Digital photo recovery

[mad_fox9007]

The recovered unviewable photos do not have a file sizes of zero. I have attached one of the photos.

[nihil]

Hi,

Not so good I am afraid, the file header is corrupted or missing. Perhaps the best method would be to try a data recovery tool on the flash or smart memory card in the camera. If you look on the CD that came with the camera, there might even be such a tool on it. Otherwise try some of the standard recovery/undelete tools.

I am hoping that the process was one way, in that it moved the files onto the PC and corrupted some in the process. I can see no reason why it should write back to the flash drive, so your original images should still be on the card.

Another approach is to copy the header from a known good image FROM THE SAME CAMERA and paste it into the corrupted picture.

Otherwise here is a good tutorial:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=10291113

I know, I know

I just had a quick frig attempt on the example you have posted................... it read the header but moaned about jpeg files not starting with some hex value or other.............I would need to refine it a bit, and may hit problems with it coming from a different camera? At least I got past the unrecognisable header problem, all I have to do now is find the correct insertion point.

Can you supply a working image that was taken with that camera? That would be a help as I am afraid that jpeg files have rather "scruffy" headers



EDIT: Incidentally, if nobody has any objections, I will move this into "Forensics" when we are done. I think it belongs under that topic and might be more useful to others later on if it is put there?

[Falcon21]

You may want to try PhotoRec. Download Page Here.
Unzipped the file, go into the "win" folder and double click on "photorec_win.exe" to run.

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost pictures (Photo Recovery) from digital camera memory and lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom. PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it'll work even if your media's filesystem is severely damaged or formatted. PhotoRec is safe to use, it will never attempt to write to the drive or memory support you are about to recover from. Recovered files are instead written in the directory from where you are running the PhotoRec program.

Photorec ignores the filesystem, this way it works even if the filesystem is severely damaged.
It can recover lost files at least from

* FAT,
* NTFS,
* EXT2/EXT3 filesystem
* HFS+

PhotoRec works with HardDisks, Cdrom, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SecureDigital, SmartMedia, Microdrive, MMC, USB Memory Drives...
PhotoRec has been successfully tested with the following Digital Camera

* Canon EOS300D, 10D
* HP PhotoSmart 620, 850, 935
* Nikon CoolPix 775, 950, 5700
* Olympus C350N, C860L, Mju 400 Digital, Stylus 300
* Sony DSC-P9
* Praktica DCZ-3.4
* Casio Exilim EX-Z 750

[nihil]

Yes, Chris's stuff is good and has saved one or two AO "hides" in the past

Remember to run it against the camera media as:

PhotoRec searchs known file header and because there is no data fragmentation (usually), it can recover the whole file. Photorec recognises numerous file format including

So it probably won't work on the transferred files, as their headers seem to be missing or corrupted.

[mad_fox9007]

Sorry for the delayed response, I havent had access to the files in a couple days. Here is a photo off the card that was not damaged.

[nihil]

OK, I will take a look at it..............

A couple of things strike me:

1. The unviewable picture has a size of about 65Kb, but the viewable one is over 700Kb
2. The unviewable picture starts with an underscore, which is frequently an indication of a compressed file?

I still think that trying to recover the images from the camera storage media is the best bet.

[The3ntropy]

xD media is not that good in general, and the USB 1.1 interface that is on your olympus C-770UZ camera is not good either

try purchasing an external memory card reader, it will be much faster overall for you and you may have better luck accessing the pictures that are on the card, if they are still on there that is . . .