Photos becoming corrupt on Windows 10?

[mrmike16]

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

 

[LukeFatwalker]

If these are Jpegs then it's likely that they are simply on a hard drive that's failing. In the future, using a PNG format is best for archiving digital images.

Depending on the state of the drive they may be recoverable, but being JPEG may mean the damage is permanent. You can try taking out the drive and connecting it to your PC and manually migrate the photos. There's a few options for data recovery from a drive as I think you already know.

What are you using for backups? Disk imager? Snapshot tool? Recommend for photos using a combination of the two, i.e. RollBack Rx and Drive Cloner Rx.

 

[Wayfall]

There was only one time i have had a corrupt few images which was when a USB stick started to die. Was taking a few DSLR pictures to print out at Jessops for the family photo albums.

It's the storage device that usually causes files to corrupt.

 

[mrmike16]

I don't think I was clear- This happens on more than one computer. Even so, this hard drive is not corrupt. I just used SeaTools to run checks on it. The ones I see right now are JPGs, not JPEGs. I don't know if there is a difference. But it is kind of disturbing that my photos can just...disappear. Any way to get it back to normal? The thumbnails are still normal. Just when I open the pictures with any app, only a sliver of it is visible.

 

[johnbl]

You would have to confirm the corruption by doing a binary file compare between the original source and the suspected corrupt file. To do this use cmd.exe as a admin then run the file compare utility. Fc..exe

fc.exe c:\file.jpg d:\file.jpg
You might have to use /b. Option (I don't remember)

This will tell you if you have actual low level corruption or if the file is being modified as it moves thru the OS.

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

 

[mrmike16]

You would have to confirm the corruption by doing a binary file compare between the original source and the suspected corrupt file. To do this use cmd.exe as a admin then run the file compare utility. Fc..exe

fc.exe c:\file.jpg d:\file.jpg
You might have to use /b. Option (I don't remember)

This will tell you if you have actual low level corruption or if the file is being modified as it moves thru the OS.

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

It's on OneDrive. There is no "source" version...On the computer it came from it also became corrupt. And before this, about a month ago, I found a picture on here that it happened to as well. It's been fine for 3 years and was never moved.

 

[johnbl]

I would think it is onedrive scaling your photos down for you. Take a photo save it on your local drive, copy it to one drive, copy it back down to the local drive under a new name then do a file compare with the original file.

You would have to confirm the corruption by doing a binary file compare between the original source and the suspected corrupt file. To do this use cmd.exe as a admin then run the file compare utility. Fc..exe

fc.exe c:\file.jpg d:\file.jpg
You might have to use /b. Option (I don't remember)

This will tell you if you have actual low level corruption or if the file is being modified as it moves thru the OS.

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

It's on OneDrive. There is no "source" version...On the computer it came from it also became corrupt. And before this, about a month ago, I found a picture on here that it happened to as well. It's been fine for 3 years and was never moved.

 

[mrmike16]

I would think it is onedrive scaling your photos down for you. Take a photo save it on your local drive, copy it to one drive, copy it back down to the local drive under a new name then do a file compare with the original file.

You would have to confirm the corruption by doing a binary file compare between the original source and the suspected corrupt file. To do this use cmd.exe as a admin then run the file compare utility. Fc..exe

fc.exe c:\file.jpg d:\file.jpg
You might have to use /b. Option (I don't remember)

This will tell you if you have actual low level corruption or if the file is being modified as it moves thru the OS.

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

It's on OneDrive. There is no "source" version...On the computer it came from it also became corrupt. And before this, about a month ago, I found a picture on here that it happened to as well. It's been fine for 3 years and was never moved.

Looks the same to me.

 

[johnbl]

if the binaries are identical with a file compare then I would suspect your viewing app. You might see if you can view the same file on another computer.

if the file is modified as it is transfered, it can be the local ethernet driver, the local router, or any router between you and the server. Most of the time it is your local machines ethernet driver that would just need to be updated.
(assuming it is not an app problem, or a cloud server compressing your .jpg for you.) when i first used microsoft one drive I transferred .jpg that were 5 MB in size and they were scaled to 256KB on the server when stored. They looked about the same until you attempted to zoom in.

I would think it is onedrive scaling your photos down for you. Take a photo save it on your local drive, copy it to one drive, copy it back down to the local drive under a new name then do a file compare with the original file.

You would have to confirm the corruption by doing a binary file compare between the original source and the suspected corrupt file. To do this use cmd.exe as a admin then run the file compare utility. Fc..exe

fc.exe c:\file.jpg d:\file.jpg
You might have to use /b. Option (I don't remember)

This will tell you if you have actual low level corruption or if the file is being modified as it moves thru the OS.

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

It's on OneDrive. There is no "source" version...On the computer it came from it also became corrupt. And before this, about a month ago, I found a picture on here that it happened to as well. It's been fine for 3 years and was never moved.

Looks the same to me.

 

[mrmike16]

if the binaries are identical with a file compare then I would suspect your viewing app. You might see if you can view the same file on another computer.

if the file is modified as it is transfered, it can be the local ethernet driver, the local router, or any router between you and the server. Most of the time it is your local machines ethernet driver that would just need to be updated.
(assuming it is not an app problem, or a cloud server compressing your .jpg for you.) when i first used microsoft one drive I transferred .jpg that were 5 MB in size and they were scaled to 256KB on the server when stored. They looked about the same until you attempted to zoom in.

I would think it is onedrive scaling your photos down for you. Take a photo save it on your local drive, copy it to one drive, copy it back down to the local drive under a new name then do a file compare with the original file.

You would have to confirm the corruption by doing a binary file compare between the original source and the suspected corrupt file. To do this use cmd.exe as a admin then run the file compare utility. Fc..exe

fc.exe c:\file.jpg d:\file.jpg
You might have to use /b. Option (I don't remember)

This will tell you if you have actual low level corruption or if the file is being modified as it moves thru the OS.

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

It's on OneDrive. There is no "source" version...On the computer it came from it also became corrupt. And before this, about a month ago, I found a picture on here that it happened to as well. It's been fine for 3 years and was never moved.

Looks the same to me.

So sorry for the late reply, but I was waiting for it to happen again...I found a whole bunch of photos that it happened to. These newly corrupt ones were transferred from my phone (LG G4) to this computer ranging from October-December 2016.

Maybe my hard drive really is going, but my SeaTools HDD checker won't tell me?

 

[johnbl]

it would depend on how they were transferred and the type of card that was installed in the phone.

when you transfer data from a SD card, the transfer is not verified unless you turn on the verification.
the verification process triples the amount of time for the transfer so it is off by default.

I think there will be a event in the event log but no one actually looks.

if you did the transfer by wifi, you can have bugs in the network drivers of you local machine, you phone and firmware bugs in the router.

if you transferred via the internet, you can add potential bugs introduced by the cell phone hardware.


it is unlikely that your drive would cause this problem but actually pass testing.

if the binaries are identical with a file compare then I would suspect your viewing app. You might see if you can view the same file on another computer.

if the file is modified as it is transfered, it can be the local ethernet driver, the local router, or any router between you and the server. Most of the time it is your local machines ethernet driver that would just need to be updated.
(assuming it is not an app problem, or a cloud server compressing your .jpg for you.) when i first used microsoft one drive I transferred .jpg that were 5 MB in size and they were scaled to 256KB on the server when stored. They looked about the same until you attempted to zoom in.

I would think it is onedrive scaling your photos down for you. Take a photo save it on your local drive, copy it to one drive, copy it back down to the local drive under a new name then do a file compare with the original file.

You would have to confirm the corruption by doing a binary file compare between the original source and the suspected corrupt file. To do this use cmd.exe as a admin then run the file compare utility. Fc..exe

fc.exe c:\file.jpg d:\file.jpg
You might have to use /b. Option (I don't remember)

This will tell you if you have actual low level corruption or if the file is being modified as it moves thru the OS.

So I have been noticing that my photos, some that I have rarely looked at, some that are new-ish, are disappearing. Not completely. 3 quarters of the image become a plain dark blue or black. A sliver still shows up. I just transferred some from my laptop and was going to post an ad with a picture of my phone, and the pictures are both corrupt. All of my photo apps/programs show the same thing. They were fine before. Is my new-ish hard drive dying, maybe? I'm running SeaTools now, but meanwhile, any suggestions? I really don't want to lose my photos! And I do backups but recovering a single file is quite annoying.

It's on OneDrive. There is no "source" version...On the computer it came from it also became corrupt. And before this, about a month ago, I found a picture on here that it happened to as well. It's been fine for 3 years and was never moved.

Looks the same to me.

So sorry for the late reply, but I was waiting for it to happen again...I found a whole bunch of photos that it happened to. These newly corrupt ones were transferred from my phone (LG G4) to this computer ranging from October-December 2016.

Maybe my hard drive really is going, but my SeaTools HDD checker won't tell me?