Help me - photos lost on Ipod!

[tasvir]

Hi there,

i have a 60GB video ipod.. whilst on vacation i took my digital rebel and uploaded 2gb worth of photos to the ipod using the apple connector.

There were no error messages or warnings and displayed the fact that the photos had been uploaded.

Now I am back in the UK and realised that i cant see my photos! Apple say they are not responsible for data loss.

Has anyone experienced this? If yes, are there any tools/software out there to help recover data either from the Compact flash card (which does have more photos on as i believed the other photos had been imported to ipod) or ipod recovery (if they were imported at some point)

Please help!
Thanks!

[mistry]

Try this for recovering from your CF card. I had a memory card which seemed to always loose my pictures. I got it back everytime using this tool even if I formatted the card. and it's free.
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

I also had a problem with my Ipod. however if I looked at the Ipod through the pc I could see all the pictures, I think you need to enable disk use or something like that.

Let me know how you get on, I can get further details on the ipod stuff if you need.

[tasvir]

Thanks for your reply mistry.... So let me give you some more details...

When i plug my ipod into my computer i can see about 60 photos which are a combination of jpg and cs2 - in total it is 258MB

However, I uploaded about 200 photos of total size 2GB. When i was uploading to my ipod there was no error message and in fact stated that all 200 photos had been uploaded and then asked me if i wanted to delete those files from my camera - so i said yes - assuming that 1) if ipod said it uploaded 200 files i should believe it and 2) if 200 files have been deleted from my camera then ipod knows there is 200 files.

So why is there only 258MB (60 photos?) This seems to be a common problem (http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?search=Go&q=photos+connector+lost) if you cant see do a search in discussions using: ipod lost connector

Now regarding the compact flash card, can i still retrieve data from it even if i have written new files to it? i.e. i took more photos.

Please give me more help, im really desparate, i took a trip to Havana and took some really great pictures, so gutted to have lost them!

[DavidW]

If you've overwritten the card, the chances are that the data is lost for good. Anything that isn't overwritten may be recoverable, but having reused the card (rather than merely reformatting the card or deleting the files) is going to make the recovery task much more difficult.

The data that has been overwritten is gone for good; in fact, I'm a little pessimistic of recovering much from the card, but maybe it won't turn out to be that bad. It depends - if you've completely filled the card again, then there is a high probability that you've lost all the pictures that aren't on the iPod.


The only conclusion from this is that the iPod just isn't suitable as a downloader; when it works it's reportedly very slow. There are other products available, such as the Nexto CF OTG, that offer verification and are inexpensive.

However, that doesn't help for now. I'm sorry about your loss, and hope that the situation isn't as bleak as regards recovering pictures from the card as I fear.



David

[drparker]

The ipod is just another drive to the PC, try some of the deleted file utilities to see if the data is on the drive and only the file name and pointers in the directory table were wiped. I use my iPod as a back device for my notebook via USB all the time. The problem is with the adapter and not the ipod.

[DavidW]

The ipod is just another drive to the PC, try some of the deleted file utilities to see if the data is on the drive and only the file name and pointers in the directory table were wiped. I use my iPod as a back device for my notebook via USB all the time. The problem is with the adapter and not the ipod.
The problem, as I understood it, is that the photos probably didn't hit the iPod's hard disk in the first place.



David

[drparker]

That sucks big time. Even though it's kind of a pain to bring on trips I always bring my notebook. The first copy of raw files goes on it and then they get copied to my ipod. Over the years I've had to many drives, CD and DVDs go bad to trust just one copy.

[tasvir]

DavidW - i think your right "the photos probably didn't hit the iPod's hard disk in the first place"

I know that for sure because i ran a disk recovery tool for the ipod and it bought up photos that i had deleted in the past but none of the hanava shots.

I will run a tool on the Compact flash and see what that brings up...

Thanks for the comments and tips for future, most appreciated...

....now suffering even more from holiday blues.....

[wocka]

Gidday,

Another camera forum I belong to has suggested this product "Get Back" http://www.runtime.org/ I haven't tried this software myself, but have heard multiple sucess storys about retrieving data.

[mistry]

sorry for not replying tasvir, how you getting on? did you get your pictures off the memory card?

[Todd Jacobsen]

I will say, I've used my IPOD in the past, and never ran into problems.

I have, however, had "ghost" songs that showed on the IPOD which were really not there. This only occurred once I realized I was deleting data from the IPOD that I didn't want deleted. I unplugged the IPOD from the connector. Even after getting the song back into ITUNES, the IPOD still would not play the song, even though it registered the song as being there. The only way I got the song to play again was by reseting the IPOD (essentially deleting everything on it) and reloading all the songs.

So what ever you did, it sounds like the actual jpg/raw files got disconnected from the thumbnail file that shows on the IPOD. You state you still see the file, but that may be just the name or the thumbnail. Sorry, but the IPOD actually works well as a HD device (albeit slow).

Only recommendation, from now on, is never delete files until you've verified download files exist on HD.

[Mike V]

I've used my 60 Gb iPod quite a lot for backing up cards and never had a problem, touch wood.

[mistry]

Mike, was you using the photo transfer attachment, or copying via a computer?