Memory card disaster - recoverable?
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Memory card disaster - recoverable?
Went to a wedding at the weekend and took lots of photos. The bride's mother asked to borrow the cameras memory card so that she could download the photos to her ipad. I gave her the memory card clearly stating that I knew nothing about ipads or what she was attempting to do other than in principle. (I have an ipad myself but do not dig too deeply into it).
She had a 'brick' to interface the memory card to the ipad and plugged the 'brick' in and then plugged the memory card into the brick. She seemed pleased that the contents of the memory card appeared on her ipad and proceeded to 'tick' the wedding photos she wanted to transfer to the ipad. The display on her ipad was also showing my holiday snaps but she obviously did not want those so did not 'tick' them.
Some short time later she said nothing had been transferred to the ipad and could I check the memory card in the camera? I did notice during the transfer process that she was plugging the memory stick in and out of the 'brick' in a somewhat willy nilly fashion which as we all know is not a wise thing to do. I checked the memory card in the camera and discovered all the photos of the wedding were no longer present. Oh dear, tears from the bride's wife. All that was left on the memory card were my holiday snaps that she did not want.
It occurs to me that:
1. The wedding photos (which are imported to the ipad rather than copied or transferred using the bride's Mum's software app) may well be on the ipad but may be in a folder not readily accessible?
2. The photos may still be on the memory stick and may be recoverable ?
3. The ipad has very limited operational capability to poke around it and see whats what.
4. Perhaps I need a (hopefully free app) to be able to recover the complete contents of the memory stick?
5. I have made sure that I have taken no further photos on the memory stick after this 'incident' in case the original contents may become irrecoverable.
6. I have a windows laptop into which I can plug the memory card if windows is a maybe a better way to try and recover the situation.
Grateful as ever for any team thoughts. The bride's mother is my sister in law and she is distraught as what she has done.
She had a 'brick' to interface the memory card to the ipad and plugged the 'brick' in and then plugged the memory card into the brick. She seemed pleased that the contents of the memory card appeared on her ipad and proceeded to 'tick' the wedding photos she wanted to transfer to the ipad. The display on her ipad was also showing my holiday snaps but she obviously did not want those so did not 'tick' them.
Some short time later she said nothing had been transferred to the ipad and could I check the memory card in the camera? I did notice during the transfer process that she was plugging the memory stick in and out of the 'brick' in a somewhat willy nilly fashion which as we all know is not a wise thing to do. I checked the memory card in the camera and discovered all the photos of the wedding were no longer present. Oh dear, tears from the bride's wife. All that was left on the memory card were my holiday snaps that she did not want.
It occurs to me that:
1. The wedding photos (which are imported to the ipad rather than copied or transferred using the bride's Mum's software app) may well be on the ipad but may be in a folder not readily accessible?
2. The photos may still be on the memory stick and may be recoverable ?
3. The ipad has very limited operational capability to poke around it and see whats what.
4. Perhaps I need a (hopefully free app) to be able to recover the complete contents of the memory stick?
5. I have made sure that I have taken no further photos on the memory stick after this 'incident' in case the original contents may become irrecoverable.
6. I have a windows laptop into which I can plug the memory card if windows is a maybe a better way to try and recover the situation.
Grateful as ever for any team thoughts. The bride's mother is my sister in law and she is distraught as what she has done.
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Stop reading/writing to the card immediately
Try using a software package such as this one Free SD Card Data Recovery - Download
with the card plugged into a normal reader into a normal PC
I often find you can recover nearly all the files. The problem is if they've been deleted AND the drive has been written to since - in that case maybe not
Try using a software package such as this one Free SD Card Data Recovery - Download
with the card plugged into a normal reader into a normal PC
I often find you can recover nearly all the files. The problem is if they've been deleted AND the drive has been written to since - in that case maybe not
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Another program is "Recuva" from the CCleaner people:
In either case you'll need sufficient space on another drive (the Windows laptop?) to send the recovered images to. You must NOT attempt to save them to the memory card! If you are successful, I would treat the existing card as scrap - get a new one or a USB thumb drive to transfer the pictures back to the bride. And make a point of choosing "Copy" when doing this, rather than "Move" - that way you still have them safe on the laptop!
In either case you'll need sufficient space on another drive (the Windows laptop?) to send the recovered images to. You must NOT attempt to save them to the memory card! If you are successful, I would treat the existing card as scrap - get a new one or a USB thumb drive to transfer the pictures back to the bride. And make a point of choosing "Copy" when doing this, rather than "Move" - that way you still have them safe on the laptop!
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Recuva works very well however be prepared to wait a while for it to do it's business. I think it even has a default option to scan removable media now which saves you applying filters manually.
(For future reference - these 'bricks' tend not to work very well on iPad as the OS isn't really designed with copying onto the device in mind. Android is less of a problem as it's a standard USB interface and a version of Linux - you can even plug keyboards in if you wanted!)
(For future reference - these 'bricks' tend not to work very well on iPad as the OS isn't really designed with copying onto the device in mind. Android is less of a problem as it's a standard USB interface and a version of Linux - you can even plug keyboards in if you wanted!)
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There is an option on the iPad to delete photos from the original host device as photos are copied across. The deletion process actually only deletes the first character of the file name. So long as nothing has been written to the card since, various programs can restore the file names and hopefully allow some if not all of the images to be recovered.
Immediately copy all the images to another device for storage once you have used the recovery software.
For future reference, don't ever let memory cards be used in someone elses device without first operating the write protect switch on the memory card unless you are completely happy with them writing or deleting information on your card. Even a simple copy process can write data regarding the last time the file was accessed and corrupt the card when you go to try and use it in your own device again.
If possible use a wireless transfer method such as wifi or bluetooth to copy images between devices.
Never trust anyone with the original and only copy of a file!
Immediately copy all the images to another device for storage once you have used the recovery software.
For future reference, don't ever let memory cards be used in someone elses device without first operating the write protect switch on the memory card unless you are completely happy with them writing or deleting information on your card. Even a simple copy process can write data regarding the last time the file was accessed and corrupt the card when you go to try and use it in your own device again.
If possible use a wireless transfer method such as wifi or bluetooth to copy images between devices.
Never trust anyone with the original and only copy of a file!
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Yeah, the SD card is probably FAT-formatted, in which case recovering deleted files is usually easy so long as they haven't been overwritten.
But removing it while it's in use is a really bad idea.
But removing it while it's in use is a really bad idea.
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Ok. Thank you all so much for your suggestions. I have now successfully recovered the pictures using 'Recuva'. I did try the first suggested program and although it did find the deleted files I had great difficulty in registering the product (otherwise it would not work).
So thanks to all of you for your helpful suggestions and no doubt the bride's mother will be very happy indeed.
In self defence (!), she did seem to know what she was doing that's why I let her do it in the first place! Of course removing the memory card during the process was an extremely bad idea but we are talking 'housewife' here not a computer nerd and to people like that if it doesn't say 'don't pull me out until I say so' they see no reason why not to.
The card was Fat formatted and I could see about 10 corrupted images that were not recoverable. It did seem as though the first character of each picture file was deleted - as predicted.
I have made a back up of the recovered files. I've also used the wireless transfer method before, but given this was transferring to an iPad which seems, as a product, to have very little user interoperability to select files/destinations etc it did not immediately come to mind as a method.
Thank you all once again.
So thanks to all of you for your helpful suggestions and no doubt the bride's mother will be very happy indeed.
In self defence (!), she did seem to know what she was doing that's why I let her do it in the first place! Of course removing the memory card during the process was an extremely bad idea but we are talking 'housewife' here not a computer nerd and to people like that if it doesn't say 'don't pull me out until I say so' they see no reason why not to.
The card was Fat formatted and I could see about 10 corrupted images that were not recoverable. It did seem as though the first character of each picture file was deleted - as predicted.
I have made a back up of the recovered files. I've also used the wireless transfer method before, but given this was transferring to an iPad which seems, as a product, to have very little user interoperability to select files/destinations etc it did not immediately come to mind as a method.
Thank you all once again.
given this was transferring to an iPad which seems, as a product, to have very little user interoperability to select files/destinations etc
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Pandora file recovery software is free and very good. I have used it to recover damaged photo files a few times.
Save the recovered files to another drive.
Save the recovered files to another drive.
Those two statements definitively don't go together! 
I'm sure you've learned your lesson, but please, please, don't ever hand your memory card to anyone again before you've made a backup!
I'm sure you've learned your lesson, but please, please, don't ever hand your memory card to anyone again before you've made a backup!
I had an issue with the SD card from our trail camera, caused by my finger trouble on the mouse pad thingy on a slow netbook pc. I downloaded/installed the recommended FREE SD Card Recovery programme suggested in post #2 which chuntered away for some minutes, declared 300 recoverable files but then said I had to buy something to actually recover the files.
I undeleted the FREE thingy and installed Recova. This found 168 deleted files but after trying only 84 could be recovered. It then listed 168 files in the new temporary directory and I'm not sure which it thinks it managed to fix and which it didn't. In the end, non of the recovered files would play.
I think that it may be a filename issue, all of the recovered files start with an underscore symbol. Removing this has made some files play.
I undeleted the FREE thingy and installed Recova. This found 168 deleted files but after trying only 84 could be recovered. It then listed 168 files in the new temporary directory and I'm not sure which it thinks it managed to fix and which it didn't. In the end, non of the recovered files would play.
I think that it may be a filename issue, all of the recovered files start with an underscore symbol. Removing this has made some files play.
I spoke too soon. The underscore does need to be removed but that doesn't fix all of the files. They are all .avi files, I notice that some of them have a play time in the column of the detailed directory, some don't. All have sensible file size information and sensible time/date stamp info, just the play time column is empty in the files that don't play. Error message suggests file type or codec type is not supported.
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(We had hundreds of additional pictures of the wedding on my wife's mobile phone.)
I do not know Pandora and will have a look. Think it is not for OSX.
Prosoft's Data Rescue and Alsoft DiskWarrior are both very good and can be found free on "Grey sites".
I do not encourage or condone such things and pay stupid amounts for software, but merely state that they may be acquired.
With any such recovery program I find it best to run overnight as they take a huge amount of time.
Prosoft's Data Rescue and Alsoft DiskWarrior are both very good and can be found free on "Grey sites".
I do not encourage or condone such things and pay stupid amounts for software, but merely state that they may be acquired.
With any such recovery program I find it best to run overnight as they take a huge amount of time.
The main reason I detest the things.
For instance ... I would like to send photographs "backwards" to an SD card, I can load them on but don't seem to be able to send others back ? Not interested in iCloud, Sharing, and all that other cr*p, I seem only to be able to slowly e-mail them all to myself to a "proper" computer, after which "I'm In Charge Again."
I've also got a Kingston gadget - thanks to the PPrUne contributor who suggested it to me ! - that allows me to read a USB flash drive, i.e. the one that I have all my passwords on (shush ), but doesn't allow me to edit anything on that stick, so when I change a password away from home I have to remember it and edit the stick when I get home to a PC. Better than nothing tho'.
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It's a bit late now but all the SD cards I have seen have a Write Protect (Lock) switch on the top left side. If lending your card to someone make sure you have Write Protect enabled so they can't inadvertently delete your data. If it was a MicroSD card then the SD adaptors also have a write protect switch on them as well.
I would like to send photographs "backwards" to an SD card, I can load them on but don't seem to be able to send others back ? Not interested in iCloud, Sharing, and all that other cr*p, I seem only to be able to slowly e-mail them all to myself to a "proper" computer, after which "I'm In Charge Again."