Ran into a minor problem with a Compact Flash card that was loaned out (along with my Canon point-and-shoot). I assumed that the borrower had copied off all of his photos prior to returning it to me. Turns out that this wasn’t the case. And to complicate matters slightly, the card had been used since it was returned to me (not filled to capacity, but I’d taken around thirty pictures). How to recover these images (keeping in mind that this solution is not specific to Compact Flash–it should work just the same for SD, MiniSD, etc.).
I paid a quick visit to the Forensics Wiki’s page on data recovery tools and found two utilities right away: PhotoRescue and PhotoRec. Options. Swell.
I’m familiar with DataRescue (makers of the IDA Pro disassembly suite), and PhotoRescue allows you to view the results of the recovery pass(es) prior to purchasing the software, so I figured I’d give it a shot. As promised, it presented me with previews of a number of images (ninety-six, to be exact) available for recovery, then asked for $29. Not a lot of money, but not free (as in beer). On to PhotoRec.
I downloaded PhotoRec, only to find that the downloaded package name was actually testdisk-6.8.darwin.tar.bz2. Funny thing about that: I already have testdisk installed from MacPorts. And sure enough, a quick path check confirmed that the binary for photorec has been with me all along.
A recovery attempt with PhotoRec was as simple as:
photorec /d my_output_path /dev/disk1
This sets the output directory and device from which PhotoRec should recover data, then spawns a terminal-based wizard. From there I chose:
-
Disk /dev/disk1 - 512 MB / 488 MiB (RO)
-
Intel/PC partition
-
FAT16 >32M
-
Other
-
Extract files from whole partition
And that was it! Ninety-six images successfully recovered in less than two minutes, at no cost.
UPDATE1: Formatting the card via the camera menu appears to have no effect on PhotoRec’s (and presumably PhotoRescue’s) ability to extract old images.
UPDATE2: NYT article on photo recovery tools and services. Mentions PhotoRescue, among others.
Share This
5 comments ↓
On the PC, I used Zero Assumption with great results. Also free. Accidentally formatted an xD picture card containing both photos and movies, and was able to recover most of them.
That link I just provided contains an old version of the software. Here’s the company’s website with the latest version. Although they talk about payment, it’s still free, at least to recover media files from flash cards.
Looks like a nice utility. I needed something that would work on either my Mac or my Linux box, which is where the testdisk suite shines: works on all Windows platforms, Linux (via source or RPM, based on distribution) and Max OS X.
[...] Do not photograph 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA [...]
[...] home, and use a free and capable image recovery program to extract the “deleted” images from the original [...]
Leave a Comment