How to bring jpegs back from the dead

March 7, 2008 9:06 PM

How do I repair jpegs I accidentally trashed and recovered (WinXP)?

A folder of spare parts I deleted turned out to be "something important," a month's worth of photos. After undeleting (using File-Saver) when I attempt to open with Paint or irFanView, many of the photo jpegs now come up "no preview available" (irFanView says "file header not found").

I went to download.com, bought a bogus little program called All Media Fixer from a phony software company (they also go by excellencesoft...ha!) called NewLive Soft—$27 down the tubes. (I contacted them, the support actually said, "Tough luck." I was sort of shocked. Also, grrrr.)

What made me realize that the program All Media Fixer sucks is that I downloaded another jpeg repair software called Jpeg Recovery Pro. It was $44 dollars and recovered about half of the files. (All Media Fixed recovered none.)

But I am still without half of the photos, about half of which I can see the thumbnail but refuse to "draw." And for (now) $70 dollars, I am hoping for somewhat more than that. (On the plus side, my hard drives have now all been all backed up.)

Suggestions? Inspiration? Help? I really miss these photos!

posted by humannaire to technology (6 comments total)

Try a different undeleter. Sounds like the problem isnt that media needs to be 'fixed' its that the undelete gave you a whole lot of corrupt items.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:21 PM on March 7, 2008

Unfortunately, if it's been a while since you undeleted them, and you've apparently been using the computer since then and doing file operations, there's probably nothing that can be done.

Sadly, the only thing to do is learn a lesson about the importance of doing backups.
posted by Class Goat at 9:31 PM on March 7, 2008

I had something similar-sounding happen with a compact flash card. You might try looking at what we did to fix it. If any of the links are down, bug me by MeMail, and I'll get the script back.

Class Goat's right though; the first step is to copy and isolate any of what could be the raw data before more of it can get overwritten!
posted by whatzit at 1:31 AM on March 8, 2008

The fact that you can see the thumbnail doesn't necessarily mean that the image data is intact. Many image processing programs enbed a thumbnail in the jpg header, so you could have that much intact while the rest of the file is still b0rked.

Operating systems, also sometimes cache thumbnails, so you'd be able to see the small image, even though the file is unrecoverable. (Nautilus does this in Linux, and I believe Windows keeps a thumbnail cache as well)

Sadly, the only thing to do is learn a lesson about the importance of doing backups.

Class Goat is right. Please, get yourself a backup solution immediately (external hard drive, online service, whatever). When your backup saves your butt down the road, (and it will) you'll know that it's the best money you ever spent.
posted by chrisamiller at 1:39 AM on March 8, 2008

Unfortunately, if it's been a while since you undeleted them, and you've apparently been using the computer since then and doing file operations, there's probably nothing that can be done.

Just to explain what Class Goat is saying. When you delete a file, your computer doesn't actually remove the data that makes up that file from from disk. It just puts a marker there saying "Okay, this space isn't being used anymore, fill 'er up!". Which means, if you act quickly, you can bring those files back before some other program uses the space that has now been marked as "available". Unfortunately, the longer you leave it, the more change you have that something will write over all, or part, of those "deleted" files.

And, unfortunately, it looks like that's the case here. Some things are just gone, and can't be brought back in one piece.
posted by Jimbob at 4:29 AM on March 8, 2008

Were these photos you took yourself? If so you should try to recover them from the memory card you used. I've had more success with undelete programs when trying to recover from flash cards rather than hard drives.
posted by aerotive at 8:30 AM on March 8, 2008