Posted by Deuterium Get them printed in store on a photo paper and store in an album or a box. This hasn't failed me yet.

Cloud storage + 2 types of media. Prints don't save all the details faithfully. That said I trust hdds more than other media so...
I have a terabyte of mostly raws stored of two sets of enterprise hdds, stored in two separate location. If I lose both, I'm boned.

**RECOVERY UPDATE**

SO far I have tried out 3 different software manufactures that offer file recovery services. Long story short: none of them have yielded results containing my lost data.

The first two vendors claimed to have success with file recovery, but, I'm assuming, only when you pay for them. As I have flushed away 12+ hours running them, hitting "next" after the scan has completed, to bring to a "Hey, we want $50 for those files we said we can recover" page. One was called YoDot Photo Recovery, I can not remember the name of the second.

The 3rd vendor, the one we usually use here at work (GetDataBack), was the only one that gave me tangible results. None of which was what I needed. After a few hours it completed only to give me about 1/3 of the total pics present on my SD card. A further slap in the face was that I already had all of those files AND it chopped off the bottom half of every picture entirely. So that's out the window.

Doubtful I'm going to find any resolution to resurrecting my files here but.. any further input is appreciated. Shoutout to @Blackhawk and @Deuterium for sharing good info on ESD corruption and other file recovery tips. I have replaced my card and keeping this corrupted one off to the side for future recovery attempts.

Posted by goat **RECOVERY UPDATE** SO far I have tried out 3 different software manufactures that offer file recovery services. Long story short: none of them have yielded results containing my lost data. The first two vendors claimed to have success with file recovery, but, I'm assuming, only when you pay for them. As I have flushed away 12+ hours running them, hitting "next" after the scan has completed, to bring to a "Hey, we want $50 for those files we said we can recover" page. One was called YoDot Photo Recovery, I can not remember the name of the second. The 3rd vendor, the one we usually use here at work (GetDataBack), was the only one that gave me tangible results. None of which was what I needed. After a few hours it completed only to give me about 1/3 of the total pics present on my SD card. A further slap in the face was that I already had all of those files AND it chopped off the bottom half of every picture entirely. So that's out the window. Doubtful I'm going to find any resolution to resurrecting my files here but.. any further input is appreciated. Shoutout to @Blackhawk and @Deuterium for sharing good info on ESD corruption and other file recovery tips. I have replaced my card and keeping this corrupted one off to the side for future recovery attempts.

As I warned you before running any of the paid apps that aren't fully functional can make the data harder or impossible for other apps to do.
Lexar has free recovery apps for download and more advanced paid versions. All work. Been there, done that, it sucked. I use the free version a lot to fix unreadable cards nothing else can format. If you do recover them it will be images alone; the indexing is destroyed. May be more trouble than it's worth. Sorry to say.

Put it aside for a data recovery expert maybe sometime in the future. That may be your best hope now.

Bummer you never got anything recovered. One preventive measure you can take in the future is to use both slots in you camera. You can set your camera up so that the card in slot 2 is a back-up of the card in slot 1. Then if one card fails, you can still (hopefully) get your images off the other one.

Posted by goat As I have flushed away 12+ hours running them, hitting "next" after the scan has completed, to bring to a "Hey, we want $50 for those files we said we can recover" page.

Sorry to hear you didn't have any luck. You could have explored all over with 12 hours. haha

Posted by blackhawk May be more trouble than it's worth. Sorry to say. Put it aside for a data recovery expert maybe sometime in the future. That may be your best hope now.

Posted by Deuterium Sorry to hear you didn't have any luck. You could have explored all over with 12 hours. haha

That's what I'm thinking. But it's not like I'm a professional, or making money of any of those shots, so going out for a revisit will be necessary for "restoring" my lost files hah.

Posted by Punchy You can set your camera up so that the card in slot 2 is a back-up of the card in slot 1.

Will have to get into the habit of doing that.

As for my situation I believe I have developed a good hypothesis as to what caused the corruption. Something I failed to mention is that my card is MICROsd being read by the camera in a MICROsd-to-SD adapter. And also that I had a little run-in with an unknown vehicle, assuming property affiliates, that kinda chased me down during my excursion. It was from then on my quiet, little trip turned into a fast paced - heart pounding runaround where I was firing off as many shots as possible before I fully exited the property. Going through my set I realize that right then, when I started sprinting like a bat out of hell, is where the files started getting corrupted. My theory is that the violent shaking while running caused that little micro card to shake or bump around in the adapter just EVER-so-slightly, causing minute interruptions as the data was being written to the card. In turn, giving me partial data files, where I can see the file name + size but no view-able preview. This is just a theory though, as it highly possible that the card happened to have corrupted sectors, conveniently, in the same area my pictures were being written to.

I'm using a full SD card now but can anyone confirm/deny problems shooting with micro-sd adapters?

Perhaps dirty contacts. Never touch the contacts and sweat is corrosive.
#1 reason is not formatting in the cam first/sharing that card with another cam or device without cam formatting.
Pulling the card during a write cycle although that usually loses the image being written at that time.

If the card is not compatible with the cam, ie too slow.
Cards can withstand high G loading, even plane crashes.

ESD can kill a card though. It's possible at some point this happened. It's a good practice to check cards every now and then with Rescue 2 and verify they are fully functional... and always format then in the cam. I'd format all my cards in the cam before a shoot. Never had a data lose issue after that.