it doesn't matter how it happened, but here's a thumbnail sketch:
i had a card in my card-reader that i thought had been read. i used windows xp to do a quick format on the card. later, i noticed a gap of about 300 missing photos, and realized that the card had NOT been read.
like a champ, PC Inspector Smart Media Recovery recovered EVERY SINGLE image off of the card. this is a freeware executable, and it rocks! you can read a review here.
you might want to either bookmark this thread, or visit the site and bookmark it. even better, go on and download it, because, you just never know when you're gonna need it.
Bookmarked. Thanks for the link. Btw, those keywords you are adding is a great idea but given the horrible search function this site has it still doesn't make a difference. However, when Google indexes this page I'm sure those will work like a charm.
I've been doing so good, for so long. I've never accidently deleted images. Last night I hit format and then immediately realized my CF card had images that I was supposed to give to someone.
Recover My Files saved my butt last month - whole wedding in the trash by mistake (selected wrong folder)
tried every free trial there was - some recovered but because they were CR2 files, they recovered them as corrupt.. Recover My Files recovered the CR2 files as TIFF, so a quick rename later and hey presto everything was back :D money well spent! :)
This software sure is a butt-saver Skip, glad it worked out for you. Here's my bonehead story:
A couple weeks ago I was doing some headshots and just about filled a 2 gig card. So I went to change cards, but accidentally put the same card back in and formatted it. Oops! I quickly realized what happened and (discreetly) took it out and put the other card in, knowing I had this same software that hopefully would recover the files later (never had to use it before though). So we did a lot more photos just in case, the client never knew what happened and just thought I was giving him more time, I was able to recover the files later that night, and they ended up getting twice as many shots to choose from. -Whew!
Everybody should try it before you actually need it, works great. Also, I've since labeled my cards 1-4, so I start with 1 and move up so there's no mix-up again.
Just wanted to repeat this. Saved my butt this morning. Got all 114 files back. This is the only product I could find that worked with .CR2 files. The other one I tried converted them to excel files for some reason.
thanks for the keywords skip, dpchallenge actually found it. But I can't recover anything. I had used Wolverine 80 gig flashpac portable hardrive and cardreader to shoot some band photos for their cd cover. The first part of the shoot for the album cover I thought was downloaded to the drive, reformatted the CF card in camera and continued to shoot, the folder or photos aren't on the drive and and the card has been used up again about 75% but even when I try to access the card, it doesn't show any old photos. Damn it! If any one else has ideas that would be great. To clarify, the photos aren't on a computer they are on an external hard drive plugged into a USB port. I believe I am fairly screwed...
Bookmarked. Thanks for the link. Btw, those keywords you are adding is a great idea but given the horrible search function this site has it still doesn't make a difference. However, when Google indexes this page I'm sure those will work like a charm.
LOL! i'm on my 3rd laptop since the original post and no longer had the bookmark. the internal search failed to get me here, but google came through :D
