I didn't heed my own advice, so I need help to recover pics from my camera

I have lost count of the number of times that I have advised people to use several smaller memory cards rather than one large one (if one card gets damaged then you don't lose everything).

However I fell to the temptation of a cheap larger card and sure enough lost all of my pic's - A good guess would be that I accidentally reformated it.

I have tried several recovery prog's, but the problem seems to be that they wont recognise my camera as a drive. Windows xp sees the drive, yet these prog's don't. Can anyone offer advice please ?

Denn


Programmes tried

photorecovery

pc inspector

undelete plus

easeus

test disc and photo pecovery

Plus a handfull of others that I forget

 

Depending on the card brand, the manufacturer of it might have recovery software...? Worth looking into, at least.

 

I'm not 100% sure about that. Some say that even if reformatted, so long as nothing has been written over the data, then you may have a chance of recovery - I'm not really convinced but hoping so anyhow.

I fully agree with that but at the time I was in a place and situation where it wasn't possible.

Denn

 

Definitely, I'll see what I can find.

Denn

 

Do you have the ability to physically put the card into your PC,if so you may have a chance at recovering some if not all your data.

 

Not quite. When you format the card, all you do is clear it's "index" of what goes where on the card, which is why it can't find any files for you anymore. The data is still there, that's how these recovery programs can find and recover the photos.

Whatever you do though, do NOT save anything else on that card. If you write over the sectors after formatting the card, your pictures go bye-bye forever.

 

I apologize, I completely missed this part earlier. :-o

Recovery software needs you to use a card reader, preferably an external one, that plugs in to a USB port. They're cheap at Walmart and similar places, and they have no internal software or drivers of their own, that can interfere with the recovery software.

In general, card readers make life so much easier there's really only positive aspects to buying one anyway.

 

Yes! I'm beginning to get the impression that this recovery software needs a reader, and I accept the fact.

Maybe I should have said originally that as much as wanting to recover the pic's, I would like to understand why my computer recognises the camera as a drive yet these prog's don't?

Thanks
Denn

P.S. Yes a card reader would be a good investment.

 

In theory what you are doing is asking one computer to read the memory from another computer (your camera) and your software for the camera does not have the ability to do this, so by far the best way is to get the card into the PC and read it directly.
As Mimsy said under no circumstances put any more photos on the card.

 

Once I found that the pic's had disappeared I put the card into it's container until I got home.

Looks as though a card reader is on my shopping list this weekend.

Denn

 

I've successfully used a freeware program called PC Inspector Smart Recovery to get pics off a corrupted card. Check it out.

 

I can only speak for the ones my company uses, but they work is they can't use the camera as a reader since the camera's own software interferes with scanning and recovery. So they don't list is as a drive because it's not a drive they can use.

 

This can normally see the camera recoverymanager
it's also free

 

Darn! --- Too late, I was going to plug Recuva as well. Saved me a couple of times already!

 

Okay I shall try that before heading out for a card reader.

Denn

 

Thanks everyone,

I bought a card reader and together with a prog' called "photo recovery" I managed to salvage around 75% of my pic's.

One final question though. Of the 25% bad files a handful show a thumbnail of a complete picture, yet a preview shows a truncated version; obviously some info is there but none of my viewers (Irfan view, photoshop etc) will open these files. Can anyone suggest a program that may do so.

Denn

 

What card brand?

Trust me, it matters.

 

It is a 2gig sandisc SDcard

I have just done another scan using VAIOsoft recovery manager and the results were nothing short of spectacular with over 90% recovery and the truncated files restored in full.

However I am still curious as to why the card brand matters - please tell?


Denn

 

Sandisk sells to professional photographers, and if you bought a card from their pro line you may be entitled to their recovery software for free or at a substantial discount. That's why it matters.

 

Interesting; guess where my next stop is?

Thanks a lot to everyone. And don't forget - back up regularly, or use smaller cards.

Denn

 

Yes VAIOsoft recovery manager is one of the best I've found so far, I often get asked to recover a card and had nothing but success with it.