Lost my vacation photos, HELP!!

June 29, 2007 9:27 AM

Digtialcamerahive: Anyway to UN-delete photos from a memory chip? Lost images of a Europe trip are in the balance here, lots of memories and we think we deleted them unknowingly. HELP!!
posted by Freedomboy to technology (15 comments total)

google can help you.
posted by devbrain at 9:31 AM on June 29, 2007

Just don't take any more pix with that card until you use a rescue program.
posted by Gungho at 10:26 AM on June 29, 2007

This just happened to me and I successfully recovered everything with a program I found using google (can't remember the name, it's on my home computer). Cost me thirty bucks, recovered all 289 pictures. So don't panic. Just don't touch the card again until you get some recovery software
posted by MsElaineous at 10:40 AM on June 29, 2007

You shouldn't have to pay anyone to do it - plenty of free options are available (and there are free software tools too).

I'll take a look at which one I've used when I get home if you still need more info.
posted by langeNU at 10:41 AM on June 29, 2007

Undelete Plus viz Lifehacker
posted by WizKid at 10:43 AM on June 29, 2007

PhotoRec might help.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:45 AM on June 29, 2007

I think it was this one: www.photoone.net
posted by MsElaineous at 10:46 AM on June 29, 2007

Oops. www.photoone.net ( not going to try to put link in this time, although it's hiding in that mess up there)
posted by MsElaineous at 10:47 AM on June 29, 2007

It should be fat32 on the card, so any windows-style undelete should work.
posted by rhizome at 10:51 AM on June 29, 2007

Adding to Pronoiac's suggestion. I had exactly this same problem (Europe trip, accidentally formatted camera card...) and PhotoRec recovered the photos with very little fuss.

(As a side advantage, it's open-source and ran fine on my BSD box; otherwise I was going to have to scrounge up a Windows machine somewhere... this is probably not relevant to anyone but me...)
posted by hattifattener at 11:04 AM on June 29, 2007

Hm. Incidentally, the datarecovery tag has this as a recurring question: 1, 2, 3. You might want to add that tag to this item, for later reference.

hatti: I actually had to double-check my notes to make sure they might work under Windows, because I'm usually biased away from it myself.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:09 AM on June 29, 2007

Sorry to piggyback on this question, but what if the jpeg files have been corrupted? Do any of the aforementioned programs help deal with that?
posted by malaprohibita at 11:37 AM on June 29, 2007

Restoration works for basic deletions. More complex stuff requires more complex solutions.
posted by effugas at 2:08 PM on June 29, 2007

effugas: That page breaks my browser - here's an alternative link.

This is for recovering deleted files. Corrupted files are a different problem altogether.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:48 PM on June 29, 2007

I've had great luck with this: http://www.bluem.net/downloads/exif-untrasher_en/
posted by blaneyphoto at 5:02 PM on June 29, 2007