File Recovery

A further point about cards…

From my own experience…

I once had a CF card which was apparently corrupt – couldnt get anything using imagerescue (Lexmarks own supplied software) and couldnt even subsequently format the card without it aborting with errors.

I thought all was lost until i had a notion and used a puffer brush to cleam out the edge connectors on the card.

Result? – card read straight away and i was able to format perfectly first time.

DataRecoveryWizard

I suggest you use DataRecoveryWizard to recover your data.

DataRecoveryWizard is a complete range of data recovery software
for all Windows operating system platforms and supports various file
systems including FAT, FAT16, VFAT, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 on
various storage media. DataRecoveryWizard ensures safe and precise
file recovery against numerous threats like accidental file deletion and
disk formatting and so on.

http://www.easeus.com/

Evenin’ all,

For what it’s worth, thanks to this thread, I’ve just downloaded Photorescue Expert after previewing a corrupted card. It’s managed to recover a bunch of pics I thought lost. To be fair I’d never bothered trying to recover the data through other methods, but PR managed to do the job with little fuss and modest cost.

Of even more mild interest the card in question became corrupted at Old Warden (makes a difference to the Forumites becoming corrupt at OW) and that was a good year or more ago now. It’s nice to know it’s there if I have a problem again. I can’t swear it’s got back all the pics I lost, but it certainly looks like it with the internal evidence. It also found batches from two previous photo sessions and recovered them.

Does what it says on the tin, & more. Can’t complain.

DO NOT USE NORTON DISK DOCTOR OR ANYTHING THAT WILL WRITE TO YOUR CARD

Nothing writes to your card, unless you tell it to – NDD can READ as well, you know.

For goodness sake, do we have to have ridiculous scaremongering like this?

However, I do take your point about that piece of software, it is probably more suitable, as NDD is a generic disk recovery system, primarily designed for hard drives – and as such is flexible, if used correctly – like any competent tool.

I don’t think Peter Norton made a fortune out of making a product that was inherently unsafe – when that is precisely what it is designed to do.

I can be used to read, and write elsewhere, of course.

Arrgghhhhhh……. Cruel Fate!!!

Most of the pics that CAN be recovered are out of focus anyway.

Mixed results…….

Photorescue has identified all of the files, but about 50-60% are only partial recoveries – ie. the images are incomplete or have corrupted areas in them.

Have also tried a couple of other utilities in freebie preview mode and although others have achieved about the same none have done any better….. Still pretty dissapointed to be honest……

Guess I’ll just have to be more careful and patient in future.

Ditto DamienB’s comments – I have had cause to use Photorescue when the file system on the card got totally f***ed up (pulled the card out whilst the camera was still writing to it – doh!) and I would unreservedly recommend it – in my case the only image I lost in the end was the one that was writing when I removed the card.

Andy

PS: After you’ve recovered the images, you may still have a problem formatting the card again using the camera format function or a standard windows format. IIRC I had to use some form of “force” format command in native DOS, after which the card was and has been fine for the last two years

Thanks Damien. I had just found photorescue and was giving it a quick go when you posted. Looks like it can get most of the pictures.

The results seem to be much better with the Expert version. Which version have you used?

Will have a proper look at it this evening.

does anyone have experience of using a third-party recovery service?

Only that it is expensive. But I don’t know of any service that can access corrupt memory cards.

You could try Norton Disk Doctor, if it still mounts as a (albeit unreadable) drive. That should be able to get at the data and may allow you to reconstruct the file allocation table or whatever database it uses to store file positioning information.