Hello,
I woke up today and found some random old raw (CR2) photos corrupt. Could not open using LR, Canon's software, windows image viewer etc. No image repair/recovery tool was able to do anything useful. I downloaded the eixfTool and ran it against one corrupt image and one that works and this is what I got:
corrupt file
FileType = VRD
FileTypeExtension = VRD
MIMEType = application/unknown
Warning = Format error in VRD file
working file
FileType = CR2
FileTypeExtension = CR2
MIMEType = image/x-canon-cr2
I am not sure why are they different. I have read in some threads here that people use hex editors to try and copy the header of one image into the other. I downloaded a hex editor and opened both files but I am not sure what to do. They look different tho.
Corrupt file starts with
"Canon Optional Data"
working file starts with
some gibberish but then I can see my camera model.
I am not sure what can I do to save those images. Can someone please help me :(
I have uploaded my raw file to https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw2gcla8ipeOSlVKSkdNX3VndzQ/view?usp=sharing
Thanks
B
You might want to check to see if the hard drive is starting to fail. Files shouldn't randomly corrupt so badly that you can't view them.
Thank you for your response.
It is not a H/W failure. I believe what happened is that when I purchased Lightroom while ago,I went back to all my raw files and reset them and saved them using DPP (canon's software). It has mostly happened in 2 folders mainly.
Based on the fact the the new files are recognised as VRD and begin with "Canon optional data" tag and it has no ending, I am assuming that the somewhere along the line as I was resetting the pictures, they got corrupted. Maybe I used a wrong shortcut while selecting/saving/resetting files and I ended up with a messed up CR2..
I am wondering if there is a way to extract the picture information and recreate the CR2 maybe using a working file.
That's strange. VRD files are usually in an XML format and associated with Microsoft Visio. They have nothing whatsoever to do with an *.CR2 image file. Have you tried to rename your corrupt files back from *. VRD to *.CR2 ?
-Uwe
They are not named *.VRD they are called *.CR2. But when I used the exiftool it recognized them as VRD files. VRD files are also Canon's recipe file.
i have just gone through some more folders and there are folders where only the edited photos through DPP have been corrupted. The rest are fine.
I am really hoping there is a way to recover the data from the raw files. This is very frustrating.
Looks rather hopeless. The dimensions are reported as 0 x 0 pixel at 72 dpi. No other meta data in the file. What have you done to "reset" your images, as you say?
-Uwe
Recovering the raw image may be quite a bit of work if it is possible.
However, there is a high-quality embedded JPEG (5184x3456 pixels) in this file that may be extracted using my extract_preview script (https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,4172.msg19805.html#msg19805).
- Phil
Have you tested that, Phil? When I try to extract the preview image with DCRAW, I get exactly ... nothing ...
-Uwe
It worked with the sample provided. Nice picture of a little girl sliding down a slide (but sadly focused on her shoes instead of her face).
- Phil