Recovering lost digital photos?

[PigletIsMyCat]

I spent yesterday and today at MK and EP, and took a few pics that I transferred to my computer, some last night and some tonight. Now, I have access to all the photos I uploaded today and ONE from yesterday!! I have no files for my pictures from yesterday! They are deleted from my memory card when I transfer them into My Pictures. They WERE on my pc at some point, since I uploaded a couple on to Myspace. When I went to set up a new album on here tonight, I couldn't find any of yesterday's MK pics except one I took of the kennel.

I remember last year, someone on the boards having a similar problem and someone else had a solution. I tried searching for a few terms (lost digital photos, recovering digital photos, etc) and cannot come up with a thread (I thought it might be too old). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated - I finally got a sweet spot for Wishes (and only got three decent pics because I have no idea how to use my four year old camera lol) and had pics from breakfast at CP with DH and Mom. I like the pics enough to dig for them, but not enough to pay all that money the 'professional' recovery services want. Any ideas?

 

[dolbyman]

as long as you haven't resused those memory cards you can try to recover the photos with a undelete software .. there are many on the market .. most of them cost money

 

[PhotoDave219]

I spent yesterday and today at MK and EP, and took a few pics that I transferred to my computer, some last night and some tonight. Now, I have access to all the photos I uploaded today and ONE from yesterday!! I have no files for my pictures from yesterday! They are deleted from my memory card when I transfer them into My Pictures. They WERE on my pc at some point, since I uploaded a couple on to Myspace. When I went to set up a new album on here tonight, I couldn't find any of yesterday's MK pics except one I took of the kennel.

I remember last year, someone on the boards having a similar problem and someone else had a solution. I tried searching for a few terms (lost digital photos, recovering digital photos, etc) and cannot come up with a thread (I thought it might be too old). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated - I finally got a sweet spot for Wishes (and only got three decent pics because I have no idea how to use my four year old camera lol) and had pics from breakfast at CP with DH and Mom. I like the pics enough to dig for them, but not enough to pay all that money the 'professional' recovery services want. Any ideas?

Okay, well you need to use some sort of file/image rescue on them. For $30 dollars you can download Lexar's Image Rescue or Photorescue an alternative program that does the same thing for the same price.

I've used both programs and personally prefer the Lexar version. Very easy.

I'm interested in your workflow. Do you connect through the camera or do you plug the card into the computer?

If you manage to recover your pictures, Try this for copying:

- Create a folder on the PC where you want to put the pictures
- open the folder your pictures are in on the memory card
- Hit Ctrl-A to Select All and then Ctrl-C as for copy.
- Click in your destination window and hit Ctrl-V to paste.

Either that or when the transfer dialogue comes up, look in some sort of preferences to see if there's anything about "Erase Card When We're Through" and turn it off.

 

[PigletIsMyCat]

I connect my camera (CyberShot) through a USB cable. I have always had it automatically delete the pictures from my memory card after the pics upload to my PC. This is the first time anything like this has happened. The pics automatically open with Windows Picture veiwer (or something that sounds like that) when I plug in and turn on my camera, and I can select one or multiple photos at a time to copy, move, delete, etc. I always delete a couple (bad focus or something) and then move the rest to My Pictures folder. I know the pics were there, because I uploaded a couple to my Myspace page, so they existed in My Pictures folder at some point in time. I went to upload them here, and they aren't in that folder anymore. I can always pull the few I put on Myspace off my page and save them back to my pc, but there were a few others that I wanted. Not enough to spend $30 though, since it was just a few pics from MK. I can just go back to MK and watch Wishes again, I guess. Oh, well another trip to MK.

 

[tigsmom]

I never delete from my chip until all pictures are transferred and backed up at least once. I have occasionally saved them to the wrong folder when I'm tired or distracted, could that have happened this time to you?

 

[Nemo14]

I think this is the thread you were talking about - not sure if this will help or not....

 

[dolbyman]

you'd need a cardreader for recovering those pics .. a usb connection to you cam is not enough...

as I said a quick google for "free memory card recovery tool" (e.g.) will give you the right direction ..

 

[PhotoDave219]

you'd need a cardreader for recovering those pics .. a usb connection to you cam is not enough...

as I said a quick google for "free memory card recovery tool" (e.g.) will give you the right direction ..

Definetly the way to go. Recovering the pictures is pretty easy to do.

I would check your recycle bin before you empty it; they might have found their way into there. Either that or search for all .jpg's modified between Time X and Time X. Could be theyre just in an odd place.

 

[JROK]

Either that or search for all .jpg's modified between Time X and Time X. Could be theyre just in an odd place.

Yea it sounds like they're "lost" on your computer's hard drive somewhere. Just do a Search for "jpg" of all your hard drives and it'll pull up every jpeg on there. Then arrange them by date and you should be able to find the pics. Doesn't sound like they're gone forever, just misplaced.

Lesson: Always backup photos before deleting cards and always check the photos on your computer to make sure there wasn't a transfer error. (ie. only half of the image appears).