Image Retrieval

Location : Wellingborough, Northants

Hey all,

Does anyone know of any good websites for retrieving deleted photos from memory cards? I didn't know that you could do such a thing, but i typed in 'memory card retrieval' on google earlier and got the following results:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGLJ&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=memory+card+retrieval&spell=1

Does anyone know of any good and trustworthy websites for image retrieval, it's just that i'm not sure which to trust as most require you to download software.

Any help would be greatly appreciated :D

Cheers :D

Glen

Admin Location : Bristol, UK

I've used this piece of software to recover files from a Formatted hard drive, so should be able to recover your files.

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

Sadly it isn't freeware, but you can download a trial, run it - If it does find your files then you can purchase it.

Admin Location : East Midlands Spotter Watch Member : Yes

Rescue Pro comes with many Sandisk Compact Flash cards, which is very good.

Also I have tried http://www.recuva.com/ which is from the same people as ccleaner. Which actually recovered several photos from a formatted Card.

Location : Wellingborough, Northants

Thanks for your help guys it is very much appreciated, and I will check these websites out.

Thanks again for the help

Cheers :D

Glen

Admin Location : East Midlands Spotter Watch Member : Yes

I'm currently testing some file recovery software at the moment, as my external hdd has been reformatted to NFTS from FAT32. Wiping 3 years worth of photos, MP3's, websites, Spreadsheets, PDF's, Databases and Word Documents. Annoying thing is I had purchased some new DVD+RW's and some DVD burning software.

I will be posting a software test in the next few days in what has been recovered.

Admin Location : East Midlands Spotter Watch Member : Yes

Ok. As some of you may have heard, my 400gb external HDD was accidently reformatted from FAT32 to NTFS wiping all my disk of its contents. Yes wiped clean, everything gone !!!!!

The main priority was recovering 3 years worth of my photos, especially the 11 day trip to the USA with Jason Grant and Mark Forest.

I approached DATALABS in Tamworth via email stating what happened and the hardware type.
They came back with a quote. £1500 to retrieve my lost data and restore it back on the HDD.

Ouch.....

During that time of awaiting for a reply. I purchased a 500gb external harddrive for less that £55 with 3 day shipping option included from www.misco.co.uk. (Drive actually arrived the following day as order was done at dinner time).

A quick search on some reputable technical support websites, and I found some links to some free software.

1st one is Pandora Recovery - http://www.pandorarecovery.com/
2nd one is recova as listed in the previous post.
3rd one is PC Inspector http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1

1) Pandora Recovery

This recovered over 87,000 images (jpeg, bmp, tif, gif) via the deep surface scan.

This took 6 attempts over 5 days as the program kept crashing every time it found over 20,000 files. I found out why, as the option to record a log (max setting of 5mb) was ticked.

So after unticking the box, I reran the program set to find just images. 2 days later the results appeared.

The images took less than 12 hours to copy over to the new harddrive. However the images have lost their organisation, in terms of name and folder status. The images have been renamed with their cluster name. (Disk space location ID on HDD) and all 87,000+ require to be sorted out into new folders. Also noted is that the exif data was note damaged and remained intact, which is useful for sorting out the photos.

I am now running a search for MS Office files, thus .txt .DOC, .XLS and powerpoint files.

Sadly as this is free software they do not have any options for MS Access files (.mdb) or MS Outlook files in terms of the inbox messages .pst and the .ost files.

Also it is unable to recover HTML files. But it does recover pdf and mp3 files.

2) Recova

This recovered 48,000 photos, most of my MP3's (of which returned their full naming convention and Itunes, Media player etc tags and several Excel spreadsheets and also earlier saved versions, along with Word and Powerpoint files and again also earlier saved versions. No Access, Outlook or webpages were located.

3) PC Inspector

This program was pretty impressive in terms of it's search as it listed images and various types of MS Office files except Outlook and MS Access files. It returned MP'3 files but failed to identify the naming structure of all files. And it also failed to return webpages.

However all the files that it did return where of ZERO size. :scratch:

Conclusion:

As the HDD was reformated from FAT32 to NFTS, I had to resort to using other software to what I had already. (RESCUEPRO from Sandisk, which recovers various files from FAT formatted media).

Pandora came out tops however only certain types of files are supported. Perhaps one day they might update the software to support more types.

I've learned a very important lesson and that is immediately backup your pictures to DVD or Blu-Ray as soon as you have uploaded them to the PC. And not just rely on external HDD's as your sole backup device.

Admin Location : Bristol, UK

Did you manage to recover everything in the end Lee?.

Mike

Admin Location : East Midlands Spotter Watch Member : Yes

Image wise just from Pandora Recovery, I spent over an hour last night scrolling through the thumbnail images in Windows Explorer on the new external harddrive and I have stuff going back to the CBY Enthusiasts Day in 2006, Delta Jets 10th Anniversary, NEC Bikeshow of 2007 and 2008, alot of the USA trip and a recent wedding. I would say probably 95% of my images if not more.

The Access databases I am not too fussed about as they were development databases.

Not too fussed with the websites either.

I have just found another free program, however it does look to good to be true in what it claims it finds, but I am now looking for genuine reviews on it. Drawing a blank at the moment.

http://www.datarecoveryuk.co.uk/software/index.aspx

It's like all these free antivirus and spyware and malware removal tools, there are so many that look genuine, but are actually malicious programs that cause more harm than good.

And without any official reviews it is hard to establish good from bad.

Admin Location : East Midlands Spotter Watch Member : Yes

UPDATE:

Downloaded the newest version of RECUVA and it has found 87,335 images in less than 12 hours.

So for image retrieval this is now equal with Pandora Recovery.

Admin Location : East Midlands Spotter Watch Member : Yes

New version of Recuva is now available and is able to restore corrupted images from CF cards.

Just this minute recovered 847 images of 2mb each in size within 20 minutes