Photo recovery software

Recuva - listed on MG. Finds everything for me. In 'options' select 'thumbnail view' and when its done you know the pictures your looking for right away. In 'advanced' select
-show files found in hidden system folders
- deep scan
- scan for non deleted files

It takes a while on large disks but finds a lot. Mp3's Flv's jpg's bmp's. I even found old truecrypt volues that still worked after recovery.

 

Just tested on my external USB enclosure and it does work.

There's also TestDisk & PhotoRec 7.0 - http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/testdisk_photorec.html

 

I haven't used enclosures but have every kind of disk and memory card with both of these programs. TestDisk & photorec is good for fixing disks and working with partitions. When I used it to scan for files it created hundreds of folders. One for every sector or block it scans and finds anything in. Takes a lot of searching after that to figure out what was found.

 

Did you find anything else to show the drive was functional? Any spinning? Lights? When your toshiba died you said you swapped an identical drive. Have you thought of a circuit board swap. If the pictures are important to you it may be worth a try. Don't throw out the drive till you've tried every option. Also Puran file recovery at MG and Glary Undelete
But recuva usually finds as much or more than anything else.

 

Are the photos, by any chance, still on the camera's SD card?

 

Any chance your picassa was tied to an upload account?

 

My understanding is Picasa doesn't change the file type, it simply coppies them. If the drive is fine then maybe what you need to do is search by file type(*.jpg, *.png, *.bmp, etc) instead of trying to recover damaged or deleted files.

On that note:
SearchMyFiles - MajorGeeks
Agent Ransack/FileLocator Lite - MajorGeeks
Everything Search Engine - MajorGeeks, the quickest and easiest of the three to use.

 

Try firing up Picassa and get it to find the files?

 

Is the drive formatted as ntfs? If it's formatted as, say fat32, then "Everything Search Engine" won't find anything, no error message, just gives an empty search result display. "Agent Ransack" will work though. It will also let you copy the selected files.

 

Picasa is an indexing program primarily. It doesn't move files most times, with the exception of importing from a memory card. Otherwise (from what I've seen of it) it doesn't move any files around at all. When importing is done though it usually asks you where to store the files. If you tried to import files from your memory card/camera now, is there a default location that shows up?

https://sites.google.com/site/picas...s-and-videos-using-picasa-or-windows-explorer

 

I've also done a little more research. According to this page, you may want to show hidden files and folders in Control Panel applying it to all folders on all drives.

 

Try a search for*.jpg instead of jpeg

 

Messed up the post, have to try again.:-o

 

In Agent Ransack:
Put a check mark in the "Expert User" box.
In the "File name" line type: *.jpg or

*.jpeg
*.png
*.bmp
*.xxx what ever extension file type was used when the photo(s) were imported and saved.​

On the "Look in" line, from the drop down carrot, select the drive letter of the drive to be searched.
Be sure to put a check mark in the "subfolders" box.
Click the "Start" button at the end of the "File name" line.

Thumbnail is a pic of what "Agent Ransack" should look like before you click the "Start" button.

Since the drive is ntfs and "Everything Search Engine" didn't find anything, I don't know if "Agent Ransack" or "SearchMyFiles" will do any better. If a file(s) exist on a drive "Everything" will find it, but it's certainly worth trying the other two.