Deleted photo crisis
June 9, 2006 2:42 PM   Subscribe

I accidentally deleted, in-camera, an important and unrepeatable picture. It was written to a sony memory stick pro in a sony cybershot dsc-p150 camera. Any way to retrieve it?
posted by londongeezer to Technology (11 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
This article on gizmodo might help.
posted by KevCed at 2:49 PM on June 9, 2006


Take a look at this thread - As long as you can get the raw data off the memory stick, you have a good chance.
posted by azlondon at 3:01 PM on June 9, 2006


In linux, I would...

dd if=/dev/memorystick of=~/memorystickdata

...and then operate on that instead of the memory stick.

Not sure what the Windows equivalent is.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:10 PM on June 9, 2006


in OS X, what you do first is make a bit-for-bit disk image of the memory stick using Disk Utility, then use Data Rescue X to retrieve all the jpeg data. In most cases your image will still be there if you have not shot a load of stuff that has over written it.

If you don't have a mac, someone who has a mac should be able to do this. I will happily provide more detailed instructions.

In the meantime, take the memory stick out of the camera and DO NOT use it.
posted by unSane at 3:48 PM on June 9, 2006


www.mediarecover.com I bought this online, and it worked for me on an SD card.

If you think the picture is on the top few pictures of the card the free version may be able to recover it.
posted by Gungho at 3:51 PM on June 9, 2006


convar are hard core.
posted by dorian at 4:04 PM on June 9, 2006


PhotoRec is a GNU freeware file data recovery software designed to recover lost pictures (Photo Recovery) from digital camera memory, as well as lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom.
posted by StarForce5 at 4:42 PM on June 9, 2006


Since most of the other options here are for Linux and Mac users (smart people), I thought I would offer a Windows solution.

PhotoRecovery from www.software-recovery.com has worked for my family in recovering data off of computer memory cards and old ZIP disks - even one that suffered the click of death...

A plus is that the software does not alter the card itself. It extracts what it can from the file system and places them in a folder called 'Recovered' in the My Pictures are of the My Documents folder. (This can be changed).

The software saved perhaps a hundred holiday photos for us - making my wife much easier to live with. Works great.

Connect the camera to the computer and give it a try.
posted by Leenie at 11:52 PM on June 9, 2006


Response by poster: Thanks for all this help. I have a mac and also a pc so I will give one or if necessary more ideas a go. Again, many thanks, will report back.
posted by londongeezer at 11:58 PM on June 9, 2006


80% probability you can get it back - use Ontrack Recovery.

MOST IMPORTANT - Do NOT take any more pictures on the card, or transfer any files - or you run the risk of over-writing the space where the image was stored; if that happens, then you most likely won't be able to retrieve it.
posted by DrtyBlvd at 3:00 AM on June 10, 2006


Response by poster: Got it! Thanks a million everyone. I tried windows solutions simply because my laptop happens to be a sony and has a memory stick slot. For the record, PhotoRecovery (recommended by Leenie) didn't find it but PhotoRec (StarForce5) did.
posted by londongeezer at 3:58 AM on June 10, 2006


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