help - 5DmkII corrupted CF card!?

I have a photo assignment and have been shooting on a SanDisk 4GB card (small but it's all I need). Card has never had a problem. I had about 30 photos on it and just took some more, I previewed them on the camera afterwards, everything was fine.

I immediately went to lightroom (30 seconds later) after properly turning off the camera. An old LR catalog opened up so I created a new catalog for this assignment. The import utility said previews were not available - puzzling but I thought I'd seen that before at times. I imported but nothing imported.

I looked at the card in finder and each picture was black with a white line at the very top--including the pictures I just took an previewed. Put the card back in camera and it says "no photos". I took another and it's there as the only photo.

Back into my Mac and I see a new folder structure was created (I think by the camera). The files are:

~1.TPA (file)

DAIM (folder with 100EOS5D in it, that folder is empty)

DCIM (folder with 100EOS5D in it, the new photo I took is here)

MISA (empty folder)

MISC (empty folder)

TRAQHE~1 (empty folder)

Has anyone ever seen this? Did my camera cause the error? The card? Lightroom? I have a GIANT job tomorrow and can't risk this being a camera thing.

Yes I have similar issues with an old 8 Gb card which I bought when I had a 30D.

It's to slow for the 5DmkII. When I take pictures and don't shoot on burst, it's ok.

If I shoot movie, the camera freezes totally. Probably because the card cannot keep up the speed. When I shutdown the camera and put the card in a reader, nothing is recorded. Sounds similar as your issue. So I don't trust the card in combination with my camera.

I bought new cards (sandisk ef extreme 60mb) and never had problems again.

So you had that similar file structure put on your card?

I've never had a problem with card speed as I've been shooting with this card on this camera for over 3 years.

I was able to recover 30 out of the 31 photos I took using Data Rescue. One was lost.

I do not believe speed of the card was the issue as I've never had problems with this card before. Not to mention I previewed the photos on the card before attempting to import through LR.

I'm going to quarantine that card, I cannot have this happen again

If anyone else has seen this (i.e. lost media and a strange file structure written to you card) let me know. I'm concerned the issue is inside the camera and may happen again.

I've had something similar - but not exact.

I don't really do macs anymore though - so I can't say with certainty.

One thing I will never do though - and that's work off the card directly. Every single time I copy it from a card reader (not camera) directly to the hard drive. RAW in one folder, JPEG in another. Then, I create my Lightroom Catalog there and open the RAW file from the hard drive.

Typically when the card is corrupt you get the odd squares of jibberish or half image half whatever going on. If an image is corrupt I've even found that Lightroom will still be able to give you a perfectly good thumbnail of that image - but developing it is a different story. The last time I had some images go corrupt - it was just the RAW images, the JPEGs were fine. Luckily I had enough shots that it wasn't an issue - but it was close.

Speed of the card should have nothing to do with it. The camera will take its sweet time writing to the card - so you'll notice a pathetically slow buffer and that's about it.

Cards are for tossing. If you have reason to doubt one - even if it's working fine but let's say you just dropped it uncased onto the ground outside - buh-bye. You'll never get a second chance. A client could care less if your card died! I also just rotate them to retirement after a few years just because.

As far as your directory - I'd have to be more familiar with how the mac might structure it say, if you were to accidentally hit live view and start recording video. Or, how it might perceive a number roll over. I'd think it would be identical to PC - but there's file folders on the cards the camera won't show.

And I'll also assume the card hasn't been in another camera? I know if my wife snakes an SD card from me I can have some odd folders from one of her ancient ELF cameras.

I'm glad you were able to recover almost all the pictures though - count yourself lucky!