Corrupt Images importing 5dmk3 RAW files

[Mattie P.]

I did a shoot yesterday and importing my 5dmk3 CR2 files to Lightroom Classic or Lightroom and the files are completely glitched and crazy looking. They import looking normal, and then immediately one by one they take on this crazy corrupt look, as if they are getting corrupted one by one or previews or something. I have tried disabling Smart Previews. They look fine on the camera and in image thumbnails. Here is an example. Please help!!

Lightroom Classic 14.2 Camera Raw 17.2

Lightroom 8.2

Windows 10 Home Version 10.0.19045

[D Fosse]

That looks like corrupt files - try a different card reader/cable first of all. File corruption is always caused by hardware failure. No exception.

What you see initially in Lightroom and on the camera screen is just the embedded jpeg preview. It is just a very small part of the file, and it can be fine even if the main data are corrupted.

[Mattie P.]

Thanks so much @D Fosse . I just tried importing to a different computer, Macbook vs my PC editing station, same reader and same cable, and everything is fine! Pretty disconcerting. Any thoughts as to why that might be?

[D Fosse]

Well, you just need to go through the hardware chain. It could be a drive about to fail, or possibly bad RAM.

I would in any case advise you to make backups ASAP if you haven't already. Don't open anything, just copy off your drive, then check the files from the backup.

[Mattie P.]

Do you mean backups of the photos in question?

[D Fosse]

Backup of all your photos. Which you always should have in any case.

[Bob Somrak · Accepted solution]

Well, at least you have your photos on the Mac.  I assume you were importing to Lr on the Mac.  Did you try a different USB port on the PC?

[Mattie P.]

@Bob Somrakyou hit on it, Legend. I just used a different USB port on the PC and everything came in clean, uncorrupted. Weird! But very relieving and good to know!