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Image Recovery

Holy Crap! my camera card is dead and all my pictures are gone

Holy Crap! my camera card is dead and all my pictures are gone

  • Where have my files gone?

    Everyone who has ever used any sort of computer has, at some point, experienced the creeping dread that is “Where have my files gone?”.

    Back ups, like avalanche insurance, are something that you only really miss, when you realise you need it, but haven’t got any.

    In the immortally, reassuring words of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy...

    “Don’t Panic”

    Chances are your photos are not really lost and can, with a bit of know how, be recovered.

  • Oh, there they are... probably.

    Cameras are much less volatile users of memory than computers are. So, there is much less chance that the data in your camera has been overwritten or is irretrivably lost. Also, camera cards use solid state memory (as opposed to the disk based memory that computers use) and this is an intrinsically, incredibly robust way of storing data. (In fact, it’s so robust that for Conspiracy Theorists and Iranian Diplomats physically destroying the camera card itself, is probably the only reliable way of preventing any data from being recovered from it).

    If this happens to you:

    1. Stop taking pictures, immediately, and turn off the camera
    2. Do NOT remove the camera card.
    3. Bring the camera (with the camera card still in it) into the shop.

    (If you only discovered the problem, after you removed the card from the camera, e.g. when you were trying to copy files across to a PC, still bring the camera and the camera card into the shop… as sometimes it is possible to extract data from the camera, itself.)

    We’ll then try our best to recover whatever data is on them on to CD’s. If we can’t get any data off them, we won’t charge you anything. If we can recover data from the cards, we’ll bask in the glory and charge you for the cost of putting the data on to the CD’s.

    Now, go do a backup.