HELP - CF CARD RECOVERY

malene

Hi, I deleted 4 pictures from a CF card and want to get them back. I didn't format the card since, but I'm wondering has anyone used any FREE card /data recovery software that can be downloaded off the net?

I did search and found 2 programs and downloaded them and then after they recovered the photos, they asked for money in order to proceed.

Thanks.

kensutz

Have you tried Recuva?

Mycroft H

PhotoRec. It's saved my otherwise lost photos on several occasions at this stage. Free too.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

5uspect

The software that cones with SanDisk cards, while a pain to use/install is pretty good

malene

Ok, used photorec, made no sense, I now have a folder called called recup_dir.1 in my C drive filled with txt files, where are my jpegs and CR2 files?

Going to try recuva now.

malene

wow, ok Recuva worked, thanks!!

pixbyjohn

malene wrote: »

wow, ok Recuva worked, thanks!!

Recuva never failed me yet.
Glad you got them back

malene

I now have a sandisc 2G SD card that i have formatted a few times, I tried the recuva software and it did bring back a few photos, but not far back enough. Is there a limit as to how many many formats the older pictures can survive or is there another FREE software that will do an even DEEPER scan. (the results I got were from the Recuva deep scan).

Thanks,

mal

5uspect

malene wrote: »

I now have a sandisc 2G SD card that i have formatted a few times, I tried the recuva software and it did bring back a few photos, but not far back enough. Is there a limit as to how many many formats the older pictures can survive or is there another FREE software that will do an even DEEPER scan. (the results I got were from the Recuva deep scan).

Thanks,

mal

You're really lucky to get images form a single format TBH. If you just format the card in camera it's probably only going to delete the data and it can maybe be recovered. If you take more photos on that formatted card then you're going to overwrite the underlying data - fairly randomly.

mdebets

malene wrote: »

I now have a sandisc 2G SD card that i have formatted a few times, I tried the recuva software and it did bring back a few photos, but not far back enough. Is there a limit as to how many many formats the older pictures can survive or is there another FREE software that will do an even DEEPER scan. (the results I got were from the Recuva deep scan).

Thanks,

mal

Can't tell you about the program, as I always use the recovery program that came with my SanDisk cards and it always recovered the pictures from the previous shot + some older ones as well, but that was always straight after a format.
A normal format doesn't actually delete any data, it just deletes the table that tells you where the pictures are stored. So as long as you don't overwrite the actual data (e.g. by taking new pictures with the card), you should be able to recover it without any problems.

malene

darn, i took loads of pix after ones I'm looking and multile formats, but the recovery only seems to go a certain distance back, I'll hang on to the card anyways, just in case.

Gambler

Hey Malene,

I can tell you that you won't get that data back - when you format a card and take new pics the data for those pictures overwrites the data from the old pics. The reason you get some older pics is because their data wasn't overwritten yet by new pics.

A very simplistic way of looking at it is if you had a 2GB card and you take 2GB of pics, then wipe the card, then take 1GB of pics then, out of the first 2GB of pics half of them will have been over written by the new pictures but the other half would still be recoverable. Then lets say you format the card again and take half a gigs worth of pictures you would probably be able to recover half of the pictures you took from the 1GB batch and half of the pictures you took from the 2GB batch.

However if the order was reversed and you too half a gig of pics, then formatted, then took 1gb of pics, then formatted then filled up the card taking 2GB of pics then you wouldn't be able to recover any of the older pics because they would have been over written when you took the last 2GB batch of pics.

In reality it isn't quite that straight forward because memory isn't always used in linear order from the first to last sector like that but that's the general gist of it.

malene

ok thanks Gambler.

ciaranr

Off topic, but for the Mac users out there, I've had great success using EXIF Untrasher, a small FREE Mac app which first creates an image of your card, then dumps all found photos out to a folder, with a new file name (unfortunately). It's simple, clean and un-spammy.