[slejhamer]

Okay, I don't yet know if this will happen, but I d/l'd the demo of Stellar Phoenix and it shows the files that were deleted from the drive that was reformatted!



I am going to call their tech people and confirm that these files can indeed be recovered.

The software is US$129 - cheap compared to a pro recovery service.

Got my fingers crossed.


Then again, the implications are staggering: ANYTHING you do on a computer can be recreated, even if you erase your files and reformat your drives!!! :o

[shuttertalk]

Back in old MSDOS days - when formatting a drive you could do a quick format, which only wiped the file allocation table etc., or a full format, which went and wiped the whole disk , sector by sector.

I would imagine that XP would do a similar thing...


But good to hear Mitch... let us know how you get on!

[Toad]

Then again, the implications are staggering: ANYTHING you do on a computer can be recreated, even if you erase your files and reformat your drives!!! :o

Well, there are ways of clearing your drives completely. There is a big difference between a Quick Format (just deleting the indexes), a "reformat" which is just creating new indexes and pretending the drive is empty, and a full format which is actually erasing the drive.

Let's hope you were lazy about formating your drive - the software to rebuild the indexes is not too tricky - let's hope for the best.

When I reread your post that said you had "moved" your photos, I was hoping for the best - until they are actually overwritten - removing the drive's indexes doesn't do much of anything - ask any hacker....

Good luck man!

[EnglishBob]

Fingers Crossed Buddy

[Rufus]

Watching closely......................................................... :|

[slejhamer]

Interesting ... I didn't know about the quick format stuff, which is apparently what I did. Also I converted it to NTFS from FAT32, but that doesn't seem to have mattered.

I see that not all the files are recoverable with this software - it is showing 3 logical drives with about 45gb total, whereas previously I had 5 partitioned drives (I'm assuming that's the same thing) and I know there are many files that are not showing up in the lists. These must have been written over by the new files that I have on the drive. I'll have to live without those.

But all in all, this is promising.

[shuttertalk]

So, any update on the situation, Mitch?

[slejhamer]

Not yet; a friend of a friend might have similar software, so I am seeing if I can get this done at no cost. I'm not in a rush, so if I can save the money then it's worth the wait.

[slejhamer]

UPDATE:

Not done yet, but I have tested a 1/2-dozen different recovery apps, some free some not.

So far, the most user-friendly is File Scavenger, which goes for US$45. It found the most files, and it ranks them according to file quality (good, poor.) The demo will let me recover small files for free - gotta go fetch 'em.
http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

The best freeware seems to be PC Inspector, which located lots of jpegs but not a single RAW file. If you don't shoot RAW but need to recover lost jpegs, this one is worth a shot.

[noisynoodle]

Slej,

Just found this message in DPReview Pentax Forum:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.a...e=15079642

Might be helpful.

Jan

[slejhamer]

Thanks. I am demoing the "expert" version right now. It is definitely one of the s-l-o-w-e-s-t apps I've tried. After 15 minutes it is less than 2% complete ... at this rate it will take 12.5 hours just to scan the drive!!! :o

[slejhamer]

Well, JaNN, that item is very helpful. I halted it and reran it in "fast" mode, and in less than 2 hours it came back with a list of over 7,000 files.

This program has one huge advantage over the others: it shows thumbnails of the recoverable images, even the Canon RAW files. That makes it easy to see which files are corrupt (many!) and which are worth salvaging.

Thanks again; I'm going to buy this one (US$29 for the expert version.)

[Toad]

Nice! Thanks for doing the research for when this inevitably happens to others here.

[shuttertalk]

Nice! Thanks for doing the research for when this inevitably happens to others here.

Hopefully not to too many of us! But we know who to turn to if it does...

[noisynoodle]

Well, JaNN, that item is very helpful. I halted it and reran it in "fast" mode, and in less than 2 hours it came back with a list of over 7,000 files.

This program has one huge advantage over the others: it shows thumbnails of the recoverable images, even the Canon RAW files. That makes it easy to see which files are corrupt (many!) and which are worth salvaging.

Thanks again; I'm going to buy this one (US$29 for the expert version.)

That's great Slej...I'm very glad it was useful and now you've tested it I may well buy a copy ready for the almost inevitable day when it happens to me!

Jan

[slejhamer]

One thing I didn't like about this particular software: It renames the files according to their cluster (or sector?) on the drive, and does not retain the original filename or directory path. File Scavenger was much better in this respect, and also recovers more file types. However, for my needs, the lower price and thumbnail preview were what sold me.

Fortunately I have Breezebrowser, so can easily do a batch rename using the EXIF info. I used Year-Month-Date-Time.crw, as this should let me easily regroup everything into date-based folders.

But hopefully everyone will be diligent about making backups, so this stuff won't be necessary again.

[EnglishBob]

It certainly made me do my back-up early.

I also realised the one thing I didn't have backed up was all the images I had worked on and processed for competition and exhibition! They are now duly burned!

Let us know how the final recovery goes Slej.

[slejhamer]

All done except for the organizing.

I am impressed that I recovered so many files using only the "fast" recovery method. I wonder if the slow 12.5-hour procedure would have been any better.

Anyway, I had about 8,000 files recovered:

- 50 or so are MS-Word or Excel files, but these will not reopen without a converter. Not sure why. Need to find my Office disks ...

- Around 500 were corrupt and unusable.

- Roughly 1,000 were .mp3 files that had been previously moved to my iTunes folder and backed up elsewhere, so I didn't need those.

- Another 2,000 were .thm files to go along with the Canon RAW files.

- The remaining 5,000+ are image files, either jpeg or RAW. They look great! As if they had never gone away ... which, of course, they hadn't.

Breezebrowser worked great for lossless renaming. I've got them sorted by year, next I'll do by month.

And I'll delete many of them along the way ... no chance I've got 5,000 images worth saving. I should be able to cut this in half, at least.

And then I'll burn them all to CD!!! Or maybe I should do that first ...

[Toad]

Excellent! That's a heck of a lot better than the total loss you were anticipating!!

[EnglishBob]

Wonderful

Great that you got so many back.