HELP - Lost Images

[Bryce Curdy]

I seem to have lost my recent digital holiday photos.

They seemed to tranfer from my SD card to my computer hard drive. I then stupidly reformatted the SD card before checking the photographs on the hard drive. Although all the files are there, I am unable to open any of them. I have since discovered the SD card was corrupt and have replaced it.

I have taken a CD-ROM with a copy of the files to The Photo Factory in Glasgow but they were unable to help. I also tried copying the files back on to the SD card and using an image recovery program I had downloaded, again without any joy.

Does anyone have any other suggestions about other image recovery software, commercial services or any other bright ideas. It's maddening when the files are all sitting there. I'm really grateful for any help.

[rammy]

Sounds like you have lost them then as the CRC header and file allocation on the original SD card will have been lost because you reformatted it.

If you had kept the originals on the SD card and checked before reformatting then you "may have" been able to recover from the SD card as the FAT and CRC pointers would remain intact, just the lost sectors need reindexing. Because you reformatted, only the segments of data that were actually readable from the SD card were copied. Which as you say is not the images at all.
Learn for next time.

BTW: What size (in megabytes) are the images on the CD, are they no where near the actual size expected? For example, my 300D generates an approx 1.5 - 1.8MB JPEG on largest finest setting.

[Bryce Curdy]

The file sizes seem about right (3-4MB for a 7 megapixel camera on largest, finest setting). I've little doubt if the police thought they were child pornography images they could rescue them!

[robertwgross]

They seemed to tranfer from my SD card to my computer hard drive. I then stupidly reformatted the SD card before checking the photographs on the hard drive. Although all the files are there, I am unable to open any of them. I have since discovered the SD card was corrupt and have replaced it.

Please clarify what you mean by "I am unable to open any of them."

Can we assume that they were JPEG files?

You say that you can see the files on the hard drive. By that, we assume you mean that you can see file names with an appropriate size, but some image viewer cannot open the files. Did an error message pop up?

If the SD card had corrupt files, then that means something. If the SD card had failed, then that means something different. How did you discover the SD card was corrupt?

It's possible that the image files were once recoverable from the SD card, but not now.

---Bob Gross---

[tim]

I'm sorry to say by copying the files back onto the card you ruined any chance of recovering the files.

[rammy]

I've little doubt if the police thought they were child pornography images they could rescue them!

Only if the card was in "original state" and nothing written back to or reformatted. Magnetism is finite and loses the charge and is reset when a card is formatted, which is different to Hard Drive where only the FAT is overwritten and yes, you can recover off a FAT formatted HD. You cannot recover off a low level format.

[Poco]

Can you post one of the files somewhere? There is a chance that there is data in the file but the headers are messed up enough for JPEG viewers to not be able to recognize them. Someone with some knowledge of the format can probably look at the files and tell you exactly what is wrong with them. I could try, but it has been a long time since hex edited a JPEG file.

[Baadil]

I agree, it would be best if we could look at one of the files.

[Bryce Curdy]

Any suggestions where I could post a file to?

[Baadil]

I guess if you cannot find any other space on the web, you could probably open a public Group on Yahoo and post the file for public there.

[jukas]

If you don't have a pbase account or other free webspace.. email the jpg to me and I'll host it for you and provide a link where people can download it.

Just realized the forum mailer doesn't allow attachments.. email is jchieppa AT gmail DOT com