Lost videos after interrupted transfer from SanDisk SD card to external drive looking for recovery advice

[Technohelper]

Hi everyone,

I recently transferred some videos from my SanDisk Ultra SD card to an external USB drive using my laptop. Unfortunately, the transfer was interrupted when my computer froze, and I had to force a restart.

After restarting, I noticed that several videos were missing from the SD card, while the files copied to the external drive were either incomplete or wouldn’t open. The SD card is still recognized by my computer, but a few folders that previously contained videos now appear empty.

As soon as I realized something was wrong, I stopped using both the SD card and the external drive to avoid overwriting any data.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue? Is it better to attempt recovery from the original SD card first, or is there a chance the incomplete files on the external drive can still be recovered? Any advice, recommendations, or personal experiences with recovering videos after an interrupted transfer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[SBrown]

@Technohelper
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• Steps to Backup, Copy, or Move Data Between Drives on Windows or macOS | Sandisk
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[Ellinor_William]

One question: were you copying the videos or moving them? If you were just copying them, there’s a better chance the originals are still recoverable from the SD card.

Otherwise, I’d start with the SD card. Even though the folders look empty, the video data may still be there if the transfer didn’t finish properly. Sometimes it’s just the file system that gets messed up, while the actual files are still recoverable.

I’ve had good results with Stellar Photo Recovery for situations like this. It can scan the SD card for lost or missing photos and videos, even when they no longer appear in File Explorer. If it finds your videos, just make sure you recover them to a different drive, not back to the SD card. If a few videos are still missing after that, you can also scan the external drive.