recovering deleted or corrupt images

[woody64]

I need help. My DS (8) accidentally dropped my Canon A530 while we were at the Packers vs. Cardinals game. Lense is messed up but I had purchased the protection plan so not worried about the camera.

When I hooked up the 1 GB ScanDisk memory card to my computer it showed the first few photos then scrambled to some gobbly gook. Now I can't find any photos. It shows several folders with weird symbols as names and can't read anything.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

 

[ukcatfan]

Do a search on this subject because it has come up a number of times and there were some people that had success. It usually involved a recovery program to help. The card might be toast for using again though. I also have to ask if you are using the camera to try to get the pics off, or if you are using a card reader. If it is through the camera, that could be the problem.

On another note, I have to question why someone from Chicago was at a Packers game. You might want to keep that information private. That could be dangerous. Unless you went just to cheer against the Packers. Just kidding. I have been a Bears fan since the early 80s.

Kevin

 

[woody64]

Kevin,

Thanks for the fast reply. I went on ScanDisk's website and they have a program I will try and use.

As far as the Packer game, my SIL used to work at Lambeau so my kids became fans after she gave us a private tour including walking out the players tunnel. We are more Favre fans as he seems to enjoy playing the game rather than making money. It was a beautiful day, Packers won, Favre 1st "Lambeau Leap" ever, etc. I just wanted my boys (11 & 8) to say they saw a HOF quarterback play.

I see you are a UK fan. I went to KU so I'm a Jayhawk. We'll see what happens come BB season.

Oh yeah, how 'bout them Bears last night!

 

[ukcatfan]

We won't get back to the glory days until we get rid of Tubby. He is just no Ricky P. I used to live in Louisville, so that was always interesting when UK played UofL. Talk about a city divided. There are a lot of UK fans in Louisville, but not many UofL fans in Lexington.

I am still trying to figure out that Miami game.

Good luck with the pics. Let us know how it turns out.

Kevin

 

[allyn]

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

 

[Groucho]

We won't get back to the glory days until we get rid of Tubby. He is just no Ricky P. I used to live in Louisville, so that was always interesting when UK played UofL. Talk about a city divided. There are a lot of UK fans in Louisville, but not many UofL fans in Lexington.

And here I thought that he liked British cats or something?

Shows you how much I follow sports............. I don't even know how football is played.

 

[woody64]

Good News-I found the pictures!

Allyn-I tried this but it didn't work. Thanks for the help.

I finally went to the SanDisk website. They had some software I could demo to see if it could find the missing photos. It worked so then I had to buy ($40) the downloadable real version to actually recover the photos. Happy to say all but 1 photo was recovered!

Thanks for everyones help.

 

[TwingleMum]

I have a HP photsmart 5MP digitial camara. It seems that it takes a long time between shots so I can't shot pictures quickly one after the other. Any suggestions?? What am I doing wrong???

 

[Steve's Girl]

Dangerous question! I had the same frustrations with my digital P & S. I am now the proud owner of a new DSLR. Be careful what you ask!

However, there are a few things you may be able to do to speed up your camera a little bit - try turning the preview off (your camera shows a preview of your last shot on the LCD). A faster memory card may help, but be sure your camera is capable of writing that fast or the card will be a waste of money. If your camera has a sports mode, try that too.

Beyond that, you may need to cope or start shoppin'! If your camera is more than a year old, the newer P & S cameras are quite a bit faster.

 

[jann1033]

had same problem a yr ago and also same solution( dslr) but a few things i did was try to time my shots , had the shutter 1/2 depressed before i was ready to take the photo etc. ie , the straw that broke the camera's back was trying to take photos of my granddaughter going down a slide...i ended up prefocusing before she started and kept the shutter 1/2 depressed till the moment before i thought she'd be where i wanted then pressed it and took about 20 photos ( and her going down the slide umpteen times )that way...was a giant giant pain but worked a few times( see my signature photo, that's one of them)
otherwise, make sure your batteries are fresh, don't use a flash. if you look on dpreviews or steves' digicam the ususally tell you the shutter times in the reviews
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/
http://www.steves-digicams.com/hardware_reviews.html

 

[ukcatfan]

Read some reviews on your specific model to make sure that yours is consistent with the reviews. If it is, then the only way to improve is to upgrade. If yours seems slower than what the reviewer experienced and you are still under warranty, then you might have a defective unit and should send it in for repairs. The most likely situation is that your model is just not capable and you will need to upgrade.

HP is good at many things, but they have never really scored any class leading cameras. Look at brands like Canon, Fuji, Pentax, Nikon, Sony, and Panasonic. Always read some reviews and actually use the camera before buying one. It may be great on paper, but feel awkward in your hands.

Kevin

 

[TwingleMum]

Thanks everyone!! The camara was a gift from my DH and it is my first digitial camara. I probably will upgrade in a few years to a Canon but for now I need to stick with what I got.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I had an HP 3MP for years and never had any problems at all. In fact, I loved that camera. I got a new HP printer a few months ago and it came as a bundle with a 5MP HP camera. I experienced the same problems you're describing with it. It also ate up batteries like no tomorrow. I missed a lot of good shots at WDW in October and almost chucked it into World Showcase Lagoon, LOL. I got a new camera last month, went with a Canon. Sorry. Found out after the fact my BIL had the same camera and same problems. Good luck.

 

[Anewman]

If you are using Flash, better(higher amped) batteries will help with recyle time. A good set of Nimhs will be night and day vs durcell/engergizers.

 

[jann1033]

the hp r817 shutter between pics is supposed to be 1.2 seconds without flash, 2 seconds with , the r 707 is roughly the same...the 945 is 5 seconds between shots , 935 shot to shot is 3 seconds with no flash...if any of these are yours and the time is way different i'd take it back if it's under warrenty or see about getting it fixed

 

[Golf4food]

It seems that some pictures we had on our SD card and copied over to our hard drive aren't showing up and have gone AWOL. The other photos are available and we did not erase the SD card, which seems to work fine. Is there an easy - or complicated - way to recover those photos? They are very important - pictures of our first house, moving in, remodelling, etc.

Help!

 

[SharonLowe]

ImageRescue (by Lexar) does pretty well at recovering images from memory cards, even when the cards have been formatted. But, if you haven't erased the card, can't you just re-copy them to your HD??

There are a number of image rescue programs out there - sandisk makes one too. It is a good idea to have at least one available for these types of situations.

 

[Groucho]

If they're still on the SD card, then can't you just copy them over again?

Check the Recycle Bin to see if they accidentally ended up there... if not, then they're either still on your hard drive or they were deleted and the bin was emptied (or full and the old stuff got pushed off.)

Try searching your whole hard drive for one of the filenames - if you know the pictures afterwards, you can probably guess one of the missing ones since they're generally sequentially named. I'll assume you're using WinXP, which has a junky file search, but it should work for this. Search all your drive letters that correspond to a hard drive. You may also want to go in the lower left, expand "more advanced options", and check the box for "search hidden files and folders".

If it's still not there, you might need to use a file recovery program. (There are ones specifically for pictures but that's just marketing - a picture is a file like any other on your PC, no different whatsoever.) There's many and most have trials that will show you what you CAN recover, but the more you use your PC, the more likely it is that the location where they existed will be overwritten, rendering it unrecoverable.

 

[thejollyfinn]

If you're attaching your camera directly to your computer via a USB cord to upload your images from your SD card, then maybe you should consider buying a SD card reader instead.
I found that if I have tons of pictures on my 2Gb SD card, my SD card reader copies the files faster and I've never lost any in the process.

Examples:
(June 2006) 1400+ European photos copied over in one sitting through my Card reader without a single losted picture.

(October 2006) 700+ Disney photos - same results

Hope this helps and Good Luck!

 

[Golf4food]

A little more info:

The pics were on the SD card and had been downloaded to the PC, but the SD card had not been formatted as we still have other photos on it that we haven't saved to the PC because we ran out of space on that HD. I opened a Flickr account and began uploading photos, and ran into some file size limit for the month when trying to upload the photos in question, and now I can find them on Flickr, on the HD, or on the SD card. They've just vanished - but I never deleted them.

I'm not a moron - I didn't forget that they should still exist on the SD card... But they aren't there...