I hope someone can help here

my first card is a sandisk ultra II and a good number of my photos were corrupted with pink, blue, and yellow stripes. in bridge and in photoshop.

used the same card again and got the same thing on a different shoot figured it was the card - it was weird tho, the photos didn't look bad when i looked at them the first time in bridge, but then the second time some of the photos were randomly corrupted and i had also burned them to dvd and the photos on the dvd were also corrupted so they were to begin with.

changed the card to my lexar professional card - used it for a shoot on saturday and all the photos were fine and nothing corrupted all photos transfered

formatted the card used the lexar card for my friends wedding on sunday. i used the card 3 times (downloaded the photos to my laptop) formated after each download. the first two times were fine, but the third time, now i'm now getting a cyclic redundancy error and a data parameter error, where i transferred most of the photos off of my card, but now about a hundred photos are not being copied, though they look fine on the camera.

another thing - tried hooking the camera to the laptop directly and i get that there are NO pictures on the card - when indeed there are and the camera sees them.

SO i'm going to try another card reader and another computer and see if that is the issue . . . i read on a forum, a nikon person had the same issue with RAW and another with jpeg, so i dont think it is the format

i have heard that it is rare that a card reader would go bad, but there is a slight possibility, and cf cards DO go bad . . . but why would BOTH cards go bad (though different issues) at the same time?? i format the card when completely emptying and usually before each shoot . . .

i am just hoping it is not the camera!

has anyone else had similar issues? if so what did you do to fix it? i hope i do not have to dread each shoot from now on!

please help!
-----
canon 30D
both 2GB cards (different brands)
card reader - never had a problem with before

THANKS!

First thing -- use the camera to download the pictures from the card. Connect directly (USB) to it and try from there.

Next: Throw the card in the trash and buy more.

Good luck!

Not sure of the cause, so I can't help you there, but Zero Assumption Recovery may help you retrieve any saveable data from the cards:

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/

The photo recovery software is free, and it's worth a try.

I'd definitely try picking up another card & seeing what happens--if the same issue occurs with a third card, I'd tend to think it's probably time for the camera to visit Canon.

It's not your card reader. I've never have heard of that happening.

Just a random idea off experience.

Are the corrupted files .jpg or RAW? Do any of the corrupted photos have file extensions? If so what are they?

I recently had a batch corrupt inside bridge and had half read files with stripes and quarter sized black boxes. Something off happened and replaced the file extensions with a weird unknown one. Essentially the photos were there and fine but the computer then had no idea how to read them properly. I was able to go into DOS and I changed it back to .jpg and then they opened fine.

Also try this software by Convar: http://www.pc-inspector.de/smart_media_rec.../uk/welcome.htm to get the 100 photos off the card. It's free and works perfectly. Will recover .jpg and Raw files from the card.

Once you have them off try a hard reformat of the CF card from the computer. If that doesn't correct the card and it's file system. Toss it.

I tried downloading directly from the camera but it said that there were no files on the camera (but when i look at the card in the camera there are photos showing)



thanks, will try - just ordered 2 more . . . i just thought it was odd that something weird would happen to two cards even though the issues were different . . .



RAW.CR2
going to post an update next

UPDATE:

tried a friends card reader with my work computer
first go to copy all missing files failed - restart computer

second try copied starting at the end 10-15 files at a time which worked

towards the top of the list, my computer said could not read the card reader - restarted computer

copied remaining files one at a time into a new file folder that worked til the last file which i assumed was the corrupted file - restarted computer (since computer froze again) and created a new file folder to copy over the one file which worked.

so i got the remaining hundred files but through a very tedious process with much breath-holding

SO how should i format the card from now on?
Thanks to you who sent me the data recover info . . . i'm hoping this is just a weird fluke . . . .

any other ideas very welcome . . . thanks!