need help recovering corrupt files

[sarah_fregosi]

<p>Hello to anyone who will listen to me!! I recently shot a wedding this past weekend, I had plenty of CF cards with me and I had checked them all before the wedding to make sure everything was in working order. Right after the ceremony/service (their husband and wife kiss), I went to take another shot, and my camera said ERROR CF. I turned the camera off and removed the card immediately. I then reinserted it into the camera and turned it back on to see what I was dealing with. All of the memory from the images I took was being used on the card but I could not view any images on the LCD. NO IMAGE was all I was getting. So naturally, I started panicking, just trying to hold onto the thought that the memory and space was being used so the images have to be SOMEWHERE! But I still had a whole wedding to shoot. I put in a different CF card and the rest of the wedding was fabulous.<br>

When I got home, I immediately put the CF on the computer and maybe a quarter of the images I am missing were there.....the rest say corrupt or invalid, and there are some missing!!!! (LIKE THE FIRST KISS AND THE VOWS!!!) The space is being used on the card and I am hoping there is someone out there that can help me or direct me to the right recovery program to use to retrieve these precious images. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before and I am definitly panicking. Of course this didnt happen during a headshot or family portrait which could easily be reshot!!!!<br>

Please Help!<br>

Forever grateful,<br>

sarah</p>

[robertbanks]

<p>Sounds like the directory entry on the card is corrupt - i.e. the images are on the card but your camera/computer does not know where on the card to go to read them.<br>

You should be able to recover the images using cf card recovery software. I've never had to use this before, so can't recommend any particular software, but I'm sure someone here can - or search google for "CF card recovery". Some is free, some is shareware, some is pay for.<br>

Before doing the recovery don't write anything (new photo etc) to the card and don't format it.<br>

btw not sure if yo do this already but general advice is to format each card in the camera before every shoot, even if the card is blank. It causes the camera to write a fresh copy of the initial directory structure and may avoid corruption.<br>

Good luck.</p>

[mark_ridout1]

<p>Klix Photo Recovery software or I use PhotoRescue , but whichever app you choose it's a great idea to have some photo recovery software on hand. File corruption (or more accurately card index corruption) can happen. You will be ok once you run the program.....breath </p>

[sarah_fregosi]

<p>Thank you for the response. I always format my cards before a shoot and I had like 5 of them with me, of course the one I popped in first was the one that was going to make my life difficult!!! I am going to try a few different recovery programs I am just hoping and praying they will work. I am looking for advice on which ones to use.</p>

[daverhaas]

<p>1) don't do anything further to the card. <br>

2) contact a professional recovery service - it isn't going to be cheap but if the images are there they can and will get them.<br>

I strongly recommend Kroll - Ontrack in Eden Prairie MN - they have offices all over and are the ones that the crime labs go to when they can't get something off of a suspect's computer. Again - NOT CHEAP - but better than going to the bride / groom saying that you don't have a photo of the first kiss.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

[sarah_fregosi]

<p>Has anyone tried PhotoRescue on DataRescue.com???? It looks like a good program, Im just hesitant to purchase without any knowledge</p>

[john_deerfield]

<p>I agree with David, don't do anything further to the card. I wouldn't contact a professional recovery service until after trying the software recovery. If you have a friend with a Mac computer, you might want to see if the card will mount on a Mac and what the Mac shows (there have been times I have taken our laptop to a our local camera shop to read cards their machine was being fussy about). Did you shoot Raw? Raw + JPEG? Sometimes a recovered Raw file might night be recognizable but changing the extension (.CR2, .NEF) to .TIF might do the trick. </p>

<p>In the future if you get a CF error, immediately replace the suspect card with a new one. Don't put it back in the camera. The camera creates a directory file (or looks for one) when you insert the card. If I have an error, the last place I want to be dealing with it and potentially making it worse, is in the field. Beyond that, never allow the computer to format or erase images. Always format the card in the camera that will be using it. Never format a card in the field. If a card and/or camera acts funny in the field, put in a new card. I also recommend shooting Raw+JPEG. If you camera supports dual cards, put the Raw on one and the JPEG on the other!</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>If the image directory is corrupted, it should be fairly easy to use recovery software to identify the file content and re-create the directory. I would give that a try. If you have concerns, find another "good" memory card with images and format it in the camera; after that you can try the recovery process once to gain some confidence.</p>

<p>If that fails, send it to a recovery service, but that will be expensive. You don't want someone to charge you mega dollars to perform something you can easily do yourself just because you are desperate.</p>

[henryp]

<p><a href="http://www.lexar.com">Lexar</a> used to offer Image Rescue free on their site. I don't know if that's still an option, but I've used the program successfully.</p>

<p>Henry Posner<br /><strong>B&H Photo-Video</strong></p>

[daverhaas]

<p>I think both lexar and sandisk have discontinued their "free" recovery software. Last time I needed it both sites redirected me to a Pay program - I could download a free demo version but could not save any images - Wasn't due to a card error - user error on my part - I deleted some photos and in a fit of panick couldn't find them on my hard drive. Checked the card - they were on there (recovered) but eventually figured out I didn't need to recover anyway.</p>

<p>As for running free or any kind of recovery programs - Be aware that they (recovery programs) will sometimes mess with the file structure and move things around if they think it makes sense. I've heard of people (never had it happen to me) that really mucked things up by attempting to run a freeware recovery program on their cards. </p>

<p>If the images are that important to you - I would not mess around. The more I think about it - what John said is probably what has happened - when you reinserted the card in the camera - it tried to create a directory since it didn't find one. Now it has overwritten the original directory and made it unreadable by the computer.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

[sarah_fregosi]

<p>I am willing to pay for a recovery program that will work. If I can do that and avoid paying hundreds of dollars for a service thatd be great! Since I did reinsert it and it tried to create a directory and overwrote the original one, do you think I'll still be able to recover them??? The memory is still being used on the card....so the data is there somewhere.....thank you so much to everyone for trying to help me. I really appreciate it.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>If the camera's operating system (or any other device's operating system) just tried to create a new folder/directory, but you haven't been otherwise writing new data to the card, you should be able recover most of what's there.</p>

[sarah_fregosi]

<p>there was an image taken after the card was put back into the camera....how will that affect it?</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Sarah, it sounds like the original directory was somehow corrupted. If you were able to shoot new images onto the card afterwards, the chance is that the electronics of the card is still fine and the camera created a new directory, pointing to the new image, which is good news because your original image are likely to still be there.</p>

<p>The analogy is like the table of contents of a book is somehow lost and you are unable to find the chapters any more. If you scan through the entire book, you can re-create the table of contents and you will be fine again. Of course I cannot guarantee that your problem is that simple, but it is worth spending some effort to attempt recovery yourself.</p>

[sarah_fregosi]

<p>ok that news made me feel a bit better haha. thank you so much. If only this happened on a personal shoot or a commercial shoot lol. but not someones wedddingg!!!! thank you so much for the help</p>

[fuccisphotos]

<p>Email Bob Bernardo. He's a regular poster here. He is great with that stuff!</p>

[sarah_fregosi]

<p>Hello to everyone that helped me yesterday. I used Prorescue from datarescue.com and I was able to retrieve every single photo that was corrupt and missing and than some!!!! I am so happy about this and I reccomend that program to anyone who may need it. Thank you all for your help I really do appreciate it<br>

Sarah</p>

[juanita_ramirez]

<p>Glad to hear everything worked out alright for you--and without much cost. Card failure is one of the most terrifying things.</p>

<p>If you haven't already, you should take this card out of circulation. Even if it seems like you format it up and everything's fine, in my experience it's very likely to fail again.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Excellent, Sarah I am very glad that it works out for you. Yesterday, my concern was that some not-so-honest recovery service may pray on wedding photographers who have somebody's once-in-a-lifetime images and are desperate to get them back. They could potentially keep your card for a couple of days and charged you, say, $500 as if they had spent a lot of effort to recover your images. And you would probably be grateful to spend that money.</p>

<p>One problem is that if the photographer pulls the card out from the camera too soon while it is still writing the directory; something that simple could corrupt it, although that did not seem to be what Sarah did. I wouldn't use that card for another wedding now, but that card is not necessarily bad. I would test it with casual subjects for a while and see whether the problem recurs.</p>

<p>Once I had a Sandisk CF cards that went bad. It first started acting up with some errors and gradually got worse and worse. I wouldn't use it for anything important anymore and then 2 weeks later it went completely dead.</p>

<p>Finally, as it has already been pointed out earlier, if something like that happens again, do not put the card back into the camera and take more pictures. If the camera cannot find the directory, it will almost for sure create a another one. Any new image you capture can potentially over-write existing images that are still on the card but not visible. Therefore, you could lose some images for good.</p>

[joel rodriguez]

<p>I had problems before with corrupted CF cards. I used Photo Rescue from <a href="http://www.datarescue.com/">www.datarescue.com</a>. Purchased for $29. Worth every penny.</p>