Recovering Pics Off a Compact Flash Card

[HankScorpio]

So I accidently clicked the "Format" function on my Rebel XT, effectively erasing the entire card. I was checking to see how much memory was left and had no idea clicking "format" would do such a thing. Most of the pics were backed up but I lost a few. Is there any way to recover these?

[coreyb]

i'm gonna go with a "no" on this one but maybe there's a genius out there who knows better...

[coolcheech]

Yes. I was on vacation and one of my memory cards got corrupted and I couldn't retrieve anything from it. I found a program that recovers damaged files, and I was able to get probably over 85% of the photos back.
Here's a link to the company that makes the program: http://www.imagerecall.com/.

There's a ton of other software out there, but I picked this one and was happy with the results. I used this years ago though, so I don't know what else is out there now.

[Eldo]

Rescue Pro works well. It's often a free download when you buy certain SanDisk memory cards.

[Huck_Schmuck]

I think you could get them back if you had erased them, I suspect that formatting actual got rid of them forever. Hope not for you, good luck.

[HankScorpio]

I downloaded Photoshop support recovery program that claims it can recover pics from a formated card. We'll see if it works.

[HankScorpio]

If anyone else is dumb enough to do this, download this http://www.photo-saver.com/recover/ and it'll recover your pics.

[RShea]

i'm gonna go with a "no" on this one but maybe there's a genius out there who knows better...

Wrong answer-unless you continue to use the card... if you stop using it then you should be able to recover with good software or sending it to someone that knows what to do.

To the Original poster get a free download Smart Recovery from PC Inspector
as a starting point to evaluate what it can find.

http://www.pcinspector.de/SmartRecov...htm?language=1

It takes only a few seconds to format the card because all it is doing is initializing the directory and beginning of the card not writing all the card to blank it out- all the data is still there unless you continue to use the card and overwrite with new pictures.

[MnO]

A format in the camera only takes away the adresses to the photos. The actual data of the photos is still stored on the memory card, just like RShea says, until you put something on the same adress. You can, however, also make a full format, which means actually replacing the data with empty space. But to do that you need to make a format in a card reader, and not in the camera.

[coreyb]

A format in the camera only takes away the adresses to the photos. The actual data of the photos is still stored on the memory card, just like RShea says, until you put something on the same adress. You can, however, also make a full format, which means actually replacing the data with empty space. But to do that you need to make a format in a card reader, and not in the camera.

ahh. very interesting. makes sense and good to know.

[Sh4ft]

For the DIY (dorky) types, I have seen good results with this free software:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

[MadPatSki]

Bump...that was 2 years ago.

Anything new out there?

My memory card was zapped when my computer crashed during the download. It contained the whole West Virginia drive down for Sandy powder. Day one was on my ski partner laptop, but the evening shots and next day at White Grass were lost.

Any pointers, advice, comments, software to try the retrieve most of them. An awesome TR is dependent on it. Thanks.

Madpat, totally pissed by digital technology when stuff like this happens.