lost phots s-40

[rzumwalt]

While connecting camera to TV all my photos disappeared. Only message I get now is "no image".
This is the first time I tried to connect to Tv. Is it possible the photos are still there?

[onehotrx7]

Yes, it's very probable that the pictures are still there - you'll probably need some kind of rescue software to recover them, although it is possibly just some kind of directory structure error...

Here's a copy of a post I made a while ago:
In most cases 'lost' photo's can be restored - as long as you haven't
taken any more since they got 'lost'... there are a couple of packages
to do this - at least one is free, the other I know of will tell you
if it can see any recoverable data, but you must register it to
actually recover your data...

The appropriate links are:

http://home.arcor.de/christian_grau/dir/
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

and of some details on recovering some particular data (from Shinji Ikari from the aus.photo newsgroup) - this makes for a long post, but is worth reading!!

How Stella got her groove back (and how Narelle got her data back...)

If you really want to know how Stella Got Her Groove
Back, go hire the movie. It's a good chick-flick, I
thoroughly reccomend it... Check the details at
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0120703 (I have it on VCD
if anyone wants!)


On the other hand, if you want to know how Narelle
Got Her Files Back, you've come to the right place...

This is long, and detailed. Go get coffee.


Background:

A 256Mb Ridata brand Compact Flash (CF) card went
unserviceable for no apparent reason. A number of
photos (approx eighty images) that had been taken
with a Canon 1D camera were stored on the card, and
*could* be browsed with the camera.

Attempts to copy the images from the card via
various methods including via a 'digital wallet',
inserting the card in a Macintosh computer, and by
connecting the camera with card inserted to a Mac
all failed.

The reason for the failure was unknown. No apparent
'mismanagement' took place, no dropping, shocking,
pulling cards out mid-write, etc took place. Your
classic "No mate, I didn't do a thing, it broke all
by itself" scenario that anyone who has ever worked
in IT will understand well, only this time, it's true!


Preparation:

Step one, ask the group. Collect lots of information.
Catch: all of the software and techniques offered were
payware. Given that we didn't actually know *what* the
images were, or the likelihood of recovery of same,
throwing money at the problem wasn't high on the list
of priorities.

Knowing that Narelle doesn't have a PC computer, and that
I have at least a dozen of the blessed things (and knowing
full well that she isn't missing much by not having one!!),
I offered to help.


Now there is not much that scares me more than Other
People's Data. (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0102609) :-)

There are two things that I have always studiously
avoided in my career. Handling money, and handling Other
People's Data. They're both just too risky.

With that in mind, but countered by my overriding desire
to help a friend in need (), I wanted to approach
the problem in a take-no-chances way...

So, before making any attempt to look at the data or
correct the data or, heaven forbid, write the data, I
wanted a copy. Bit-for-bit, with no 'interpretations'.


Best way I know of to do that is using 'dd' (aka 'Disk
Dump'), a utility that is common on most unix operating
systems.

So, took a spare laptop, split up the disk into a bunch
of filesystems, and made a quick-n-dirty installation of
linux on one of the partitions. For the record, I'm a big
non-fan of linux, and I don't reccomend you use it for
any other than quick-n-dirty solutions. FreeBSD is your
friend for real/serious work. I did not install X-Windows.


I installed Windows 2000 on another partition, since that
gives the best balance between hardware device access for
recovery, and a platform to view images, copy them around
easily, etc, etc.


Next, I tried to repeat the broken card problem. I took
one of my 512Mb Ridata CF cards, put it in my Canon D60,
and fired off a bunch of random shots, pulling the card out
of the camera mid-save, powering the camera down mid-save,
and a bunch of other abominations.

Unfortunately, but to the credit of the camera, I didn't
succeed in making anything go wrong beyond the occasional
half-written image. Bummer!

Next step, take a bunch of photos, put the card in a PC,
and delete all the images, plain and simple!


One poster reccomended a bit of software called 'Digital
Image Recovery', saying it was free. I tracked it down on
the net, only to find that the author had decided to go
commercial "to fund my study" and so he wasn't offering
freebies anymore :-(

I took a punt, and got a copy of the software anyway.

Ran it up on Windows 2000 and the freshly deleted CF
card, and it promptly (and flawlessly) recovered all of
the freshly deleted images, and a whole bunch of images
that had been on the card in the past without even a
whimper. It just did it. This software clearly doesn't
bother with little things like file allocation tables,
it goes straight to the 'disk' and reads the whole thing,
finding it's own files as it goes along. Very very impressive!

Assorted other experiments and tests (a whole morning's
worth), and I figured I was sufficiently well-armed to try
it 'for real'.

One other preparation point worth a mention, I made a couple
of extra partitions on the laptop's hard disk, a gigabyte
in size, and formatted with the DOS FAT16 filesystem.


Recovery:

Visit Narelle. Find home, meet hubby, meet pets, meet
children (she has, I think, somewhere between eight and
twelve little angels, I lost count!), have coffee. For
the record, I thoroughly reccomend visiting Narelle, it's
lots of fun :-)


The recovery was actually pretty quick and painless.
That's the problem with extensive preparation, it makes it
all look so easy when you do the job :-(

I booted a laptop up with the Linux to start with, I
wanted that bit-for-bit copy before I did anything remember.

I put the 'broken' CF card in a CFPCMCIA adaptor in the
laptop, and *without* mounting it as a filesystem, issued
the command...

dd if=/dev/hde1 of=./cf-card-dump.dd

.. and set about the business of chatting and sipping coffee
while waiting for the 256Mb of raw data to dump from the
card.

The PCMCIA is pretty quick, much faster than USB (but I
never actually got the CF card to mount with Linux in a USB
card reader anyway, so the point is possibly moot).

then, I popped the CF/PCMCIA out of the computer.

I intended to do the real recovery job with the Image
Recovery software with Windows 2000, but, just for kicks,
I issued the following command...

mount -o rw,loop -t vfat ./cf-card-dump.dd /mnt/cf

... That 'mounts' the dump file as a filesystem in unix,
read only, the 'loop' means we're mounting a file, not a
proper disk, and as filesystem type 'vfat' which is what
cameras, etc, usually use for memory filesystems.

Then..

cd /mnt/cd

...and...

ls -1

.. that returned...

Desktop DB*
Desktop DF*
Desktop Folder/
TheVolumeSettingsFolder/
Trash/
dcim/
fileid.dat*
finder.dat*

A little unusual I though, since the only thing that the
Canon cameras create is a 'dcim' directory. The rest are
'furphys'...

So...

find . -print

... returned...

.
./dcim
./dcim/100eos1d
./dcim/100eos1d/d3da6591.jpg
./dcim/100eos1d/d3da6592.jpg
./dcim/100eos1d/d3da6593.jpg
./dcim/100eos1d/d3da6594.jpg
./dcim/100eos1d/d3da6595.jpg
[...]

.. whah-hey! This looks good...

but further down, the source of the problems...

./dcim/100eos1d/d3da6671.jpg
./finder.dat
./TheVolumeSettingsFolder
./TheVolumeSettingsFolder/!""'*bc