If you haven't already had this happen, you need to be ready for it and know what to do because it is going to happen at some point.
The question is, how do you recover images from your memory card if something unexpected happens before you've had a chance to back them up?
The first thing that you need to understand is, that there is NEVER a way to guarantee that you will always be able to recover images and files from your memory card if a catastrophe happens. Heck, the same applies to hard disks, cds, diskettes or any type of recordable media. The problem is that sometimes damage has occurred to the file, or the media and is causing data to be missing or corrupt.
Now for the good news! There is software available that may be able to help you in a number of situations. We'll get to that in a minute though. First we want to talk about what it can do and how to insure that you have the best chance at actually recovering your images.
For Digital Photographers, the situation is usually that either in the camera, suddenly the camera is not recognizing the images on it, or that the card just isn't working right. While it could be a memory card failure, it's more likely some type of glitch caused a problem. It could also be that an image or images were mistakenly deleted or the card formated. That can cause sheer panic when you realize what has occured regardless of the cause.
So what do you do? I recommend the following:
1) The very first thing to do would be take the card out of the camera and put it into a safe place until recovery at the computer can be attempted. The reason for this is that if the card simply appears to be empty, and if the camera can still write to it, each new attempt to save data on the card increases the chance that the images lost will not be recovered.
Here is a simple explanation. Let's say the card could store 100 images. You shoot 10 pictures and 90 more shots avilable. You suddenly notice that the 10 images you shot come up missing! If you just say the heck with it and decide to keep shooting and recover the missing later, you may have problems if the card has a problem or corruption is going on that could cause further image loss and risk. Also, even if that wasn't the case, when you try to put new images on the card, it may overwrite areas on the card that the 10 missing images that need recovering are stored in. This is because the camera isn't seeing them for whatever reason and may assume all the space on the card is free. So the point here is, don't tempt fate. Just pull the card out and use other cards until you can attempt your recovery.
To understand how the software works, you need to know a little bit about how files are stored. Don't worry, if you aren't a technical type person, it doesn't matter. This is quite simple.
when files are saved to the card by the camera, it creates the files and uses a file system to list file names and locations in a list called the directory. Often times, this directory which is just data stored on the card can get messed up. Or when you format the card in the camera or delete files, it simply alters the directory so that the files aren't listed any longer and the camera can now use the space that was reserved for that file. So all the image information can still be there even if you deleted them or formatted the card.
The moment you have been waiting for, the software! There are programs out that will scan your card, or even your hard drive for image files. If it can find information that is an image file, and if it can find all of it's data, it can recover the file and list it in the directory again or store in a new location for you to use again! The software I've seen does not usually recover the old name, it just recovers the file, usually with a numbering scheme such as image001.jpg, image002.jpg, etc. It can take a while for this software to run, but in my testing, I've been able to format a memory card and recover all of the images that the format appeared to delete.
The program I was very impressed with is RescuePro from SanDisk. It works great and the reason it's different than some recovery software, is that it understands image files and it analyzes the card or disk for images files. If all the data for the image is there, it seems to find them and recover. You still have to rename the files to something you recognize or can work with, but other wise the file is recovered.
RescuePro may come with some memory cards for free, but recent versions of this product require yearly subscriptions which I'm not particularly fond of. Here is a couple of links to software that may help.
http://www.cardrecovery.com
http://www.card-data-recovery.com
You can also do a Google Search for Image Recovery Software or Photo Recovery Software. There are plenty of options and some of them have free trials that you can download and see if it finds recoverable images. Then you only pay for it to be able to save the images it finds.
Hopefully, this will be of some help.
