Topic: Recovering data from CF

Does anyone have experience with the subject? CF = Compact Flash

I'm taking pictures and suddenly it doesn't work anymore. Canon 400D says something like: problem with memory card, replace it. Then when I stick it into a computer windows says that I need to format it before I can use the card.
I'm sure that the camera didn't have enough time to erase the pictures from the card so my guess is that they are still there it's just that something like the boot sector has been overwritten. It happened to the card before and format worked but I didn't care about the pictures then so I didn't need recovery.

Any good programs that I could use?
Is there a way of making something like an image file of the CF card before I try anything with it?

The pictures are really valuable but the value is mostly emotional and I'm broke so I need to do the recovery by myself if it's possible.

this crops up ever so often - have a search .

Anyhow, recovering from a CF isn't much different than recovering from some other media,

basic idea is to copy 'an image' of the storage device, and then try to recover the
files out of that image.

A quick search in a software directory suggested this utility - http://www.artplus.hr/adapps/eng/dpr.htm -
at the very least it has the option of doing the disk image first, is specialized on image recovery (can probably
find images based on their 'signature look' as files), and it's free.

so long,
and good luck,

->Tyberius Prime

tyvm, looks like the right thing. I'll try it the second I get home from work.

hmm this program was able to recover only 232 files of around 600 because it found only one folder so I tried a few more programs and looks like R-Studio was able to find 3 folders and all ~600 files ... I can't say if it was able to recover all the files until I get back home but it looked like it might

bah ... no luck ... the program is stupid ... finds the files but doesn't recover most of them ... when I look at some of the files in a hex editor I can see that 4949 2A00 1000 0000 4352 which marks the beginning of every CR2 file is often somewhere in the middle of those 'recovered' files ...

so does anyone know a program that they have used and actually works?

Wohoo! Finally found a program that was able to recover all the pictures: EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard.

link?

.



-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

I didn't use that link tho

Some shots that I picked out: http://www.kaarellumi.com/stuff/corfu/