Inadvertently removed the CF card during the image offload process, and formatted the card. Not all the images had downloaded to the hardrive. Earlier, I read on FM of a similar mistake by another FMer. Others offered several suggestions for software for successfully retrieving these images. I've searched FM but apparently have used the wrong search terms. I will very much appreciate help with finding the FM link or any suggestion for software to retrieve the images off a CF card. Thanks.

Just get a image recovery program and have it search the card. As long as you haven't rewritten files to it, they should be able to be recovered. I use the sandisk one that comes with extreme cards.

JohnBrose: Thanks, will give it a try. Haven't written anything else to the card. On road now, headed for Zion N. P, if the air temperature rises above freezing. Hope I can bring back the images.

Try Recuva, it's free and has worked pretty well for me in the past. I originally tested it by shooting test images, formatting the card, shooting a few more then trying the software.
Best,
Andy

www.recuva.com

AndyKellett: Thanks for tip. I may have to try it, too. The recovery software from Sandisk took about 3 hours to scan an 8 gigabyte CF card. The software found the 83 files, and saved them to the hardrive, yet CS4 could not open the saved, recovered files. Maybe I did something to affect the outcome. Again, thanks.

Took some sunset pictures with storm clouds over the Nevada desert. Hope to recover them.

I did essentially the same thing today, used Stellar Phoneix Photo Recovery, ended up costing me £30 but it was fast, and it worked. You can use the free trial to actually see what it's capable of recovering, then purchase it if it works. It got back all 300 of my RAWs, around 5 of them were damaged (had white stripes on the sides) but other than that, all perfect.

richhrly: Thanks for suggestion and description. I may have to try that recovery software, if the other two fail to perform.

What a relief you must have felt on getting back those 300 images!

I formatted an SD card once, and bought the Undelete program, but I could not recover them even though I hadn't written anything on the card after I formatted it. I think you can only recover them if you deleted the images, not formatted it. Maybe it's different for CF cards. I'm glad you got them back anyway.

The best recovery program you can buy is from Prosoft Engineering. They make a product names "DataRescue II." It will find drives which don't show up on the desk top because of the corrupted files and it will recover the images on the file. Big thumbs up.

All: Update: I tried recuva, and it worked to bring back 82 of 83 images on a CF card that I had formatted, but thankfully had never used meantime. I note that this recovery program restored the image files to the *.tiff file type. I haven't tried to load any of these recovered files into CS4 or ACR yet, but I can view thumbnail images.

martines34: I'll likelly buy DataRescue II as well. It sounds like a more sophisticated piece of software.

Dpic_arctic: Yes, the file recovery programs can restore image files even if the user formatted the memory card.

This ability arises from how an operating system identifies a file. The OS writes a header to it. This header defines the space on the storage media where the file resides. When the OS "deletes" a file, it really only changes the definition in the header to make the file space available for writing over.

Even smarter software can recover data (files) even when the space has been overwritten, by reading the electro-magnetic traces remaining from the previous file.

But enough. I thank the stars the wizards have devised file recovery programs to bring back images from memory cards.

anotherview wrote:
All: Update: I tried recuva, and it worked to bring back 82 of 83 images on a CF card that I had formatted, but thankfully had never used meantime. I note that this recovery program restored the image files to the *.tiff file type. I haven't tried to load any of these recovered files into CS4 or ACR yet, but I can view thumbnail images.

That is typical. You'll need to manually or batch rename the file extensions.

EBH

EB-1: In my understanding, the two file formats (*.CR2 and *.tiff) differ in their file structure. So likely a conversion from one file format to another would have to occur. But of course CS4 and ACR can read the *.tiff file. Renaming or conversion seems unncessary.

A recovered .CR2 file may be named as .TIF by the software as it does not know the proper extension. The file format has not changed. Simply rename the file as .CR2.

EBH

EB-1: Okay, I may try renaming a *.tiff file extension to *.cr2, but on a file copy, to see if it works.