Fiance deleted all my 2010 family photos! Probably around 10K RAW files... Anybody have a suggestion as to which program works best to recovery .CR2 files from my hard drive?
You don't mention if you're using a Windows PC so I'll assume you are.
IF!!! your files are located on your boot drive you really do not want to even boot that drive back up.
I fubared a drive in November and tried a few different things, this one got the most back for me. My hard drive failed and failed ugly. if you just deleted them, it's probable that you'll be able to get most of the data back UNLESS the computer rewrites something over the file.
I strongly suggest you unplug that drive and do the recovery on another computer. Note that you will need to have an additional hard drive of sufficient space to actually recover the files TO. In your case, since you're just undeleting, it may be over kill to recover to a separate drive.
Now, as a last comment, you clearly need a backup strategy. The easiest thing to do is get a big external drive and let your computer back up to that on a regular, preferably daily basis.
Another thing to do is set your fiance up with her own sign on info so she's not looking at all of your files.
First question - did she just hit delete? If so they are in the trash - open the Recycle Bin and see if they are there. If so just drag them back out. The only way to really delete files under Windows is Shift-Delete which requires confirmation or when they are too big to fit in the Recycle bin - which also requires confirmation. Note that both methods of "permanently" deleting require confirmation. I'd be asking questions. Anyway - you have two choices with data recovery programs A) simple undelete and B) extensive sector scanning. If going the sectors scan route as recommended get a second system and remove the hard drive that held your files. Any number of external drive housings so just pick one. My suggestion would be to try a simpler undelete program first - reason I say this is because if you kept your files under any "My Pictures" folder then the chances are good they will not be accessible unless you're logged in due to security.
Also, if you are on a Windows System, if you have the "System Restore" enabled, this will allow you to go back in time and restore except if the files are on a second drive this probably will not work.
If all else fails you can recover a majority of the files from CF or SD card using a file recovery program like Sandisk Rescue Pro. I have personally recovered many files this way, far more than the card can store. Good luck!
I've used and been happy with R-Studio. It is quite powerful in doing simple undeletes or a full scan to recover files, even on RAID arrays. Reasonably priced - but different products for NTFS and FAT.
BubbaJon wrote:
If so they are in the trash - open the Recycle Bin and see if they are there.
Not 10,000 raw files! You're right though, she should have seen some sort of "these won't fit, are you sure" type message.
Windows doesn't really delete files anyway, it just removes the reference to them and until you over write the file with another piece of data, you can find any number of programs that will simply undelete the files you're missing.
Quickly make sure that drive is not being used by other programs -- such as scratch disk for Photoshop. You need to eliminate all "writes" to that drive ASAP, even if it means removing it and placing it in an external case.
Anything that writes to it might effect the recovery.
I've used Pandora recovery on a drive. Pulled a good 90% of the images off the drive & pulled a bunch of crap off the drive that shouldn't have been there in the first place.
You do not bother; you can easily recover the deleted and missing photos. Photo recovery software are available which ensures to recover missing,deleted and lost photos. The software can perform JPEG recovery, TiF recovery, GIF recovery and many more, within few easy steps only. JPEG Recovery
Josh, I hope you've learned the valuable wisdom of keeping backups. And of keeping off-line backups too that can't be deleted at the press of a button on the main computer, or damaged by a "power surge" or anything else that affects everything that is plugged in at the same place and time.
I recently had a drive lose all partitions and data. I tried several recovery programs but all I got was gibbershit - ranging from almost nothing to many thousands of files that were equal in size (8MB, I think) and all totally useless, and nothing gave me anything like the actual partition structure that was previously on the drive. Eventually I cut my losses and reverted to older backups. Were it not for the hefty price rises on hard drives last year I would have scrapped this one and bought more. This problem happened to an external backup drive but was not apparent until I lost my main drive in a separate crash. 2011 was a bad year for me in terms of computer crashes My recent backups are spread and in some cases duplicated over about six hard drives. Most of the backups are bootable copies of my system and data but some are just incremental data backups. They're all good for different reasons.
Luckily for you, simple file deletion is potentially the easiest data loss to recover from.
btw Josh, are you still engaged ? Maybe it was a test planned by your future mother in law
lorita, welcome to FM It's great that you're able and willing to provide some useful help for others. That's what we like to see here at FM and what we generally appreciate of others when in need. It's what lifts FM above some other forums. I recommend that you put some gear info into your profile as sometimes it helps others to better help you by letting them know what sort of gear you're dealing with.
ZAR Zero Assumption Recovery....bloody fantastic. Got my out of a similar scrape, except from a corrupted RAID 0 array, yep it even recovers corrupted arrays too - took a while...!
You must back up to an external drive and do not use your computer (or at least the disk in question) until you have a recovery volume ready - this will prevent your files from being irrecoverably written over.
My recent backups are spread and in some cases duplicated over about six hard drives. Most of the backups are bootable copies of my system and data but some are just incremental data backups. They're all good for different reasons.
It's great that you're able and willing to provide some useful help for others. That's what we like to see here at FM and what we generally appreciate of others when in need. It's what lifts FM above some other forums. I recommend that you put some gear info into your profile as sometimes it helps others to better help you by letting them know what sort of gear you're dealing with.