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Attempting to view old images and videos

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jonem81

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 3:27PM

I have a Western Digital external storage device, and I have stored many different types of images and videos on it, mostly from DVD's. Now trying to view them, I am getting error messages such as : JPG image. "failed to open document", or "Couldn't display IMG_1234.JGP, because of an error loading the data". I am a little disconcerted about this, because these are very valuable family images and videos. Has anyone had a similar problem, with an answer,please?

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lotvic

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 3:44PM

Which programs have you used to try to open them? sometimes a different program will have no probs.

Do the Thumbnails view show ok? Or it may even be an 'ownership' problem and you have to take ownership of the files on the ext HDD

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Woolwell

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 5:10PM

I have had a similar problem with an external harddrive whereby a few picture seemed to be come corrupted. I learnt to have more than one copy of my photos, etc. In your case is it all images and videos or just a few?

Recuva may recover them but no guarantee.

I hope you have better luck than I had. In my case they were scanned photos/slides and I still had the originals.

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Diemmess

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 5:26PM

Prevention rather than recovery, but do make sure you sign off correctly if you disconnect or switch off the external drive for any reason.

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jonem81

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 8:31PM

lotvic

I have tried other programs, and yes, they have worked fine, but not now! Quicktime,RealPlayer,WM Player and others!Which answers your theory about 'ownership', I believe? Many thanks for your input.

Woolwell

I have so many on the ex. drive,so checking to see if all are corrupt is difficult. However, I DID manage to run one of them, to date. Thank you for your commiserations, but quite a lot of them came from my Sony camcorder, and the tapes used again! Some came from my DVD's, which I still have, but of course, losing any of them is sad.

Diemmess Can you explain further, please? Thanks (Why have copies of these replies gone to bold, large font)?

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lotvic

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 8:54PM

ok

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jonem81

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 9:14PM

Attempting to view old images and videos.Posted Today at 3:27PM

One thing I failed to mention. Earlier, my external drive would not switch off when I pressed the button switch. This was most unusual, since that has not happened before. Just a few moments ago, I switched it off by turning off the PC. After the PC had re-booted, the external drive was off, so I switched it back on again, then off again,to try, and then tried to see if I could access my videos and images. AND I COULD!!

So, was it a loose connection, or a software hitch or.....was it something I had or had not done..?

Thanks to all who subscribed, jonem81

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lotvic

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 9:21PM

Could have been Windows Indexing/archiving monitoring that got interrupted first time round.

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Woolwell

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Posted November 20, 2012 at 9:53PM

Good news but now back all of these photos and videos on to other media as a matter of urgency. You may be experiencing the start of a drive failure, I hope not. I have 2 external drives and also back up important images on dvd.

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Ian in Northampton

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Posted November 21, 2012 at 9:57AM

I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again. I have all my music files and all my photos on an external drive which is backed up to another external drive which is backed up to another external drive which is backed up to another external drive which I keep in another part of the house. With this kind of priceless stuff, you just can't be too careful.

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Fermat's Theorem

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Posted November 22, 2012 at 6:25PM

I'm so delighted you've got the pictures back - they can be priceless. That is why as well as having multiple backups I also store mine online - I use Picassa, but Photobucket and Flickr are good also. It is also a good idea to print out photos that may become precious in the future, because digital formats change so quickly nowadays - imagine if they were all on VHS cassette tape now! Hope this helps :-)

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