Photos recovered from camera lost for 13 years in river

A digital camera thought lost forever has resurfaced after 13 years in a Colorado river.
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San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Eli Weisel

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." - Billy Graham 1981

"Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise" - Barry Goldwater

Well, I bought a couple of (then sinfully expensive) SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB SD cards about 13 years ago; and while still on their initial usages, both failed. Thankfully I had saved the contents of one of the SD cards, so no memories lost there, but the other SD card has our only pics of Baby Buzz struttin' his stuff for his HS prom. Been trying periodically ever since to get those photos to reappear, but no Colorado river luck yet here in Cali (pick your descriptive adjective) country. I'm now thinking it may be time to find a river to soak that one in for another few years. SanDisk replaced the first failed SD card that I sent back to them, but still holding onto the borked SD prom card with ever waning hopes.....

Up until those failures, those were the (relative) priciest data cards I ever bought, are still the only ones that failed that fast, and have been/were the only ones that have been totally resistant to at least some recovery. Other cards have been mostly recoverable, and it's been just one, or a few, pics that got hosed, such that recovery utilities snagged all but the bad/corrupted photos on 'em.

Congrats to Colorado.
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I think an SD cars is more likely to fail when you WRITE, ERASE, and possibly READ data, than when it's just sitting under water. The plastic case is usually sealed and the contacts are gold plated, so you have a decent change of reading the data after all these years.

Rugged != Reliable

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g=

Quote
Buzz
Well, I bought a couple of (then sinfully expensive) SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB SD cards about 13 years ago; and while still on their initial usages, both failed. Thankfully I had saved the contents of one of the SD cards, so no memories lost there, but the other SD card has our only pics of Baby Buzz struttin' his stuff for his HS prom. Been trying periodically ever since to get those photos to reappear, but no Colorado river luck yet here in Cali (pick your descriptive adjective) country. I'm now thinking it may be time to find a river to soak that one in for another few years. SanDisk replaced the first failed SD card that I sent back to them, but still holding onto the borked SD prom card with ever waning hopes.....

Up until those failures, those were the (relative) priciest data cards I ever bought, are still the only ones that failed that fast, and have been/were the only ones that have been totally resistant to at least some recovery. Other cards have been mostly recoverable, and it's been just one, or a few, pics that got hosed, such that recovery utilities snagged all but the bad/corrupted photos on 'em.

Congrats to Colorado.
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Recovery may require physical repairs to the SD card itself. There were batches of cards from several manufacturers that had cold solder problems between the chips, the PCB, or the connectors.