[porphyrin]

Eek. I need help!

I recently got back from a vacation where I took many pictures. There were too many for the memory card (Sandisk 256mb), so I routinely downloaded them to my laptop via the "removable disk" drive. When I got home, I wanted to move them all to my home computer (which is XP, just like my laptop), so I put the memory card (which still had a number of pictures on it) in the laptop and selected the entire folder of pictures on the laptop, cut it, and tried pasting it to the card. I knew the folder was too large, but I thought it would just fill up and I could move them all in a few trips.

I pressed "cancel" after a message came up telling me the card was full, and then I pulled the memory card out from the laptop. I thought everything was fine. I have the same removable drive on my home computer, so I inserted the memory card, but nothing happened (usually a message comes up asking me what I want to do with the disk). I opened My Computer and tried to open the drive (which happens to be F on my computer), but it just said "Please insert disk into drive F." The card can't be read by anything -- none of three computers, nor the digital camera I had been using.

I downloaded some programs that are supposed to recover lost or corrupted files (Photorescue was one of them), but I got errors. The programs can recognize the drive, but it says that there is more than 2000gb of files on the memory card, which there certainly is not...and I can't even *begin* a search for corrupted files, because it claims that there is not enough room on the C drive to store all of those 2000gb of files.

Is there *anything* I can try that will work? These pictures are very dear to me. I have thought of trying to use the photo recovery programs to recover the pictures from the laptop itself...is that in any way possible? Is there some secret cache of all the files that have been on the computer hidden somewhere, sort of like the temporary internet files?

Help would be greatly appreciated. I have a feeling I screwed it up, but I would like to hope for the best for now...

[mrss]

Are the photos still on the laptop or did you delete them? If you deleted them, are they still available in the recycle bin? Get the laptop files first. If you're successful in getting the laptop pics, burn them to CD's.

If the laptop pics are gone, you might be able to use recovery software like Convars PC Inspector Smart Recovery. It works on hard drives. You need an external drive though to be the destination for any files that the software finds. If you try to use the C drive, it will be overwriting the erased data you want to recover. Probably the best way to recover is to remove the laptop drive and scan it on another PC. Certainly not very easy and maybe best done by a service facility and not cheap either.

After all the pics are back, you can probably just reformat your card. and reuse it

Good luck.

[vicks]

Originally Posted by mrss

Are the photos still on the laptop or did you delete them? If you deleted them, are they still available in the recycle bin? Get the laptop files first. If you're successful in getting the laptop pics, burn them to CD's.

If the laptop pics are gone, you might be able to use recovery software like Convars PC Inspector Smart Recovery. It works on hard drives. You need an external drive though to be the destination for any files that the software finds. If you try to use the C drive, it will be overwritting the erased data you want to recover. Probably the best way to recover is to remove the laptop drive and scan it on another PC. Certainly not very easy and maybe best done by a service facility and not cheap either.

After all the pics are back, you can probably just refornat your card. and reuse it

Good luck.

if the photos are still on the lap top, perhaps you can put them on a thumb drive and move them to the pc.
vicks

[porphyrin]

The pictures are definitely not on the laptop anymore. I cut and pasted the folder and after I clicked cancel and removed the memory card...well, I don't know where they went. It might be that they're on the card but it is too corrupted and cannot be read, because after I clicked cancel there were quite a few pictures left on the laptop that the memory card had no room for. (I later successfully moved these to my other computer using a different memory card.)

Would reformatting the card erase the pictures completely, if they are on there? And how do I go about reformatting it? The computers still won't recognize that the drive is there.

Thanks for the help.

[slipe]

Deleted (or cut) files on your laptop hard drive stay there until they are overwritten. A delete or cut just tells the file system they aren’t there and the space is available. If you haven’t used the laptop since your incident your photos are probably still on the drive and can probably be recovered with recovery software. Even if you have used the laptop there could be recoverable images that haven’t been overwritten.

The memory card retrieval after a format has a lot to do with the camera. Some cameras do a fast format of just the FAT and the individual files can still be recovered. Some do a complete low level format and overwrite everything on the card. It is more common to have the files still available. If you can get the computer to format the card use FAT and not FAT32. I think the computer does a fast format but I’ve never formatted a card in the computer.

How you would go about formatting the card if neither the computers nor camera will recognize the card is problematic. You might try another device that takes SD cards or a friend’s camera.

You probably need a new card. I found a 150X 2Gb SD card online for $22 delivered. It turned out to be faster than my Sandisk Ultra II card. It is probably more memory than you need, but it might allow you to extract the files found by recovery software without requiring another device.

[porphyrin]

Thanks so much! I downloaded PC Inspector smart recovery, and although it is going VERY slowly (it has been running 24 hours and is only 3% done....I am using an ipod as the external drive because it's the biggest thing I have), it is bringing the pictures back, one at a time.

As for the speed, is it *because* I'm using an ipod? I was using a jump drive before, but it's only 256mb and filled up after about 50 pictures. I tried to remove them and scan again, but the same pictures came up, and lots of them weren't even from the vacation I wanted. Is there a way to fix that, or speed up the scan for the ipod?

Also, there are several pictures that have been found but can't actually be seen (no preview available), and obviously I don't know what they are. Is there any way to find out?

Thanks a lot again...I honestly thought I'd never get these pictures back. But I'm willing to wait a couple days at this speed to get them back.

[slipe]

I have no idea why it is going so slowly. And having the same pictures recover again after you download them to the computer and wipe the drive makes no sense to me. If you are lucky you just lost the thumbnails for the photos you can’t see. There is no way to generate the thumbs again until you recover the images.

[porphyrin]

Yeah, it seems odd to me too. I didn't mention that I'm scanning the C drive and that a lot of other pictures that have simply been on the hard drive at one point or another (or are still on there) are showing up...I've only got about 20 from the vacation itself.

So, I thought I would ask if it would be reasonable to try and just get the pictures from the card itself. Like I said in my first post, with other recovery programs, it would recognize the disk but claim it was 2000+ gigabytes and thus not be able to even start... But smart recovery seems a little better than the other programs, and so I have two questions: 1) Will it recognize a drive that the computer doesn't? (the other ones did) and 2) Should I cancel my current scan of the C drive and try this? I really don't want to go through the process of getting the same pictures again for 24 hours because it is so slow...

[slipe]

Anything you do on the computer is likely to overwrite more files since the file system shows the space as available. I’ve never been in your situation so I can’t really advise you on how to proceed. I would probably try to use PC Inspector on the card.