HELP: SDXC Card failure: " No valid image"

[Einst_Stein]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

My son  is visiting Petra. When he tried to review the pictures in the 64GB SDXC,  Leica T said " no valid image".  He then changed to a new SDXC card.

What to do to recover the pictures in the SDXC? 

[lct]

You may wish to try photorescue

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Anbaric]

I have successfully used PhotoRec from CG Security in the past.

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

It's a little technical to use, but it's free and can sometimes work when other tools fail. It has an old-school command-line interface, but (on Windows at least) there's also an easier to use GUI:

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_7.0_Release#PhotoRec_.26_QPhotoRec

[lincoln_m]

You usually get “no valid image” if you reformat an SD card and then try and look at what’s on it by pressing play. But if he’s been taking photos and now it’s showing that message then there might be some corruption perhaps with the last image. Maybe the battery is low? If that happened to me while on a trip I’d lock the card and keep it safe until I got home to try those rescue services. With new Sandisk cards there’s often a code for their rescue app, I don’t know about other brands.

if I go on long trips I usually take several smaller cards just in case something goes wrong and I don’t then lose all my images. I reformat the cards before the trip when the camera has a full battery and take a shot to make sure it’s working fine. 
 

if the card had been formatted and used in a different camera brand before being used in the Leica that might account for the message.

A computer with an SD card reader might be able to show the files even if the Leica T can’t. But remember to lock the card (little slider on the side) before plugging into a computer. Macs in particular want to delete the files from your card after transferring (importing) but before you’ve checked them. I always say NO to that and prefer to delete the card by reformatting only when I know I have imported and also made a backup.

for expensive once in a lifetime trips I keep the SD cards in a safe and never use them again but buy new cards for next time. In the old days we’d store the slide film or negatives. Now a 64GB card is actually cheaper than a 36 shot film and processing but holds 100x shots. Compared to the cost of travel what’s a few SD cards?

20 years ago on an Everest trek we met some other travelers at a tea house and they were distraught because they couldn’t read their only SD card that had all their pictures on from 2 weeks travel. I was using film until about 6 years ago but that encounter stayed with me as a lesson to make sure I had known working backup film or cards , batteries etc that I’d used before just in case things go wrong when out on an important shoot.

I hope all goes well and the new card works ok and that he is able to recover the “hidden” images when back home.

[frame-it]

9 hours ago, lincoln_m said:

Macs in particular want to delete the files from your card after transferring (importing)

you mean lightroom not "macs"? and that option can be switched off in lightroom

[lincoln_m]

No I do mean Apple MACs, iPAD etc when importing into Photos app, they want to delete the files off the card too so it’s not just Lightroom but it might be a feature of macOS or iPadOS.

For Lightroom I first copy the files from SD to my backup disk and also to a folder on the MAC. In Lightroom App I then import the new shots into my Lightroom catalogue (I have several catalogues for different countries) which makes its own copy. It is then safe to delete the temporary Import folder on the MAC leaving the original backup disk copy and the one in the Lightroom catalogue. 
I don’t import to Lightroom directly from the SD card because MAC OS wants to delete and also I had occasional slowness issues with reading directly from the SD card, but that might have been my previous iMAC and Aperture I used before Apple stopped supporting Aperture forcing me to move to Adobe Lightroom classic/Photoshop.

I’ve not used Lightroom on a PC so I can’t comment if it’s Lightroom that wants to delete but Apple Photos and iPhoto before always wanted to delete off the card before you checked the files were safely on your computer/pad/phone.

[frame-it]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

30 minutes ago, lincoln_m said:

when importing into Photos app, they want to delete the files off the card too so it’s not just Lightroom but it might be a feature of macOS or iPadOS.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[Anbaric]

I hope the OP was successful in restoring their images, but since this thread was opened 5 months ago further advice may be superfluous at this point.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Anbaric