Xperia Z MicroSD Card has become corrupted. How to recover .jpg and .mp4 files

[SophieXperiaZ]

Hi all,

I have an issue with .jpg and .mp4 files which I think have been corrupted. Usually I back everything up right away, however last week I was skiing out of the country and didn't have Wifi to upload to Dropbox and Picasa. 

I have many photos and videos that have since been corrupted (I don't know how..!?) They are stored on my Micro SDHC 32 GB (Sandisk) and I have copied the files onto my Mac. 

On the Xperia Z, the photos are viewable as thumbnails in the Album application. When touched to be opened, they fill the screen but are in VERY low quality; the thumbnail has been expanded and you can't see people's faces. 

The Videos have the stills and a play button on it as if they will work, but when clicking on them, Movies opens and then the dialogue box "Cannot play video." comes up. 

When viewing the files in File Commander in /SD Card/DCIM/100ANDRO, the photos have thumbnails, but when opening them, the Android mountain silhouette image is shown. 

I have taken photos and videos since and stored them on the MicroSD; these are fine and can be viewed in File Commander and Album app alongside the corrupted skiing files.

The skiing files cannot be opened on my Mac, either transferring them with Android File Transfer, or sending the files to Dropbox. I have tried removing the .jpg and .mp4 extensions to no avail. 

Would you be able to help me with the following?

1) How did this happen and how can I avoid it in the future?

2) How can I recover the files? Either using my phone or connecting to a Mac / PC

Thanks in advance! 

[_alexdon_]

http://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperia-mini-pro/Sony-Xperia-Mini/m-p/525657#M16285

Read that post.There seem to be serious incompatibilities between some cards and the device.In what format do you have it?(FAT32 or FAT16)

[SophieXperiaZ]

Thanks for the link. Out of all those, which one is the preferred compatible option for the Xperia Z? 

I formatted the SD card in the phone to FAT32. 

What is the best way to recover the files? Most of the options of using a computer either cannot open the corrupted .jpg (even the thumbnails) or have to buy the software first.

[_alexdon_]

You could try recuva for recovering,I have not used it but only heard of it.I do not know,it seemed that SDHC class 10 32/64GB worked fine,Sandisk was pretty good,better than Sony cards even.But I see that even Sandisk has issues...

[kaslokesh]

Try recuva. its really fast and recovery probablity is good... its a free software from piriform.

[MichelMerlin]

Photos probly unrecoverably corrupted by Picasa

Please see explanations in DO NOT USE PICASA! CATASTROPHE IN THE WAITING! and Picasa silently and unrecoverably destroys photos, hereafter resumed:

1. In ~2007-2010 Picasa introduced a face recognition that works extremely well and gives stunning results; it even recognizes at the other end of a large room in low light a person seen from 3/4 rear; then those persons and data are very efficiently handled.
2. At the same time Picasa added a silent "improvement" that proves catastrophic: as soon as launched, Picasa silently searches all your system (main PC, plugged or connected or networked devices, including HDs, SD cards, cameras, etc) for photos and videos, and "improves" them, silently to not disturb you.
3. Unfortunately those "improvements" have a BIG bug: some involve editing the EXIF data inside the photo file (usually .jpg); but Picasa copies back the edited data in the wrong places, overwriting the original data, and making the JPG and EXIF index tables unable to retrieve the data. When photos get corrupt, they most often have a wide horizontal or vertical stripe replaced with an uniform color, usually a color from the original photo; in the worse cases that stripe is gray and covers the whole photo. The corruption being in the photo data themselves, is unrecoverable. One guy ("Uncle Code Monkey") found the bug and was able to restore one photo but at the price of a hard work with an hexadecimal editor, making this impracticable in real world.
4. Instead of addressing it, Google apparently spends its time and effort to squelch the forums and all the web about it; in Google own forums, that were full of threads of distressed people who couldn't believe they had lost loads of photos, some have disappeared, the others have been closed.
5. A 1st-level workaround is to NEVER connect your original with a system running Picasa: close Picasa, plug your SD card, copy your photos into your computer, remove the SD card (and insert it back in your camera, safely unconnected to any computer: it is your only safe original), only then can you relaunch Picasa.
6. A 2nd level, and the only really safe, is to uninstall Picasa and NEVER reinstall it (which I did in 2010).

Versailles, Sun 19 Oct 2014 20:41:00 +0200

[Kayleecat01]

Did anyone get the solution to this as I have the exact same problem and I really want the videos back x

[Frankywright]

Got the same issue. Over 200 of my lovely holiday pictures currupted. I use the latest Soney experia Z3. I think this happens when the sony phones get hot. I can see some of the photos in tumbnail but they will not open. I have tried many things like uploading them to my google online account, save in diffent format but nothing seems to work. I am soangry right now that I feel like smashing this junk phone. If anyone can help me, it will be greatelly appreciated.

[XkrT]

I have the same problem as I mentioned in another topic.

/t5/Xperia-Z-ZL-ZR/Phone-not-detecting-micro-SD-card-anymore/td-p/346895/page/5

I moved  my photos to the sd card and some of them got corruped. This is a serious problem wich Sony is avoiding for years.