File recovery - recovering OLD files

I've looked around but can't seem to find a solution...

I had a nearly full card (Sandisk 4gig extreme III) before accidently reformatting and shooting about maybe 6 images. When I run data recovery, I recover about 4 gigs of stuff shot 3 WEEKS ago, which I am pretty sure should have been over written.

Is there no way to recover the files that were just recently deleted? None of this makes sense!

I reformatted the card on a nikon d200 if that info helps any...

If you got the shots from 3 weeks ago recovered, then the more recent ones should be there, too, unless they were overlaid by the 6 new images you shot. Just go through all the recovered files one by one. They should be there.

That's what I assumed as well, but there is no trace of what I shot on that card, and I KNOW it existed because I previewed them before they were erased.

File recovery does seem to be just chance that you get what comes without specifically targeting any files or dates. Professional services may be able to do this but wth the consumer programs you do seem to just have to accept that random images will be saved. After recovering photos on two hard drives I have found for some reason that RAW (CR2) files do recover better than Jpeg for some reason?

A small thread on recovery at https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=334677 the PC Inspector program is quite good (and free!) and can target .CR2 files only.

Andy