Any way to retrieve jpg photo off CF card?

[G2Jim]

I took 70+ shots on my 256MB CF card, and only one photo in the middle of all the others can't be uploaded to my PC or read from any graphics software. The frustrating part is that it shows the preview of the photo in the finder as a thumbnail, but when trying to copy it to the hard drive it says "Error code -36". If there's enough of a file to preview the thumbnail, isn't there some means to rescue/repair the file?

[Persian-Rice]

I had a similar problem, but in a much larger scale.

Although many of my thumbs were fine, the actually full-sized image was corrupt. Unfortunately, there is no way to recover this. I managed to open the images in photoshop, but it was clearly obvious that much of the data had never been recored and showed as a large white space.

Pretty much, there is no data to recover, because there must have been an error within the card during recording. That image is gone. The thumbnail is recorded separately, so in actuality there are duplicates, the thumbnail might have been saved, but the image itself is probably corrupted.

Sorry.

[dsze]

Hold on... all hope is not necessarily lost. Without looking up what that error code actually means, I would say that there is a chance that your image could be recovered.

I also had a similar incident recently, but it was with a WHOLE 512MB card and it was the ceremony shots from a WEDDING! After I was revived from heart failure, I spent an entire day trying to recover the images.

I wasted ALOT of money on various data recovery programs and the only one that I got to finally work was PhotoRescue. It managed to save all of my photos, but one. It cost about $30 I think. I would highly recommend giving it a try, if it is an important shot your trying to save. Even if its not so important, you're bound to need to recover another image someday. Let us know if it works for you.

-daniel

[G2Jim]

Thanks guys - I'll give it a little more effort before giving up.

[PaulB]

Go to:
www.convar.de
and download their FREE recovery software.
I have recommended this program before and it works.

Best of luck.

[dsze]

Paul, that one did not work for me.

I also tried the Octane one, and 3-4 others that I can't remember the names of, but the only success story was with PhotoRescue. Let us know which works for you.

-daniel

[Persian-Rice]

Yes photorescue has been good to me as well.

[elbirth]

I know some CF cards come with some recovery software stored on them. A friend of mine got a 1gig Lexar card that had trial versions of Image Rescue and Photo Mechanic on there.... not sure if something like that would help, but I'd give what dsze suggested a try.

[iceman]

I also had a problem where I thought all the images on a 1Gig card where lost. I bought Bad Copy Pro

http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/

I was able to recover all the images plus some others that I had deleted long ago. Needless to say, I was extremely happy.

Also, I was in the habit of just pulling the CF card out of the card reader without going to "My Computer" "Right Clicking" and "Ejecting" the card , the way that it is recommended by the manufacturer. Since I have started doing this, I have not lost any more images.

Regards,
Dennis

[robertwgross]

...
Also, I was in the habit of just pulling the CF card out of the card reader without going to "My Computer" "Right Clicking" and "Ejecting" the card , the way that it is recommended by the manufacturer. Since I have started doing this, I have not lost any more images.


On my card reader, there is a green "Power On" light, and a red "Active" read/write light. As long as the red light is not lit, then I can pull the card without ejecting it. If I were stupid enough to pull the card while the red light was lit, then there would be hell to pay.

---Bob Gross---

[G2Jim]

Thanks guys. I tried both PC Inspector Smart Rescue and PhotoRescue. Both were able to make the photo jpg file readable, but in both cases only the top most portion of the photo came out. I suspect I might have turned off the camera too soon after I took the shot, or else just one of those unexplainable things. I appreciate your help and now know how to recover files otherwise thought lost! :)

[dsze]

Sorry it didn't work out for you. Yes, in the case of turning off the camera too soon; theres' no way to recover a file that was never written in the first place. Why turn your camera off at all? Mine is set to turn off in 4 min. unless I'm shooting a wedding and then its set to turn off in 15min. I never touch the on/off switch, unless I'm changing lenses or cleaning the sensor.

Hang on to photorescue. You'll be glad you have it someday. :)

-daniel

[iceman]

Just a note, my Canon 10D will not shut off, even with the switch, until the camera is done writing to the card. A very nice feature. :lol:

[Olegis]

Canon 10D will not shut off, even with the switch, until the camera is done writing to the card.

Try opening the memory card compartment door - the camera will shut off immideately and all the files that were not written to the card at that moment, will be lost forever. Very nasty feature ...