URGENT! I need help fast. - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

04/09/2005 07:30:36 AM · #1

I just started using IMatch. Now I wanted to delete the thumbs the prgrams has created. Instead, the program deleted the ORIGINALS. It deleted all pictures, every single photograph I took after January. The pictures are NOT in the recycle bin. I need a program to recover those pictures! There is a possibility to do so as long as they've not been overwritten, right? They can't just be gone...
Help, please.

dahkota

Canon EOS-7D

04/09/2005 08:01:05 AM · #2

//www.handyarchive.com/free/nef

This place shows EImage recovery - listed right under IMatch.

Maybe this can help?

d

Strikeslip

Canon EOS-5D

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS

04/09/2005 08:04:03 AM · #3

This is the one I know of:

Easy Recovery - Ontrack.com

The lite version is $90, not exactly cheap, but there is a free version which only shows you the deleted files which are recoverable, without recovering them, so you have a good idea it will work if you shell out the dough.

Don't go straight after this without searching around, there may be a better solution for you. Good luck!

Nikon D200

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

04/09/2005 08:13:04 AM · #4

Depending on your computer and operating system, you may already have a utility installed. Check your system accessories.

Or, I have had good luck with products from Iolo technologies, and they have a free trial on Search & Recover 2 that you can download today. Try this link: //www.iolo.com/sr/2/

Good luck!

Fujifilm XF 23mm f/2 R WR

04/09/2005 08:15:26 AM · #5

Hi Gilles,

I recently had a hard drive partition fail, lost the FAT, damaged sectors, no utility could repair it and even Western Digital's utility said the drive was fubar.
I downloaded a program called PCInspector
It was able to recover 5,800+ jpegs from a drive that windows couldn't even see.
It isn't fool proof, and had a number of files come back reporting very wrong sizes, plus in my case, all the original files names were now gone, and it prompts for what kind of file naming system you want. (file0001, etc). It did basically toss all the 5,800+ files in a mix and came out in whatever order they wanted to be. EXIF data was intact.
It has been a very long process (still not done) to resort and put what I can in sub-folders.

Wasn't as perfect as we would want once files were gone, but after getting back as many files as I did, I was very happy, in spite of everything, plus it is freeware!

One thing to note: It took my system a weekend to complete (12GB) and selected the recovered files to be written to an external drive. Make sure you have a lot of room, because if you run out of room during the process, it will hang and will have to start all over.

Hope this helps.

aznym

Fujifilm X-T3

04/09/2005 08:28:02 AM · #6

//www.recover-my-photos.com

I used the software when I lost a few of my originals (NEF RAW files).

"It will recover JPEG, TIF, PNG, CRW, RAW format photos and MOV, MPEG, AVI videos from smart media, compact flash, Memory Sticks, Microdrives or virtually any removable storage device."

04/09/2005 09:09:50 AM · #7

Thanks for your help so far. I'll try the program Brad suggested, since I can't buy anything. I have to save everything via network, but as I don't have any partitions, I can't save the entire HD. All the files that were deleted were in one single folder, I hope the program allows me to recover that folder only...

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

04/09/2005 09:34:34 AM · #8

Originally posted by gloda:

After the initial couple screens, and scanning of drive(s), you can select a folder to recover from and where to put them. The data is still there, even if you delected it, just windows reference to it and where it is is gone.
Should work well for what you need.

davidx76

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

04/09/2005 09:40:22 AM · #9

My hard drive failed last week, lost most of my pics and uni thesis stuff. I did take a look at various programs, but in the end took it to a professional data recovery shop. They got all the data back no problem. I'd stongly recommend you think about this option, since they will probably have all the programs being mentioned in this thread and they should be very experienced at doing this type of work.

Good luck!

04/09/2005 09:56:33 AM · #10

Dammit! Everything looked fine, the program was working and copying the recovered data via network to my other PC. Then it crashed. No files on the other PC, plus the program doesn't list the files anymore. Aaaaah.

ericsuth

Canon EOS-20D

04/09/2005 10:09:42 AM · #11

I'll throw another option at you...Its not really for a casual computer user but you can do a ALOT with this little tool. It's a hex editor called WinHex and it's powerful, if you have a fair amount of computer experience this may be perfect for you. I'm not a wiz using it but you may glean something from it. Again, very powerful and I think in the past few years they've tried to make more accessible to mainstream use. Good luck.

edit: sorry forgot to include the link:
//www.x-ways.net/winhex/index-m.html

Message edited by author 2005-04-09 10:10:23.

04/09/2005 10:28:43 AM · #12

Originally posted by gloda:

They are still there.
Make sure you have enough space in your destination folder/drive, reboot and do it again, shutting down any applications you don't need running.
I ran mine several times until I figured it out.

Message edited by author 2005-04-09 10:31:20.

04/09/2005 10:45:16 AM · #13

So rebooting doesn't make things worse?

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

04/09/2005 11:02:55 AM · #14

Originally posted by gloda:

So rebooting doesn't make things worse?

Nope. The original files are still there. Unless zeros are written to the folder, or new files are written over the originals, the files are still in the same place they were. When a file is delected, only the FAT/Dir addresses are removed.
I had to do mine several times. First time I tried putting the images on my C: drive, then ran out of space during the process (was at 25% and hung). Brought a blank 120GB drive from home and used it to write all 5,800+ jpegs to.

Kelli

Canon EOS-D60

04/09/2005 11:21:05 AM · #15

this won't help you recover what you already lost, but you might want to consider for future use a program called "Go-back". It picks safe times and saves them, then if you ever have a problem, you can "go back" to before the problem and everything will be there. If you had this installed, you wouldn't have a problem right now. It takes care of virus's too. I'd be lost without it.

04/09/2005 12:35:15 PM · #16

Brad, I think the files are really gone I've rebooted a couple of times, started the program under different condiditons. When I first tried to copy the files, the program crashed. Only those files which had not been 'copied' yet are still available. I guess I'll try a WindowsXP system restore?

04/09/2005 02:41:29 PM · #17

Just caught this.
I think I saw something about Windows XP & SP2 on the site. I am not an XP kinda' guy (W2K here), but from what I understand, the restore feature just my pull you out of hot water on this.

04/09/2005 03:17:20 PM · #18

Too late. The restore didn't help me, but I got the most important pictures back. A friend of mine has a backup from my shots which are not for DPC.
What I lost:
Frames, A Clockwork Orange, Self Portrait, What's Cookin'?, Yet Some Call It Passion. All I got left of those are the 640x### versions from DPC and the special editions from my homepage.
Since none of these were candids or snapshots, I can reshoot them with the comments I got here in mind. From now on, instead of waiting for 4,5GB to burn a backup DVD, I'll burn them as fast as I have the pictures: multisession should do.
Thanks to all for helping me so fast.

DanSig

04/09/2005 05:27:29 PM · #19

sorry for your bad luck, I had a very similar experience just 2 days ago, I bought a LaCie 400GB firewire drive, moved all my pictures to it and told iPhoto to import them all without duplicates, then I deleted all the pictures folders except the iPhoto library were 1 copy of every picture should be.

there were 18.000 pictures in the Library and I deleted 36.000 pictures that were supposed to be duplicates.

when I started looking through the library I found out that iPhoto imported all the old thumbnails and not the originals, so I had 18.000 thumbnails at 120x200 pixels.

I found a recovery software after a major search on the internet (using a mac makes recovery harder).
after spending over 20.hours recovering, I had about 67.000 pictures recovered, I only deleted 36.000.

an added bonus ?? I looked through the pictures and found out that there were a lot of pictures on the drive that werenÂ´t mine, probably some library that LaCie uses to thest the harddrives before shipping.

well.. I was lucky, I recovered all my pictures but the recovery program renamed them all so now I have to go through everry single picture, all 67.000 of them, delete what is not mine, and rename and categorize the rest.. I will probably take me a month to complete...