LOST PICTURES ---- HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:12:26 -0500, M-M wrote:

In article ,
RainLover wrote:

I got some software recover program and took a look... there were some
photos! but... They were photos I took back in MARCH of this year
and purposely deleted back then!


I'll bet you have the wrong card in your hand. That one is indeed empty.
Keep looking for the other one.

I WISH it were that easy. I only own TWO cards... both SCAN DISK,
one is 512 and one is 3 gigs.

James.

On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:49:19 -0000, wrote:

No need to panic James, you can have your pictures back. Try Stellar
Phoenix Digital Media Recovery Software.
It Recovers lost or deleted digital pictures from: Memory Sticks,
Flash Cards, Sony Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, SD Cards, MMC Cards,
XD Cards, Secure Digital Card, Zip Disks, Mini Disks.
This Advanced Photo Recovery Software supports all major camera
manufacturers, including:
Nikon (NEF) Canon (CRW, CR2) Olympus (ORF) Sony (SR2, ARW
files)Kodak (K25, KDC, DCR) Fuji (RAF) Minolta (MRW) Pentax (PEF)
Sigma (X3F)
Download the demo version from: http://www.stellarinfo.com/digital-media-recovery.htm


I tried a recovery program and it found 500 mb of photos on my 'empty'
card... the only problem is, they are photos I took back in MARCH and
had long ago deleted... I don't know why THEY stayed while the more
recent Africa photos vanished... very odd....

James

On Nov 7, 8:08 pm, RainLover
wrote:
On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:49:19 -0000, wrote:
No need to panic James, you can have your pictures back. Try Stellar
Phoenix Digital Media Recovery Software.
It Recovers lost or deleted digital pictures from: Memory Sticks,
Flash Cards, Sony Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, SD Cards, MMC Cards,
XD Cards, Secure Digital Card, Zip Disks, Mini Disks.
This Advanced Photo Recovery Software supports all major camera
manufacturers, including:
Nikon (NEF) Canon (CRW, CR2) Olympus (ORF) Sony (SR2, ARW
files)Kodak (K25, KDC, DCR) Fuji (RAF) Minolta (MRW) Pentax (PEF)
Sigma (X3F)
Download the demo version from:http://www.stellarinfo.com/digital-media-recovery.htm

I tried a recovery program and it found 500 mb of photos on my 'empty'
card... the only problem is, they are photos I took back in MARCH and
had long ago deleted... I don't know why THEY stayed while the more
recent Africa photos vanished... very odd....

James


This is the most interesting thing you've said all day.

I am assuming this is your 3gb card with the lost images. You've
recovered 500mb of trash. You other card, 512mb, works fine. Again,
you're recovered 512 mb.

My guess, and this is PURELY speculation, is that you need to update
your card reader driver and that it is having difficulty recognizing
any part of the card above 512mb.

I would meet with CJ and see what he can pull off. If you don't do
that, put a recover program (full version, not trial version) on some
other, newer computer and try the recover again.

On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:28:20 -0800, Pat
wrote:

On Nov 7, 8:08 pm, RainLover
wrote:
On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:49:19 -0000, wrote:
No need to panic James, you can have your pictures back. Try Stellar
Phoenix Digital Media Recovery Software.
It Recovers lost or deleted digital pictures from: Memory Sticks,
Flash Cards, Sony Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, SD Cards, MMC Cards,
XD Cards, Secure Digital Card, Zip Disks, Mini Disks.
This Advanced Photo Recovery Software supports all major camera
manufacturers, including:
Nikon (NEF) Canon (CRW, CR2) Olympus (ORF) Sony (SR2, ARW
files)Kodak (K25, KDC, DCR) Fuji (RAF) Minolta (MRW) Pentax (PEF)
Sigma (X3F)
Download the demo version from:http://www.stellarinfo.com/digital-media-recovery.htm

I tried a recovery program and it found 500 mb of photos on my 'empty'
card... the only problem is, they are photos I took back in MARCH and
had long ago deleted... I don't know why THEY stayed while the more
recent Africa photos vanished... very odd....

James


This is the most interesting thing you've said all day.

I am assuming this is your 3gb card with the lost images. You've
recovered 500mb of trash. You other card, 512mb, works fine. Again,
you're recovered 512 mb.

My guess, and this is PURELY speculation, is that you need to update
your card reader driver and that it is having difficulty recognizing
any part of the card above 512mb.

I would meet with CJ and see what he can pull off. If you don't do
that, put a recover program (full version, not trial version) on some
other, newer computer and try the recover again.

Hi,

No.. my large card is just fine. My SMALLER one (512mb) came home
utterly EMPTY... the data recover software found 500mb of previously
deleted (6 month ago) pictures, but NOT ONE FROM AFRICA.

It's VERY strange, because while in Africa, I was reviewing photos
every day and they were all there... somehow THOSE vanished, but not
the previously deleted photos.

From my very limited knowledge of how memory hardware works, when you
'delete' you're simply removing the first letter of the file name and
it 'vanishes', but as you put NEW information onto the card, the
older, invisible stuff is permanently removed.

If I'm right, I don't know how I could view all of the photos for a
week, but then, in the end, they not be there, nor did they displace
the much older, already-deleted files.

I'm afraid all is lost...... and those lost pictures where the BEST
part of Africa (crying).

James

RainLover wrote:
On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:28:20 -0800, Pat
wrote:

On Nov 7, 8:08 pm, RainLover
wrote:
On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:49:19 -0000, wrote:
No need to panic James, you can have your pictures back. Try Stellar
Phoenix Digital Media Recovery Software.
It Recovers lost or deleted digital pictures from: Memory Sticks,
Flash Cards, Sony Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, SD Cards, MMC Cards,
XD Cards, Secure Digital Card, Zip Disks, Mini Disks.
This Advanced Photo Recovery Software supports all major camera
manufacturers, including:
Nikon (NEF) Canon (CRW, CR2) Olympus (ORF) Sony (SR2, ARW
files)Kodak (K25, KDC, DCR) Fuji (RAF) Minolta (MRW) Pentax (PEF)
Sigma (X3F)
Download the demo version from:http://www.stellarinfo.com/digital-media-recovery.htm

I tried a recovery program and it found 500 mb of photos on my 'empty'
card... the only problem is, they are photos I took back in MARCH and
had long ago deleted... I don't know why THEY stayed while the more
recent Africa photos vanished... very odd....

James


This is the most interesting thing you've said all day.

I am assuming this is your 3gb card with the lost images. You've
recovered 500mb of trash. You other card, 512mb, works fine. Again,
you're recovered 512 mb.

My guess, and this is PURELY speculation, is that you need to update
your card reader driver and that it is having difficulty recognizing
any part of the card above 512mb.

I would meet with CJ and see what he can pull off. If you don't do
that, put a recover program (full version, not trial version) on some
other, newer computer and try the recover again.

Hi,

No.. my large card is just fine. My SMALLER one (512mb) came home
utterly EMPTY... the data recover software found 500mb of previously
deleted (6 month ago) pictures, but NOT ONE FROM AFRICA.

It's VERY strange, because while in Africa, I was reviewing photos
every day and they were all there... somehow THOSE vanished, but not
the previously deleted photos.

From my very limited knowledge of how memory hardware works, when you
'delete' you're simply removing the first letter of the file name and
it 'vanishes', but as you put NEW information onto the card, the
older, invisible stuff is permanently removed.

If I'm right, I don't know how I could view all of the photos for a
week, but then, in the end, they not be there, nor did they displace
the much older, already-deleted files.

That is what is very weird indeed. Have you any idea what proportion of
512Mb your African pictues took? You're quite sure there aren't any
extra folders on the card in which those images are tucked away? You
didn't annoy any witch doctors while in Africa?

If it was me I'd be tempted to suppose that this is so impossible that
I would have to start considering the incredible, such as that
possibly I'm mistaken in one of my firm convictions, e.g. about which
card.

--
Chris Malcolm DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Chris Malcolm wrote:
[]
If it was me I'd be tempted to suppose that this is so impossible that
I would have to start considering the incredible, such as that
possibly I'm mistaken in one of my firm convictions, e.g. about which
card.

I explained just how this can happen (as It's happened to me), but the OP
hasn't yet got back with the likelihood of it actually being the cause.

Cheers,
David

RainLover wrote:
I'm hoping SOMEONE here can help me.

I just arrived home from a 3 week trip to Africa and was blown away to
discover one of my memory cards is EMPTY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, to make it even odder, I was reviewing pictures everyday, so they
WERE on the card.

I got some software recover program and took a look... there were some
photos! but... They were photos I took back in MARCH of this year
and purposely deleted back then!

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PICTURES?????

Any ideas?

The only think I can think of is that particular card was in my
checked luggage and something ZAPPED it... be even so, why did my old,
deleted pictures stay and the brand new ones vanish?


Help, Help, Help! Any suggestions on recovering them????


James


If there are images from an earlier shoot on the card, then either the
card was rewritten from a folder on your computer which contains the
older data, overwriting the African images - which I find very unlikely,
since you would have had to copy the folder to the card by mistake,
instead of copying the card to the folder; or the card never did have
the African images on it, since saving those images would have
overwritten the older images.

In other words, if the African images were on the card while in Africa,
and they aren't there now, then you must somehow have overwritten the
card with the older images when you put the card into your computer.
The African images would have overwritten the older images, so they are
no longer on the card. The fact that the older images are now on the
card means that either the African images were never on the card at all,
or you overwrote them with your computer.

In many respects, cards are like cassette tapes. If you record over old
tracks with new music, the old tracks no longer exist. If the old
tracks exist, then either you didn't record over them, or you wrote them
back again.

Getting zapped in your luggage is not possible. Forget that theory.

One other thought strikes, a bit of a long shot, but ... If it is a SD
(secure digital) card, it will have a tiny slide switch on one edge
which will prevent writing to the card. If this switch is in the secure
position, and your camera has some amount of built-in memory, then you
may have been looking at that memory when you checked your images - but
they weren't written to the card. If that's the case, then you don't
need to be told the bad news.

Colin D.

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:56:07 GMT, "David J Taylor"
wrote:
: RainLover wrote:
: []
: - Pictures where viewable throughout Africa
: - It's an SD 512mb card (thank god it was THAT one and not my 3gig one
: - once I arrived back in the states, the camera says 'emtpy card'
: - putting the SD into a slot on my home computer (and it shows empty)
:
: The REALLY weird thing is that when I use a recovery program, it FINDS
: files that I DELETED back in March, but NOTHING for last week.
:
: I'm trying to get over the grief since I think all is lost, but ANY
: suggestions would be welcomed
:
: James, Port Orchard (near Seattle), WA, USA, Earth
:
: Possibility:
:
: - before Africa, when you last used the card in your computer, you did not
: "safely eject" it.
:
: - when you replaced the card in the computer, it rewrote the directory of
: contents which it had before Africa, thus "erasing" what you wrote in
: Africa.

That seems far-fetched. The reason you "safely eject" a device is to make sure
that any cached updates have been written back to the media. That's unlikely
to be an issue with a card reader, since reading a card doesn't normally
affect the data that's on it. An exception would be if the user had moved,
rather than copied, images from the reader to the computer. But even then, the
effect of the premature eject should be to preserve (on the card) images that
would otherwise be deleted. And once the card has been removed, the computer
is unlikely to retain any memory of having seen it. So the next time it's
inserted into the reader, the putative update would be unlikely to occur.

One possibility that hasn't been mentioned is that the OP inadvertently
deleted the folder with the Africa images while the card was still in the
camera. I don't think my Canons let you do that (i.e., delete an entire folder
without actually formatting the card), but I suppose other cameras may be
different in that respect.

Bob

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:36:58 +1300, Colin_D wrote:
: RainLover wrote:
: I'm hoping SOMEONE here can help me.
:
: I just arrived home from a 3 week trip to Africa and was blown away to
: discover one of my memory cards is EMPTY!!!!!!!!!!!!
:
: Now, to make it even odder, I was reviewing pictures everyday, so they
: WERE on the card.
:
: I got some software recover program and took a look... there were some
: photos! but... They were photos I took back in MARCH of this year
: and purposely deleted back then!
:
: WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PICTURES?????
:
: Any ideas?
:
: The only think I can think of is that particular card was in my
: checked luggage and something ZAPPED it... be even so, why did my old,
: deleted pictures stay and the brand new ones vanish?
:
:
: Help, Help, Help! Any suggestions on recovering them????
:
:
: James
:
:
: If there are images from an earlier shoot on the card, then either the
: card was rewritten from a folder on your computer which contains the
: older data, overwriting the African images - which I find very unlikely,
: since you would have had to copy the folder to the card by mistake,
: instead of copying the card to the folder; or the card never did have
: the African images on it, since saving those images would have
: overwritten the older images.
:
: In other words, if the African images were on the card while in Africa,
: and they aren't there now, then you must somehow have overwritten the
: card with the older images when you put the card into your computer.
: The African images would have overwritten the older images, so they are
: no longer on the card. The fact that the older images are now on the
: card means that either the African images were never on the card at all,
: or you overwrote them with your computer.

A third possibility is that they're in a separate folder that has somehow gone
unnoticed. That the images got put in a separate folder isn't far-fetched.
Apparently this was the second card used on the trip, and there were other
images (albeit deleted) already on the card. So there would be a sequencing
break, which might well cause a new folder to be created. It *is* far-fetched
that the folder doesn't get seen by the computer, but a poorly written driver
might let that happen. It's at least plausible enough to make it worth trying
to read the card on a couple more computers with different drivers. Maybe
lightning will strike.

: In many respects, cards are like cassette tapes. If you record over old
: tracks with new music, the old tracks no longer exist. If the old
: tracks exist, then either you didn't record over them, or you wrote them
: back again.

I don't care for the cassette analogy, with its implication that new data are
always written at the first available location on the media. A card is more
like a floppy disk or a flash memory stick, on which any available space can
be used. On such a device it's at least possible that preference will be given
to locations at which no "deleted" data still exists.

Bob

Robert Coe wrote:
[]
That seems far-fetched. The reason you "safely eject" a device is to
make sure that any cached updates have been written back to the
media. That's unlikely to be an issue with a card reader, since
reading a card doesn't normally affect the data that's on it. An
exception would be if the user had moved, rather than copied, images
from the reader to the computer. But even then, the effect of the
premature eject should be to preserve (on the card) images that would
otherwise be deleted. And once the card has been removed, the
computer is unlikely to retain any memory of having seen it. So the
next time it's inserted into the reader, the putative update would be
unlikely to occur.

Unlikely as it may be, something similar has happened to me, removing one
CF card accidentally without Eject, and inserting another. The second
card then appeared to have the contents of the first. A file recovery
program worked OK.

One possibility that hasn't been mentioned is that the OP
inadvertently deleted the folder with the Africa images while the
card was still in the camera. I don't think my Canons let you do that
(i.e., delete an entire folder without actually formatting the card),
but I suppose other cameras may be different in that respect.

Bob

If everything else has been eliminated, finger error remains....

Cheers,
David