PLEASE HELP - advanced card data recovery needed

C2photo

C2photo

Suspended / Banned
Messages
81
Name
Audrey
Edit My Images
Yes
hey all , ok story is i deleted a few important images from my 4g cf card and need to recover them, i have tried the software card rescrue which i bought online for £30 and this got me back a few but not them all, i have a feeling that i might have over writing the data of the others as i took more pictures after they were deleted, is there no way possible of recovery if this is the case. or r there more advanced card recovery services out there that might be able to get them back? please please help fellow photographers as you know this is a photographers worse nightmare!!!! :'(:bang:
 
thanks chris i kinda thought that mysel but didnt want to believe it lol - and needed a second opinion- but i did also thing there might have been an advanced recovery out there, not sure what to do now then!!! the images arent totally away and i have loads to show my cilent its just there were a few more at the start that they know they got taking and r wondering where they are now!! it was just the first photographs from the session i deleted u see...
 
I think most of us have at some point lost images and it can be really painful. When I lost mine I managed to recover most of them, but when the camera wrote a new folder to the card it destroyed a few images from the start of my shoot that could not be recovered no matter what we tried. Even the most sophisticated data recovery techniques employed by intelligence agencies have a tiny success rate at finding overwritten data and thats from an operating system that is likely to leave a trace. A card won't leave anything behind so it's pretty much impossible to ever recover overwritten data from these. :(
 
i think im just going to be honest with them then - its difficult thou as it was a large family sitting with then ind families being photographed, normally i would just offer to have them come back to te studio but the family that data i lost left to live in new zeland and its just not that handy!!! im going to have to think of something :( thanks everyone for your help :) x
 
Chris Primadona said:
If you have written over the data you deleted with new data you won't be able to recover the images I'm afraid :(
Click to expand...

AP (I think) did a review a while ago on data recovery software, they were able to recover a significant amount of image data from cards that had been over-written. I'll have a look later and see if I can find it.

Either write-off the data or put that card to one side for a while. There are several data recovery specialists that advertise in the back of the photography magazines. Are the images worth a phone call or two?
 
That would b so great Alastair :) I would really appreciate that, aye I feel like it is as I don't want to knock my business name and want no black marks against it. I hate letting people down ( as we all do ) and in this case the family involved are really disappointed cus there's not so many for them to choose from as the other families and plus the fact that they headed away it makes it worse! Will def gav nething a go :) so Ur saying there might b abit of hope? I was stringing words together there and practicing what I was gona tell them. and how to compensate them in someway.
 
for the future

_ never delete images on a card in camera
_ always write to 2 cards if you have 2 slots
 
It would help if you mentioned the make of card as Scandisk do their own recovery card.

Realspeed
 
Alastair said:
AP (I think) did a review a while ago on data recovery software, they were able to recover a significant amount of image data from cards that had been over-written.
Click to expand...

I would be very interested to hear about that technology!

As far as I knew the only way to recover overwritten data is if firstly the images that got lost were saved onto a magnetic storage media, and secondly the use an electron microscope for reading the platter was used, and any ghosting left behind was availible to intelligently reconstruct what might have been there.
 
Last edited:
Chris Primadona said:
I would be very interested to hear about that technology!

As far as I knew the only way to recover overwritten data is if firstly the images that got lost were saved onto a magnetic storage media, and secondly the use an electron microscope for reading the platter was used, and any ghosting left behind was availible to intelligently reconstruct what might have been there.
Click to expand...

It only works because "over-writing" isn't as straight forward as it sounds and recovery is only easy if it hasn't really been over-written (I'm assuming that the OP has just meant to say that they've reused the memory card since deleting the data rather than specifically over-written the exact same sectors on the card). The software looks for the remains of the previous file in the gaps. Unless the card was completely filled, properly formatted and then completely over-written, traces of earlier files will remain.

It's not easy to specifically over-write data files on a memory stick.

Can't find the issue I with the data recovery review yet, got another couple of boxes of old magazines to flick through.
 
Hi

I have some recovery software I could try for you if your willing to send me the card.However I offer no guarantee what so ever it will work. If you cant find an alternative method feel free to PM me and I will give you my postal address.
 
thank u all so much for all ur help :) trez500 thats really kind of you, is it an advanced one you hav? as i downloaded software and it didnt recovery them, well just a few, thats why i was looking to see if there was a more advanced ways of recovery.
 
C2photo said:
thank u all so much for all ur help :) trez500 thats really kind of you, is it an advanced one you hav? as i downloaded software and it didnt recovery them, well just a few, thats why i was looking to see if there was a more advanced ways of recovery.
Click to expand...

Its recovered files from hard drives years old. However as I said there is no guarantee.Its a 2011 version file recovery program. I have pulled back lots of files from computer hard drives. Sometimes works sometimes not.Did you just delete the photo files.
 
ding76uk said:
Just be honest with your client by telling a white lie...
Click to expand...

:cuckoo:

As to the original question, most generally available recovery software will work fine if the data has not been over written. If it has, they do not work so well. In fact if you have the right equipment you could probably recover data after 5 or more overwrites, but that is going to be expensive (unless you have friends in MI5).

Depending on how important the data is, it may be worth contacting data recovery specialist companies.
 
I really don't know where people get the info about recovering overwritten files. If you write over the file you can't recover it. If you write onto the storage medium you MIGHT get it back if you didn't actually overwrite the sectors that the file you want to recover was on. (but it seems the OP has already recovered the non overwritten files already).

Disclaimer: Unless in the last few weeks the technology has somehow been discovered.


Have a read of this...

http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html
 
Chris Primadona said:
If you have written over the data you deleted with new data you won't be able to recover the images I'm afraid :(
Click to expand...

Not totally true, specialists can sometimes recover data thats been overwritten, but it's going to cost (no diy fix) and it may only recover parts of the data, and if it's been used more that twice it's pretty much had it as I understand it
 
contacted http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk...hoto-recovery/ etc... they hav gav me a trial software to download to see if i can recover them and if they show up i then have to purchase the software to get them which is £150!!! worth a try atleast and il see what to do after that, they also mentioned that they wouldnt do nething ne different inlab, which i think he quoted something like nearly £300 madness!!! il see the craic with the software and make a decision after that! thanks everyone for your posts and feedback much appreciated xx
 
swanseamale47 said:
Not totally true, specialists can sometimes recover data thats been overwritten, but it's going to cost (no diy fix) and it may only recover parts of the data, and if it's been used more that twice it's pretty much had it as I understand it
Click to expand...

The military declassification program I used to use wrote alternating 1s and 0s to the media at least 10 times. The media was then usually incinerated just to be on the safe side.

Chris - I get the idea from having been in defence electronics.
 
C2photo said:
contacted http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk...hoto-recovery/ etc... they hav gav me a trial software to download to see if i can recover them and if they show up i then have to purchase the software to get them which is £150!!! worth a try atleast and il see what to do after that, they also mentioned that they wouldnt do nething ne different inlab, which i think he quoted something like nearly £300 madness!!! il see the craic with the software and make a decision after that! thanks everyone for your posts and feedback much appreciated xx
Click to expand...

I think we have this somewhere, never used it as far as I can remember, normal card recover stuffs always worked on customers cards (normally just deleted or formatted though)
 
Hi, It seems till now you have tried many ways to recover your pictures but didn't get it. In this situation I will recommend you to consult any data recovery services expert. They will properly analyse the storage media, But, As you have mentioned your pictures might be overwritten. I want to tell you data recovery is only possible till the time data is not overwritten. But you can consult to expert and can take proper guidance.
http://www.stellardatarecovery.co.uk/
 
swanseamale47 said:
Not totally true, specialists can sometimes recover data thats been overwritten, but it's going to cost (no diy fix) and it may only recover parts of the data, and if it's been used more that twice it's pretty much had it as I understand it
Click to expand...

Oggy said:
The military declassification program I used to use wrote alternating 1s and 0s to the media at least 10 times. The media was then usually incinerated just to be on the safe side.

Chris - I get the idea from having been in defence electronics.
Click to expand...

I would also back up this information. With a caveat.
With movable platter storage, there is the chance of recovering /some/ of the data.

To industries where data is important, even the chance of recovering some of the data is a large risk, requiring destruction of the platters. So you may not get 100%, but even 10% could be enough to risk securities.

On a personal note. I was using a 2.5" 500GB disk for whilst I was on holiday. I wrote over 300GB of images and copies to the disk last year, then formatted it (after copying the data to another device).
This year, I wrote another 400GB of data to the disk.

Then the disk corrupted and was showing as unusable. I ran some software called photorec (so not even a physical investigation of the disk), and recovered over 30k images. 20k of these were actually of last year's data. Around 95% of all of the images that had ever been stored on the device were recovered successfully (I checked by doing checksums for my own interest against the original copies for the two years).

I would advise that if you have items you /cannot risk/ becoming public, that magnetic media is destroyed physically.

On the other hand, if you are in the position of the OP, (or indeed the position I was in), then recovery tools can be used to recover large portions of your data.

You have a CF card, so 'safety' of the card is not necessarily a problem (i.e. head crash is not likely to be a problem), but what you can do is perform a block level copy of the data and perform the analysis on that.

(on moving platter disks, if you have the physical platters, there is scope that calibration of the heads changes over time, and more of ancient data can be recovered).
 
My USB crashed and I had to reformat the card. Although my USB was formatted the SD camera from within the camera wasn't, so I thought I would check it. I downloaded Stellar Photo Recovery, and scanned the SD card. I could see thumbnails of some of the stuff I'd lost (and stuff I'd long since thought deleted).
I now need to buy the full product and hopefully recover them, but before I do, has anyone used this programme and is it succesful? Are the images good resolution like the original or inferior, or just thumbnails?
Anyone help?
 
Jester1970 said:
My USB crashed and I had to reformat the card. Although my USB was formatted the SD camera from within the camera wasn't, so I thought I would check it. I downloaded Stellar Photo Recovery, and scanned the SD card. I could see thumbnails of some of the stuff I'd lost (and stuff I'd long since thought deleted).
I now need to buy the full product and hopefully recover them, but before I do, has anyone used this programme and is it succesful? Are the images good resolution like the original or inferior, or just thumbnails?
Anyone help?
Click to expand...

The thumbnails are stored in the initial parts of the files. There may be corruption that occurs after these parts, you will not know until you have recovered the full image. It will either be a perfect recovery, or a corrupted recovery, it will not be a lower resolution recovery (unless only the thumbnail is un-corrupted)

However, I would recommend again (I cannot force you to use it), the program photorec, it is as likely I would think of recovering your images, and it is free.

I am not affiliated with the program, or any of its associates, but I have used it with sucess, and I know it is used professionaly.
 
Jester1970 said:
My USB crashed and I had to reformat the card. Although my USB was formatted the SD camera from within the camera wasn't, so I thought I would check it. I downloaded Stellar Photo Recovery, and scanned the SD card. I could see thumbnails of some of the stuff I'd lost (and stuff I'd long since thought deleted).
I now need to buy the full product and hopefully recover them, but before I do, has anyone used this programme and is it succesful? Are the images good resolution like the original or inferior, or just thumbnails?
Anyone help?
Click to expand...

Hello, Jester1970 As you have downloaded demo version it is showing you preview of data which it can recover. I know many people who have used Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery software and successfully recovered their data. You can go for this software.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top