Recover Lost Digital Images
Photo by Scott Bourne
(Shot in Kenai Fjords National Park Alaska – 08/06 – Canon 1D Mk IIN – Tamron 14mm F/2.8 Lens – ISO 400 – 1/2000 second – F/14 – Exposure Compensation -1 EV)
The call came in past Midnight. “Scott help! I just accidentally erased my memory card with the pictures I took in Africa.”
Accidents happen. And in addition to erasing images, sometimes photographers face other digital gremlins that destroy their images. Thankfully, these incidents are very rare. But when they happen, help is available.
Let’s start with prevention. Format your cards in your camera, not on your computer. Always backup a card (even if you think you’ve already dumped it) before you format it. You never know. If your card starts acting wierd, stop using it. Now. Remove that card and save it for data restoration just in case. Also, avoid swaping cards between your camera and your friend’s camera. If your friend’s camera uses a different operating system, you could cause problems that end up in data loss. Also avoid using cameras with very low batteries. If the batteries fail in the middle of a data write operation it can cause problems later.
Lastly, don’t remove your memory card while the camera is taking a picture or writing data. That will surely cause image loss.
If you make these mistakes, there are software tools available that may help you recover your lost images.
PhotoRescue and ImageRecall are two popular cross-platform programs that have a good track record of helping photographers recover lost files. You can usually recover deleted files, and should have decent luck recovering corrupted files. These programs cost between $29 and $99 and are probably good to have on hand in the event of an emergency.
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My brother was moving to New Zealand and had been traveling across the country with his family prior to the move. He had recently purchased a Canon PowerShot Pro 1 camera for the trip. At some point while a family member was transferring images to my brothers laptop disaster struck. He isn’t sure exactly what had happened only that no images were transferred and the Lexar 1GB CF card was “blank”. He downloaded the Lexar recovery software and ran it. No Luck! I asked him to mail me the card so I could try some other options prior to mailing the card to Lexar for recovery.
Upon receiving the card I also ran the Lexar and SanDisk utilities with no positive results.
I searched Google for card recovery options and read good reviews about PC Inspector smart recovery http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1. I downloaded the and ran the FREE software. I took a little while to do its magic but Success!
The software successfully recovered 208 images from his 1GB CF card.
This is the ONLY software I would recommend using.
Ernie
I was about to post about the exact same program, it is awesome so I donated to them for it.
If you want a free, open source solution, try PhotoRec. I posted this on the Flickr group in a thread by someone who was trying to recover images from a Fuji memory card. PhotoRec has saved me a couple of times, even with corrupted flash cards. Again, its free and open source.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
I’ll second PhotoRec, but for a more user friendly experience (Windows only) I’d recommend Recuva ( http://www.recuva.com ) This is also freeware.
The mind boggles at paying for something that free software will do better
does anyone have any experience dealing with a corrupted file that’s been compressed. I archived a bunch of pics (~3gigs) before installing leopard, now I can’t get at the files. I’m stupid for not testing out the file before I burned it to DVD, but this is where I am. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I know that this is late to the game, but I just accidentally formatted about 4gb of film from my G9. I tried out the RescuePRO recovery disk that I got along with some SanDisk memory I picked up and it really helped out, a little clunky to work with but it save my butt.
Chris! and Junto!! thanks so much .. i just recovered my lost files… (todays whole shoot) because your post… i started to buy another program for like 39. but it only found 72 files …. the Program you suggested recovered 115 of the photos… i think everyone but not positive!
Thanks for your POST and insight!
west
Hi there, i have a 8gig card in my Canon G9. A set of captures got corrupted. I am able to see the file on the Memory card, but not able to view these images. Out of all the captures(close to 300), I am not able to view about 100 of them in between.Luckily, an image in sequence (at about 50th place is viewable). The file properties display as JPEG, and do see the image name as ex. IMG_0279.JPG. It simply say “The file appears to be damaged or corrupted’. These are very important photographs, covering my sons ‘Baptisim Cermony’. Any help will be truly appreciated. Please help me.
Help appreciated.
–Bala