Hi Fov,
Don’t worry!!! The NEF raw files which are lost during transfer process can be easily recovered only if they are not corrupted. Even I was under the same problem couple of day’s back where I lost some of my precious raw photos while transferring it to computer. Then I got to know about photo recovery software and I used it. This utility helped me to recover Nikon RAW files. So it can also be helpful in your case only if the files are lost not corrupted. Following are the details which can be useful
http://www.nikoncanonphotorecovery.com/recover-raw-images-from-nikon-d4-dslr-camera.html
Download link: http://www.nikoncanonphotorecovery.com/download/nikoncanonphotorecovery-windows.exe
All the best,
Senny

I have been having the exact same problem the last few weeks when transferring NEF files from my Nikon D800. I don't use any transfer program just simple copy/paste and a few files every time is corrupted.

Then I edit in Lightroom 4.2

Today I fortunately still had them on my SD card and tried to transfer the same two files again and re-import into LR and they were fine?!?!?

Weird

So save them on the SD card until you know they work for sure. Its a drag, but for now it works for me and I have my NEF file uncorrupted

There is a new utility available that will fix these corrupted NEF images:

http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/fix_corrupted_nef.html

- Phil

i have also a problem with reading the nef files, not in camera but after transfer from sd to computer and also from cf to computer. Old nef files still on sd card can be read but all nef files that I make now cannot be read.
I have reset the camera, I have downloaded and installed the latest firmware for D800 (1.01) but still the NEF files are showing as corrupt.
This only happened after 2300 shots and before that time I didn't have problems at all.
Is there a solution for this already, I cannot find a definite solution in this post to this problem. Thanks in advance. Frank.

The disk that came with my D800 updated my old version. I have had no problems.

This happened to me as well. :(

It only takes seconds to connect to my D90. I just tried it to see.

yeah, i'm talkin about lightroom. capture one doesn't do it either.

check the cable

I'm using a 5m usb cable for tethering (d3s connected to Aperture) and never had such a problem - doesn't matter if I have a card inside or not.

Did it make any difference? I know tethering is different, but it doesn't seem to matter as with any program when my memory card is full it takes much longer for it to connect and transfer files.

That is worthing tring, I agree with that.

I'm talking about tethering, but maybe an empty card is worth a try.

How big a memory card and how many files? My camera always takes way longer the more pics I have on it.

No

partially if the the usb cable is a long one

Am I the only one who has to wait 2 minutes (maybe 3 seconds under) for Lightroom to stop saying "No Camera Detected" after turning the camera on when tethering in Lightroom (LR3 or LR4)?

Sorry to weigh in late. The problem program here - Nikon Transfer 1.5.3 - is a stand alone program that is no longer supported and has not been updated for the D800. The issue of 1.5.3 corrupting files is a known issue - don't use it.

Nikon View NX2 has an embedded program - Nikon Transfer. There is no version number and it is only available as an embedded program.

Nikon Transfer (the embedded version) does simply transfer files, but it also can edit or add to the EXIF information. You can drag and drop files but it is a little more cumbersome if you are using renaming functions or adding EXIF information during transfer.

Once the files are corrupted, I don't think there is a way to fix them.

spraynpray said:
So you obviously don't have any back up copies anywhere then - bummer.

What about copying them to SD and using the Sandisk recovery utility?

I know this is an old thread now, but having just read through it quickly for the first time, doesn't Nikon transfer just 'copy' the files from your card to your chosen drive? How were the original NEF's on the memory card corrupted? Maybe I missed the explanation for this somewhere, but I would have thought you could just drag and drop the files from the card (not using transfer) to your computer, and them open them in your chosen editing package. What am I missing?

tk said:
Hi Guys --

I was shooting with my D800 this past week and when I was downloading my card at the end of the day, I noticed that about 80 images were corrupted [and file names altered]. As they are right now they cannot be opened by LR,PS, etc.

Example File Name: DSÿ_41ÿ2.NEÿ

They are close to 50mb in size, so I feel like the data is there, however everything I have attempted has failed.

Any ideas on how I might be able to save these files?

Thanks! tk

It was unexpected, it was supposed to transfer some files not frankenstein them ! It's history now, albeit I kept it to further test the NEFs recovery.

FOV said:
Nikon Transfer 1.5.3 corrupts D800 NEF files.

I suspect that you have thrown out this aged version of transfer, and replaced it eather by something supplied with the camera or viewnx2 2.3.1 by now (it has transfer build into it for convinience..) ?

I would never have expected/ trusted this outdated software to know what to do with your brand new D800 files i guess..

I could not wait for NEF repairing anymore. I had to use the embedded JPG files for all the NEFs I could not recover from the card. It is the only solution I am aware of so far. Should a solution be revealed later, I will let everyone know about it. Thanky you all for your support.

@bobcooley, FYI you can extract the full size embedded JPGs with exiftool using a .bat script like: "for %%E in (*.NEF) do exiftool -b -jpgfromraw -w jpg %%E"

FOV, I ran into the EXACT same problem - If you come up with a solution, let me know. I've tried many things, including putting the files back onto an SD card and attempting to re-transfer with NX2, but to no avail (once NX1 has transferred the files, they don't seem to read as NEF files anymore - except by Capture NX (or NX2) which will open the files (albeit much smaller copies) and will NOT save them out as NEF files.

I'll post here if I come up with a fix as well.

cheers!

Thanks @spraynpray.

@Janoch, yes I tried restoring the metadata but it didn't work so I compared two copies (good and bad) with winmerge. Both had the basic JPG section (at different offsets), but there seems to be significant other changes in the data section of the corrupted file against a good copy.

I will investigate more on DCRAW, but I see it doesn't have D800 support yet.

Guys, thank you very much so far.

First an apology in case you've already seen these
... but if you want to run some tests yourself, these links may inspire you.

Script for restoring meta-data:
http://geekswithblogs.net/felipe/archive/2010/07/12/140879.aspx

Wikipedia on Dave Coffin's RAW reader (links at bottom for GUI-frontends):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dcraw

Example of a frontend application, RAWDrop:
http://www.wizards.de/rawdrop/

Best of luck!
Jan.