Can files be recovered even after being deleted?

[nihil]

Hi LisaDarln,

My fellow members have already given you some good links on data recovery software. Your chances of recovery are dependent on the amount of activity on your machine, and whether you have defragmented the hard drive.

If you have deleted the files using windows explorer, they would generally just go into your recycle bin, and can generally be recovered from that, using its inbuilt recovery command. This assumes that you have not emptied it.

My contribution is that you actually have TWO possibilities here:

1. Recover from the hard drive
2. Recover from the memory in your digital camera

If you have not overwritten the image in your digital camera's memory it is still there.

http://home.nexgo.de/christian_grau/dir/index.html

The product is called "Digital Image Recovery" it used to be free, but I am not sure about the latest version. You may have to do a search for a freeware site that has the older versions?

The principle is the same as for your HDD. Just connect the camera to your PC and scan its memory with this software.

If you have trouble finding it, please let me know and I will try to find out where I got it from. I think it was on a magazine CD, in which case it is probably in their website archives somewhere.

I would like to see the picture with the "orb" on it. I have been a keen photographer for 40 years and would suggest that they are more than likely "artifacts" produced by light reflections on the inner lens surfaces. This is why you get "lens hoods" for conventional cameras Remember that although your camera is "digital" its capture mechanism is still optical.

EDIT: It was a Haloween party, so the lighting would be low, with a good number of point sources (individual lightbulbs). Your camera aperture would be wide open, which explains the "orb" effect. When you take a backlit subject in daylight, the aperture is partly "stopped down" so you get a "polygon" effect.

Good luck

[LisaDarln]

Thank you all for the information you've given me, on both my probable errors in picture taking and that the pictures might still be retrievable.

I'll take a look at the software for the camera and see about the memory thing from the camera that Nihil suggested, but beyond that I'm not going to bother.

I thought the process might have been easier, like they're hidden now and to unhide them I'd do something, or input some command into the Run box, or do something in the registry... or some such.

I don't feel the need to satisfy my husband's mild curiosty of why the pictures were ruined to the point of paying someone in order to retrieve them or taking time to download and install some other program free or otherwise, especially when there seems to be no guarantee they're still there anyway. It's been about a month.

Still it's good information know, in the event something important does get damaged or inadvertantly deleted.

[nihil]

Hi LisaD.

Please try your "Recycle Bin" recovery, they may be there.

Also, please do not think that I suggested that you had made any errors in your picture taking. I was merely relating a few experiences that I have had over the years. I also have a very open mind to psychic phenomena, so I would like to have a look at one if possible, there is an awful lot of stuff that cannot be explained "logically/scientifically"

I was only going to look to see if it was scientifically explicable

Good luck

BTW If you have NOT used the camera since then, your pictures are DEFINATELY recoverable using my method #2

Cheers