jan 12 '18 at 13:49
  • Lightroom still says "There´s a problem while reading this file" and displays some pictures only partially. Futhermore with some pictures the generation of miniatures seems to be very slow. – SwingNoob Jan 12 '18 at 14:04
  • See here for some tips: https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/10943/are-these-blotches-of-wrong-color-caused-by-a-corrupt-sd-card?rq=1 -- Always format the card in the same camera it is to be used in. You can try copying twice into two separate directories in case there's an error it might be better corrected on the other copy. .Jpg files don't corrupt each other but a fault in the filesystem of the card (or even your computer) might cause one file to overwrite another, if it happens on your computer you have big problems. – Rob Mar 01 '18 at 20:03
  • Possible duplicate of Is there a way to recover corrupted JPEG files? – Itai May 08 '18 at 00:42
  • "faulty MTP implementations" etc are already the exception - in the overwhelming amount of cases, if you try to copy a file from corrupt media, the OS will already give you an alert or even refuse to copy the file. – rackandboneman Oct 08 '20 at 23:59

3 Answers3

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How can I make sure that all the photos that seem to be ok, are really ok?

Use a tool designed to check the integrity of the images. See Is there a tool to check the file integrity of a series of images?

There are also file copying tools that aggressively check files as they are copied.

Can it be a problem to have damaged .jpegs in the same folder as the correct pictures?

Corruption will usually not spread unless the underlying media is faulty. Some programs may crash and do as much damage as possible on the way out. Consider using different programs.

What can I do about that? I want to lose as little as possible.

Stop using faulty SD cards.

xiota
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A corrupt jpeg image among the others will not damage the others sitting in the same folder. Each jpeg is a discrete and separate data file.

You may want to try multiple times each time with a new folder in case one of the corrupt files can be transferred successfully and you don't want to overwrite any until you have checked them all.

Stan
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Use some batch handling tool that will aggressively notify you of any errors, then let it do something non trivial with the pictures, and look if any errors are apparent. In case you are familiar with shell scripting (on linux, mac, or cygwin systems), one good way would be using the ImageMagick convert tool in a for loop, checking the exit code after every conversion.

rackandboneman
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