Working with digital images

[StephanieJean]

hi. we had a school speech night last night and I took heaps of photos of myself getting awards and doing my speeches and of all my friends. Then today I leant my camera to my friend, but didn't have time to put the photos on my laptop so they were all still on the camera. She accidentally deleted them! Now I have tried heaps of recovery programs and none of them bring up the photos from last night. Why is this happening and can/how do I fix it?

Please help me! This is really important to me. I am school captain and had an important role in the speech night and as this is my last year as school I wanted many photographic memories.

I need my photos!!!

HELP!!!!

Stephanie

[bdery]

Hi Stephanie!

Don't get panicked just now, we'll try to figure something out.

First, tell us which camera you're using. That will help us figure out how the files were deleted. Or do you know if your friend deleted them or formatted the card?

Next, you say you've tried many recovery programs. That's a good start. Can you tell us which ones? From what I've heard, some programs work best with some brands of memory, but I'm not sure why. Quite often, too, paying programs work better than free ones, so that could be a solution. Did the programs actually make a run and told you it was unsuccessful, or did they not even access the card for some reason?

Normally, three things can happen that will remove a file. First, it can be "erased" (meaning it's still there, but its address on the Fila Allocation Table is gone). Second, a regular format can do the same thing, but with all files (the FAT is erased). Those two methods usually let you recover your files. The third way, which is not available on all cameras, is to do a "Low Level format". When that happens, every part of the memory card is rewritten with blank data, and of course the FAT is erased. In that case, the data is lost.

One last thing to consider, if you tried recovering your files from the camera instead of from a card reader : some brands, like Canon and Kodak, do not give you direct access to the memory card when it's on the camera. You can transter files, but a recovery software won't be able to access it. Other brands make the camera in such a way that it's, in fact, a full card reader, with it's drive letter in the "My Computer" menu (on Windows). Those brands let you acces the card itself.

Let us know how it goes. Good luck!