Digial Photos with Gray Bars - I had something similar once

by iseolt - 5/8/10 9:03 AM

In Reply to: Digital photos stored on external drive have gray bars on them, help! by Lee Koo (ADMIN) Moderator CNET staff

I won't go over what anyone else has commented on already.

But i have had this happen a few times - here's the first. I had a new camera and shot a bunch of really nice pictures of a baby. I transferred them to my pc with a card reader. Almost all the photos had the gray bars and were no good - corrupted. I still had the photos on the card and used the cable that came with the camera. (it was for 'fast cards' in the old days) - they transferred intact.

However, did you view them way back when you transferred them? I've read almost all of the posts - but can't now remember everything i read. Did you also back up on cd or dvd?

If none of the suggestions others wrote (drive incompatibile with current OS, etc.) - try to remember how you backed them up to the hard drive.

Right now, i'm backing mine up to dvd, blu-ray AND external hard drive. And now i'm reminded i'm a bit behind, so i'm going to back up!!!

Sorry if they are lost. (i would at least try some of the recovery methods suggested).

In conclusion, i found using 'slower' card readers corrupted the files during transfer (when using 'faster memory cards'.

Good luck!