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Photography: Think Simpler

How I Recovered Three Months Worth of Images After Multiple Card Formats

with 13 comments

Imagine being on a very big shoot (like a wedding) and accidentally formatting your memory card. Though most of us are more careful than that, it could accidentally happen. Or, you could erase images that you didn’t want to but did without pay attention. So how would you be able to recover them?

Situation 1

I was Facebook messaged by a girl I met for coffee recently asking me for a photo that I had shot of her. I told her that I didn’t really like it at all and that I deleted. In fact, I really did; and it was a total bummer. But I also realized that I had deleted images off the card that I actually could perhaps add to my portfolio. So I went on a quest looking for software to do it for me. I had known about some free software that did it, but I had decided that it was about time that I go further.

After some research and reading online, I stumbled across Remo Software, who has an excellent Photo Recovery product for an affordable price.

So in order to get it working, I needed a card reader. The reason why is because the software didn’t detect my Canon 5D Mk II when I plugged it in due to EOS Utility taking over. After borrowing a friend’s reader and going through the recovery process, I was pleasantly surprised.

Not only was I able to recover my RAW images at nearly their full size, but I was also able to recover images as far back as three months back. Suddenly, I started seeing image that I had shot around my grandfather’s passing. It was like nostalgia had just hit me as I scrolled through an album of older images that I had shot.

In the end though, I ended up finding the images and giving them to the girl.

What amazed me more though is the fact that I format my CF cards at least twice a week. So that means:

3 months = approximately 12 weeks.

12 weeks x 2 formats = 24 different card formats

Despite constant formatting of my CF card, the software was still able to recover my images.

Situation 2

This situation is much more serious. A co-worker was shooting an event in Central Park and had encountered problem with his CF card. For some odd reason, his Macbook stop recognizing it. He tried many different options, and it seems as if the only thing that saved him was to format the card. In formatting the card, he lost all the work that he did and that he needed.

Being a good friend, I took the card from him and in under a half hour I was able to recover months of images for him.

Using Remo

Using Remo Recover is surprisingly simple; but there are features that I haven’t even used or needed to use for my needs. Mostly, I’ve just needed to recover images off of a card.

The software is extremely straight forward if you read the directions when they are prompted. You can recover deleted photos, lost photos, etc. The software will scan your card and then later on ask you what file types you want to recover. In my case, they are CR2 files. The program is smart enough to recognize most RAW file types, and therefore can save you in a situation like this.

Depending on how much information you want to recover, it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours in my experience. The scanning and recovery time varies based on the size of your card and the types of files you want to recover. That means that in practice, if you want to recover HD video and RAW files off of your card, prepare to go make yourself a sandwich or two and sit back while waiting for the software to recover your lost media.

Is it For Everyone?

To be honest, the software is not for everyone. It’s for those that need to recover images and it’s a great tool for professionals to have as extra insurance. Many manufacturers such as SanDisk have their own data recovery software on their websites that are free to use. Free software have their limitations though and may not necessarily be anywhere as powerful as paid software such as Remo.

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Written by Chris Gampat

October 20th, 2011 at 12:54 am

Posted in Learn

Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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  • Anonymous

    The formats were what us IT nerds calls a “quick format.”  The file system metadata is wiped clean but the actual data isn’t overwritten as part of the format process.  Any images that have not been overwritten by subsequent writes will be recoverable indefinitely.

    • Jivo Deiga

      Yes, that’s true that data is there to grab. However, after formatting, the metadata does not hold any information about the whereabouts of the file. I guess the software is looking for the unique file signature of the specified file type and must be having some specialized  algorithms designed to pick the file in single piece, which is commendable given the issue of fragmentation these days with drives..

      • Anonymous

        It’s been a LONG time since I’ve used a disk sector editor, but back in the olden days (and probably still today), at the end of each disk sector was a pointer to the location of the next relevant sector.   The recovery program needed to only find the first sector of the file.  Then it could follow the chain to the end.  Fragmentation didn’t matter.

      • Anonymous

        What do you mean by the metadata does not hold any information about the whereabouts of the file? It’s coming from the CF card.

        • Jivo Deiga

          When a file is deleted, the metadata (NTFS) or the FAT table (FAT) removes the entry of the file, when you format a drive (CF, Flash Card or any other storage device) you are wiping the complete table of content (Including the metadata). Now, with new table of content you get the completely empty drive and when you save any file you actually overwrite your previous data. (rchrd881)  Even if you are able to get fie signature, you will not get the information about the chunks of the file spread all over the drive in blocks / clusters due to fragmentation, because EOF or the BOF information is not written within the file, that is metadata is created to know the location of those chunks. That’s why I said this software is really good if you are saying after several formats you were able to recover your files.

        • Jivo Deiga

          Also, the metadata in my reference is file allocation used in NTFS, not the the metadata of any RAW photo :)

          • Anonymous

            Thanks

    • Anonymous

      Hi Richard,

      Thanks for the comments. Believe it or not, I got the metadata back. Pretty cool, huh?

  • http://profiles.google.com/sckortyman spoorthy vemula

    Nice backround. Whats it say?

  • Anonymous
  • http://www.recoversdata.com/ Recovers data

    great idea recover to delete photos  its very helpful i am also using it and it has great result and  more benefit for us i shared this blog to my friend thanks for sharing.

  • Anonymous

    I am SO glad I remembered reading this post! I settled in to edit a full card of photos tonight, only to find that both computer and phone were demanding I format the card. I downloaded Remo, and it recovered the full set…over 900 RAW files. Whew. 

  • Anonymous

    I am SO glad I remembered reading this post! I settled in to edit a full card of photos tonight, only to find that both computer and phone were demanding I format the card. I downloaded Remo, and it recovered the full set…over 900 RAW files. Whew.