Recovered photo from bad memory card
Have you ever had your memory card in your digital camera die on you? Maybe it shows a "Card Error" or "Card Malfunction", etc. on your camera's screen. Or maybe you just deleted your photos and now want them back. Well, here is recover any photos already on the memory card, and it is easy and free.
Instructions
1. ** WARNING **
Once you know your card has been corrupted in your camera, immediately remove it and do not use it for anything else. Do not reformat it or do anything to it other than running it through the recovery process as outlined below. Your precious photos will not have gone anywhere, but if you write anything onto the card, you can overwrite your photos.
2. First of all you need to download the software to do this. Go here: http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1 and download the PC Inspector File Recovery 4.x software. It is free to use. Install the program on your Windows PC computer.
3. Insert the bad memory card into your card reader and start the PC Inspector File Recovery program. The first screen will ask for language, choose English. The second screen just shows some general information, you can close that screen.
4. You will see six tabs on the left hand side of the program. Choose the tab on the top left - "Open Drive". This will scan your available drives and show you a listing of drives you can choose.
5. Choose the drive that says "removable disk" or the drive letter that is assigned to your memory card reader. Now click on the green check button on the right hand side. This will bring up another window that looks like a file listing. Now look on the left hand side on the colorful tabs and you will see a tab that looks like a doctor's symbol (Red Cross over a doctor's bag). Click on that symbol.
6. Now a "Select Cluster Range" box will open up. Start cluster is the minimum (put slider to left). End cluster is the maximum (put slider to the right). Now click on the green check button on the left.
7. This will begin the file recovery process. It will find many files on that memory card, including files from older times. This process will take about 5 to 30 minutes.
8. Now you will see a file listing with filenames such as "cluster xxxx.xx", these are your recovered files. You will need to save them somewhere. What I would do is create a folder on your desktop to hold the recovered files.
9. To save these files, you will need to select all of the files (Ctrl-A)
listed, and then click on the diskette icon on the left hand side. It will look like a gray floppy diskette.
10. It will now ask you where to save the files. You can choose the folder
you created on your desktop to put the files there. Click on the green
check button after you have chosen your folder. Now the actual recovery process will begin. You can expect to recover many hundred photos from a card, since usually there are data from many photos on the card itself. This recovery process will take about 1 to 4 hours depending on how many photos you have on your card and the state or corruption.
11. Once the program is completed, you can open up that folder containing your recovered photos to go and see what came through. You can delete the unwanted photos and transfer the ones you want to your collection.
12. Once you have confirmed that you have recovered all of the photos, you can reformat the memory card and reuse it.
Tags: memory card, hand side, process will, recovery process, check button