Recovering photos

Back in Jan I posted about photos disappearing from an SD card. I
tried a couple of free recovery programs mentioned on here. Either
they retrieved a lot of files with unrecognized data, or retrieved
only a few photos. Then I got Scandisk's RescuePro and Voila! it
successfully recovered almost a 100 photos. This was done using a card
reader connected to my desktop.

Then my friend (who was on the same trip) got a new dual core laptop
with a built-in card reader. When he put that particular card in, I
noticed even without recovering, a few more photos showed up. So I
installed RescuePro on his machine, and WOW! recovered 160 photos!! So
both software and hardware matters when recovering photos.

BTW that card has bad sectors - so guess I'll reformat it and use it
for unimportant stuff.

In article <1175361432.952944.234630 DeleteThis @b75g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
Tippi <aa172 DeleteThis @torfree.net> wrote:

> Back in Jan I posted about photos disappearing from an SD card. I
> tried a couple of free recovery programs mentioned on here. Either
> they retrieved a lot of files with unrecognized data, or retrieved
> only a few photos. Then I got Scandisk's RescuePro and Voila! it
> successfully recovered almost a 100 photos. This was done using a card
> reader connected to my desktop.
> Then my friend (who was on the same trip) got a new dual core laptop
> with a built-in card reader. When he put that particular card in, I
> noticed even without recovering, a few more photos showed up. So I
> installed RescuePro on his machine, and WOW! recovered 160 photos!! So

Different programs use various analytical routines to find the data
(and several have different selectable routines within their program,
too), so you should always try two or three different ones if you can,
if one particular program has a problem. And (as you found out) never
format or give up on the card until you have exhausted everything
reasonable. Cards are cheap, throw the bad one (marked) in a drawer
and try it again later with something else.

> both software and hardware matters when recovering photos.
>
> BTW that card has bad sectors - so guess I'll reformat it and use it
> for unimportant stuff.

That's probably more the reason for the variety than the hardware
(unless it was because of faulty connection to the reader, but these
things have such error checking built into the protocols that if not
all the contacts are solid, it should not read at all). I'm not sure
that there's much differnce in what machine it's connected to can make
- the data either reads or it doesn't.

However, if the "sectors" are bad due to faulty [intermittant] memory
in the card, the readings may be [just as] intermittant, which could
account for the various levels of data recovery.

Glad you got more data recovered, though. It's frustrating to lose a
card - I just had a 6 GB CF II microdrive card that I've been using
flawlessly for 2 years go south on me - fortunately, this was
immediately after I had just pulled all the data off of it (I put it
back in the camera, and it wouldn't work, nor on the computer. Nothing
to indicate why or how it toasted, other than perhaps just a final gasp
due to age).

--
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
-- Charles A. Beard