I accidently deleted bunch of .CR2 files in the CF card . I used Ontrack Pro to recover the files . 30% of the files were recovered and worked prefectly . 70% were recovered but are unable to view or convert at all .
Anyone knows how to recover .CR2 files and what program do you use?
I used file scavenger 3.0 to recover RAW and Tiffs I had accidently lost from an inadvertent disc reformat. I got the vast majority (many thousands) of them back.
try www.quetek.com and see if it recovers all of your desired files before paying for it.
Mike K
file recovery has nothing to do with file type (.cr2 or .jpg). It is a matter of changing a single byte in the appropriate directory entry. Chances are that if you cannot recover those files then they or the directory entries have been written over and lost.
usually the table of contents on the CF card becomes corrupted, but the data is still on the card. It does not matter that the file type is.
However, because the table of contents is corrupted... if any more data is WRITTEN on your CF card, you potential write over any data that was previously there, which therefore makes file recovery impossible.
So word of advice, if you want to recover as many files as you can, make sure you don't make any WRITES to the card before you attempt any file recovery program.
Doing file recovery can be very difficult depending on what you've done to the card (a good example is that a CF Card decided to empty itself when i popped it into my card reader, and couldn't find a thing on it.)
If that happens:
1) Don't write ANYTHING to the card! - Do something and the allocation for those images may be gone forever.
2) As soon as possible, get your recovery software going with a reliable CF card reader (electronics do matter here - cheaper card readers tend to generate more errors than not when i've tried them)
3) Use your software - On the PC, I use R-Studio and Lexar Image Recover (Basic edtion - Do a deep scan and you'll get everything and more back). On my Mac I use soley Lexar Image Recovery (This has got me and some friends out of scrapes more times than i can count)
4) Post Recovery, Check your images - there may be corruption and non readable images.
5) After Recovery - Format the card totally.
Also remember the following:
1) Let the write finish on the camera before you remove it (classic error)
2) Remember to stop the card before you eject it on a PC (or put it in the Trash on a Mac)
Image and Document recovery is a fine art (was doing this in the office today). In your case, it looks like other files have taken over the sectors that image was written to, and thus the files are no longer 100% there
Thank you very much for your kind repsonses . I will follow your advises and be more careful next time.
I find an opensource program called Photorec . It's free , and it works in command window like some MS-DOS programs. It was able to recover all my .CR2 files.
