Lightroom Classic CC 2020 Corrupt CF Card

[mattpeyton]

Today on a professional corporate shoot not one but two CF cards were corrupted during import into Lightroom. I've had these cards for at least four or five years-the scenario was exactly the same. Lightroom ignored the "do not import duplicates" command and started creating files with "-2" In the file name. So using the task bar in the upper left I stopped the import. Light room then ejected the card and the card was at that point unreadable, in either of my cameras or by my computer and had to be re-initialized to be used.  The chances of this happening on two different identical transcend 64 gig 400 XCS cards is astronomical-and there does not appear to be anything wrong with the reader. All this equipment was used over the weekend for a long and grueling shoot with no incidents.  The only change since the weekend is Catalina updated itself to the latest version. Any fellow travelers? I'm back in on that same job today I will be manually copying the files over to my import folder using finder.

[dj_paige]

Software applications cannot cause disks to become corrupted. (This is a statement that covers all software applications, not just Lightroom Classic).

Perhaps the drive in your camera that writes to the camera card is corrupted?

[dj_paige]

Also, you say the card reader is working fine. How do you know that? The two cards it tried to read weren't readable, maybe the card reader is the problem.

[mattpeyton]

There are many previous incidents of the "eject after a Import" function in Lightroom corrupting cards. Do a Google search on it. The camera produced readable desks until they interacted with Adobe Lightroom. Additionally two cards-from two cameras-inside of two hoursIt doesn't pass the sniff test. You're speaking like an expert… But my guess is… You're not one?

[mattpeyton]

For those following - more info:  Catalina 10.15.7 (so present update from two days ago).   Lightroom now updated to V 9.4 (but was previous version so 9.3?).   I've updated camera raw to version 12.4.

Today I'm going to run SD cards (extreme pro) and a different Lexar reader.    It's my opinion that this error was caused by a re-emergence of the Eject After Import bug....

[Just Shoot Me]

Quote:

I've had these cards for at least four or five years-the scenario was exactly the same.

End Quote:

Your statement above explains your problem.

Your cards have gone bad. Try replacing them more regularly, like every year or 2.

And who, what camera maker, uses CF cards anymore?

[mattpeyton]

Do you believe that two cards - from two different cameras – went bad in the same two hour window – rather than say… A software update from Apple or Adobe affecting the import process? I'm trying to calculate the odds against that…. I've been a professional newswire photographer for 22 years. I've never heard of cards having expiration dates before. Can you point me in the right direction on that?

[dj_paige]

I will stick with my earlier comment ... software applications cannot cause disk or camera cards to fail. This has nothing to do with Lightroom Classic, it applies to ALL software applications.

You have not ruled out hardware errors, and another one I thought of is that you import the photos and then they reside on a hard disk which is malfunctioning, again not Lightroom Classic's fault.

Furthermore, Lightroom Classic uses operating system calls to access your camera card and all disks, so it can't be Lightroom Classic doing this anyway. If you still think it is Lightroom Classic doing this, I will say that as far as I know, there is no plausible mechanism for this, and you need to come up with a plausible explanation for how Lightroom Classic, which uses operating system calls, can do such a thing. All the plausible mechanisms for corruption are hardware.

[mattpeyton]

You're under the impression that corruption on my hard drive spread to two different compact flashcards in the course of one hour? You're aware of that Adobe acknowledges this problem right? There is a known bug with regard to eject after a Import… It looks like it has resurfaced under this present version of Catalina. Adobe released updates last night to both camera roll and Lightroom classic my guess is that the code is fixed now. My purpose of writing this was to warn other news wire and professionals

[Todd Shaner]

"Lightroom ignored the "do not import duplicates" command and started creating files with "-2" In the file name. So using the task bar in the upper left I stopped the import. Light room then ejected the card and the card was at that point unreadable, in either of my cameras or by my computer and had to be re-initialized to be used."

So after discovering the 1st card was no longer readable after the aborted import process you proceeded to perform the same LrC import operation with the 2nd card? If not then it wasn't LrC that corrupted the 2nd card.....and if you did then shame on you. Have you tried any of the memory card recovery programs to see if the files can be saved.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=ALeKk02g5MPN1bJZQrrlo4U6E9X0H4JXWg%3A160147...

[mattpeyton]

"If I did then shame on me?" Look dude… This is a professional forum… We didn't know what corrupted the first card until the second one went down… But I reiterate who exactly do you think you're addressing, Arizona? (yes looked you up)  I'm putting this out there because there's a bug in the new Catalina update that caused this KNOWN problem to come back. It's a known bug. Since you're obviously sports wire shooter (who speaks to people in an overly familiar tone) you can probably use the search tools to find it yourself.    This form has proved useless…  Unfollowed. May all your cards load properly.  👊

[Todd Shaner]

"I'm putting this out there because there's a bug in the new Catalina update that caused this KNOWN problem to come back. It's a known bug."

OK, got it! So you're not interested in assistance, but want to report this issue. The best way to do that is at the separate Photoshop Family forum that monitored by Adobe staff. This forum is strictly user-to-user with very little monitoring by Adobe. I searched the below forum and do not see a report for this specific issue. I suggest filing a 'Report' there and then copy the link to this post in that report. Also copy the report link back here for others who land here with the same issue. They can add their 'Me To' vote and 'Follow,' which will help to get Adobe's attention.

https://feedback.photoshop.com/

There is a similar post at the below link. It was suggested they also report the issue at the Photoshop Family forum, but apparently that didn't happen. This user is claiming the LrC eject destroyed the SD card making it unusable so perhaps a different issue (i.e. faulty hardware).

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/bug-lightroom-cc-9-1-corrupts-sandisk-memory-cards-...

[Just Shoot Me]

So I have question. Just how do you think LrC corrupted your memory cards.

LrC does not write to any memory card when you are importing from them. That is why the Move option is not selectable (it is grayed Out). To Move a file the OS first Copies it to the new location then Deletes the file from the source it copied it from.

LrC only allows you to Copy as DNG or just Copy.

As for the option to Eject After import all LrC is doing there is telling the OS to initiate the Eject drive command and notify you when it has been properly ejected.

Can you format those cards and if you can, can you then write and read to/from them?

[Jao vdL]

If the cards are ejected from the card reader before they are fully unmounted from the operating system, they become unreadable by the camera. It is imperative to not take out the card immediately when Lightroom says it ejected the card. The operating system is still working it at that point and unless you wait until that is done, for some reason I don't understand, cameras can no longer access the card. If you happen to accidentally do this, the simple fix is to plug in the card again, while NOT having Lightroom open, and simply ejecting it from Finder/explorer and waiting until that is coimpletely done. This will make it readable and usuable in the camera again. I've done this enough times where I thought the message in Lightroom meant I could pull out the card and had an unpleasant experience plugging it in the camera.

[Just Shoot Me]

Jao LrC doeds not Eject the card. It tells, Asks, the OS to Eject the card. AFAIK the Flash notification that comes up in LrC that says something like "Card Ejected" only happens After the OS had Ejected the card. That only happens if nothing is writing to or reading from that card.

[Jao vdL]

You would think so but experience clearly belies that. The number of times I've had Lightroom tell me the card was ejected and I then eject it only to get the operating system telling me that the card was not ejected properly and to unmount before ejeecting it is quite high. Lightroom clearly does not wait for the operating system to complete its tasks to say the card was ejected. It appears to simply tell the OS to eject it and then immediately pop up the message. This might be different in Windows vs Mac OS X for all I know. Just know that this is an issue on OS X. I nowadays mostly use XQD cards that are extremely fast reading and writing to but they take a while to unmount and if I am too impatient this happens every time.

[Todd Shaner]

I tested LrC 9.4 Eject CF card on my Windows 10 Release 2004 system. If I try to eject the card during the import process using the 'Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media' button in the Windows task bar nothing happens. If I click on it again immediately after the import process closes in the LrC taskbar it shows the CF card as ejected. So it would appear as long as you wait for the import activity to terminate in the LrC taskbar BEFORE removing the memory card there shouldn't be any issue. At least that's what I'm seeing.

[mattpeyton]

Thanks Todd!  We're an Apple company - so the laptops in question run Catalina.   We've gone back to the 'import using finder' method to finish this job - I will do more testing when I'm wrapped - but so far so good (also using SD Pro cards which feel a little faster than the Lexar Pro CF cards).   My guess is that the update that appeared within 48 hours of the Catalina  update was in response to this problem....    They can't have not known (really fast) that the Eject After Import corrupt your card bug was baaaaack.   =M=