triple your CF capacity!?! (not true)

[Dante King]

I might be way off base here, but bare with me. I was playing around with a Cf card and image recovery software that came with it. I was able to recover up to the last 2 formats of the card. I was a bit shocked by this. Then I got to thinking. Why not save money on vacation and just format your CF cards, shoot again, foramt and shoot again. Then use image recovery software and you have tripled your storage?

I know this might not always work, but so far it has for me.
Yes I know I might not want to take wanted pictures and entrust them to this mehtod.

What do you say?

[sid]

Before the previous formats, did you actually use up 100% of the card capacity ? The reason I'm asking is that when you delete stuff, it's still there on the card/hard disk/floppy. The data is still there but the file is marked as deleted. New files are created in teh space thats not been used yet. So, once the card starts getting filled up, the camera/computer starts writing to the locations that actually contained the previously "deleted or "formatted" files.
All the image recovery software does is actually read individual memory locations from the disk and interprets the data accordingly. Given enough time (and motivation) , you could write your own image recovery program from scratch. (I know I could ;) )

[PacAce]

Are you saying that, say you have a 1 GB card, if you shoot 1GB full of images, then format the card and then shoot another 1 GB of images, you can recover 2 GB of pictures? I find that very hard to believe. Are you sure you just didn't recover a few shots from a previous session because you didn't fill up the card to full capacity on the last session?

[kawter2]

Before the previous formats, did you actually use up 100% of the card capacity ? The reason I'm asking is that when you delete stuff, it's still there on the card/hard disk/floppy. The data is still there but the file is marked as deleted. New files are created in teh space thats not been used yet. So, once the card starts getting filled up, the camera/computer starts writing to the locations that actually contained the previously "deleted or "formatted" files. )


yes this is what happened, there is no way a recovery software could recover a rewrite on flash memory

[cmM]

unless the actual capacity of the card is 3GB, that is not physically possible. The card can hold 1GB of data... how can you pull 3GB of data out of 1GB ?

[thomasrhee]

Even if this was technically possible, would you want to risk losing 2gb worth of precious photos? I'll pass. To me, the photo's are worth more than the $160 it would cost to buy another card which comes out to less than a dollar per photo for only one full shoot in raw.

tyr

[pradeep1]

I might be way off base here, but bare with me. I was playing around with a Cf card and image recovery software that came with it. I was able to recover up to the last 2 formats of the card. I was a bit shocked by this. Then I got to thinking. Why not save money on vacation and just format your CF cards, shoot again, foramt and shoot again. Then use image recovery software and you have tripled your storage?

I know this might not always work, but so far it has for me.
Yes I know I might not want to take wanted pictures and entrust them to this mehtod.

What do you say?

Dante, you are a goofball. :p

Yes, it is possible to recover data that has not been overwritten....that's probably what you are seeing. If you shoot 1 GB and format and record 1GB, you are not going to get your old pictures back. Don't do it! ;)

[Dante King]

I'm gonna have to play with this some more.

[Dante King]

DOH!!! I thought I was on to something. I swear I was completely sober! Really! I thought I had figured out something comepletely new. Man do I feel dumb. Ran this recovery software on a "disk and bam! Here come previous Pics form the grave. Well. I kinda hate to admit this but since you'll keep the laughter down to a roar....... I have 2 printers with card slots and a crad reader hooked up to my PC. Well lets just say that I had left some cards in the slots of the printers and when running the software..... OY!

[blackviolet]

lol... that reminds me...

3 people stayed in a hotel for the night. the girl behind the counter charged them $30 to stay, so they each put in 10 bucks. later, the manager realised that girl overcharged the travellers as the room is advertised as twenty five- so the manager told her to take 5 dollars and give it back to the travellers. remembering that each of the travellers put in the same amount of money, the girl decided it was easier to give them back one dollar each and keep 2 bucks for herself.
so they each paid $9 x 3 travellers = $27 plus the $2 that she took - that makes $29 - where's the other dollar?!

[cmM]

lol... that reminds me...

3 people stayed in a hotel for the night. the girl behind the counter charged them $30 to stay, so they each put in 10 bucks. later, the manager realised that girl overcharged the travellers as the room is advertised as twenty five- so the manager told her to take 5 dollars and give it back to the travellers. remembering that each of the travellers put in the same amount of money, the girl decided it was easier to give them back one dollar each and keep 2 bucks for herself.
so they each paid $9 x 3 travellers = $27 plus the $2 that she took - that makes $29 - where's the other dollar?!

Did they buy a horse in the meantime too by any chance? ;):-P

[PacAce]

Did they buy a horse in the meantime too by any chance? ;):-P
LOL :lol:

[Dante King]

Man, I tought I was going to be awarded the bonehead of the site award. Thanks for taking it easy on me. I'm really a sensitive guy! :)

[PacAce]

Man, I tought I was going to be awarded the bonehead of the site award. Thanks for taking it easy on me. I'm really a sensitive guy! :)
Darn! And we were going to surprise you with it. :mrgreen:

[chucksberg]

No....They paid 30, she gave them 3 back, and kept 2.

[Dante King]

Darn! And we were going to surprise you with it. :mrgreen:

See here I go messing up again!

[jrobert]

This is actually possible to do with magnetic recordings such as hard- or floppy-disks. It takes some pretty sensitive (read, 'forensic') equipment that you or I are unlikely have around, not just software that can look at the raw digital data on the disk.

Magnetic recording is a physical (hence, analog) process, so over-writing a '1' on the disk with a '0', produces slightly less '0'-ness than does over-writing a '0' with a '0'. (I've oversimplified the process of magnetic recording and reproduction, but that's the gist of it.) Sensitive read-amplifiers and level-detection equipment can deduce the state that must have existed before the current state (of '1'-ness or '0'-ness). I've heard that the process can be carried back over a couple of overwrites. So, in theory, it would seem that a micro-drive's capacity could be doubled or tripled! (Stunt demonstrated by trained professionals -- don't try this at home!)

-jeff-

[cmM]

This is actually possible to do with magnetic recordings such as hard- or floppy-disks. It takes some pretty sensitive (read, 'forensic') equipment that you or I are unlikely have around, not just software that can look at the raw digital data on the disk.

Magnetic recording is a physical (hence, analog) process, so over-writing a '1' on the disk with a '0', produces slightly less '0'-ness than does over-writing a '0' with a '0'. (I've oversimplified the process of magnetic recording and reproduction, but that's the gist of it.) Sensitive read-amplifiers and level-detection equipment can deduce the state that must have existed before the current state (of '1'-ness or '0'-ness). I've heard that the process can be carried back over a couple of overwrites. So, in theory, it would seem that a micro-drive's capacity could be doubled or tripled! (Stunt demonstrated by trained professionals -- don't try this at home!)

-jeff-
TRue that, but that is not the case with flash memory, where the 1s and 0s are recorded through electric charges. Once it's overwritten, that's it.