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. :(

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

Hi msmoto!
I had seen the thread you pointed out but somehow missed the FastStone software link!
Thanks a lot for your help!
Now I'm able at least to convert the "damaged" NEF to 24bit TIFFs :)

Cheers!
Ricardo

Did you review everything here?

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=5578

Hi,
I'm having the same problem with NEF "Unexpected end of file" errors.
I have a D800 and use a SanDisk ExtremePro 32GB SD Card.
I still didn't try a card reader, till now i used the D800 (and the PC) USB3 port with the cable that came with the camera.
My system is Windows 7 x64 and no matter what program i use to do the transfer, Windows Explorer for normal copy, ViewNX 2.3.1, Lightroom 4, i get a lot of corrupted NEFs.

I searched the forum but wasn't able to find a satisfying answer :|
I see the posts are 3 weeks old. Any news from the corrupted NEFs front?

Thanks!
Ricardo

Just to repeat :

Download the last ViewNX2 2.3.1 from Nikopn, and transfer from within that program version... and get rid of all old Transfer NX2 / 1 versions before installing the new program...

For Capture NX2 upgrade to the latest version ( 2.3.2 ) to be able to process the NEF's from the latest Camera's..

it's been covered please search forum

I am having serious problems with the D800's NEF files. Even when I transfer files by wire from the D800 to my PC, the end files are corrupted. This occurs when using Transfer NX2, Transfer NX1 as well as a simply copy over on the PC (although that method is safer in my experience).

The issue exists with both the CF card slot and the SD card slot and has resulted in the loss of several hundred RAW pictures over three shoots. This is the most serious failure I have experienced with Nikon equipment to date (I have had D70, D40 (two), D90, D3000, D300, D3100 and D7000 cameras without problems). I believe it must be an incredible embarrassment to Nikon given that they had an extra year to get this camera ready (due to the Thai flood).

If anyone has had any success with any program (I have tied a couple including Phoenix) in recovering the corrupted files (Nikon Transfer deleted them from my CF card after the corrupted import) I would appreciate your letting me know. The NEF file is there (at 40mb), but it just cannot be rendered.

Chris

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.

Let us know how you get on with the FastStone experiment.

Good luck FOV.

I like your optimism, but even that optimism can't work wonders this time - I already recovered everything that was possible from the cards. The first session and part of session two were completely overwritten.

The only solution is to fix the NEFs.

If they were not completely overwritten, you may be surprised and recover perhaps most of them. You have nothing to lose.

I did three sessions and transferred to computer in between, so I could recover from the card the 3rd one. I cannot do that with the first two ones, they were overwritten.