[Wrao]

I think I may have lost 400+ pictures from my trip to Australia. I am trying to use my camera and nothing is happening. When I try and take new pictures it says the memory card needs to be initialized. My card reader isn't working either. Anyone have any ideas?

FUjifilm f480, Fuji 512mb XD memory card. Latest version of iPhoto.

[FFL]

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/

worked great for me several years ago when I first met and got a photo with the Radiators' lead singer, only to be crushed when the memory card was unreadable.

the above software recovered all but a couple pix from the card

[Wrao]

Says it cannot find any compatible media. XD is not exactly a standard ya know?

[Wrao]

I fiddled around some more with a different program and it is presently in the process of recovering about 98% of the photos! hurray!

[Yonzie]

Dude, hook us up!
That said, good to hear it worked.

[thegeriatric]

Great news, glad it worked out for you.

[turtle]

Glad you were able to get them off, most of them anyway. It sucks when you lose a card.

How about posting some of those pictures up here to show off your trip?

[Wrao]

Actually, it only half worked. The other program I used, added a watermark to all the pictures telling me to buy the program. But... getting warmer.

[Yonzie]

If you have a windows box, I got a copy of Rescue Pro. The mac version is horribly broken (can't even get it to run) so I have no need for it. Came free with a SanDisk memory card.

[Enki]

Even Better: Card Raider, 19.95 and you can download it. Saved several hundred photos on an XD card the camera wouldn't even acknowledge existed. I did need an external reader for that.

[Wrao]

Originally Posted by Enki Even Better: Card Raider, 19.95 and you can download it. Saved several hundred photos on an XD card the camera wouldn't even acknowledge existed. I did need an external reader for that.

Yes, The demo worked perfectly for Card Raider... and it gave me the watermarks. But, seems like there is no free option, so I will just have to fork over the $20 for one of these applications. It's a funny market niche they are in. They can't get THAT much business, but when the situation arises, it is over something(irreplaceable photos) that most users will GLADLY pay for.

Suffice to say, this whole data recovery thing is utter witchcraft to me. Makes me a little leery about all the things I have 'deleted' in the past.

[turtle]

Originally Posted by Wrao Yes, The demo worked perfectly for Card Raider... and it gave me the watermarks. But, seems like there is no free option, so I will just have to fork over the $20 for one of these applications. It's a funny market niche they are in. They can't get THAT much business, but when the situation arises, it is over something(irreplaceable photos) that most users will GLADLY pay for. Suffice to say, this whole data recovery thing is utter witchcraft to me. Makes me a little leery about all the things I have 'deleted' in the past.

Well, most things aren't really removed from the disk so you would want to use a secure method. Even then it isn't always permanent.

[Wrao]

It's just kind of surprising is all. If $20 software can recover photos from a fragged memory card with 90% retention. I can't imagine what million dollar computing arrays and R&D projects might be capable of. Reminds me of that scene in one of the Mission: Impossible movies where they get some HD from an exploded laptop and the R&D guy shows the disc and it is burned and fragmented all over, but he's still able to 'recover' about 30% of the contents(including the next plot device, conveniently).

Who says digital technology is an impermanent medium?

[Banana]

Wrao, it bears to remember that there is no such thing as completely secure system. That was true before the digitial age, and is still true right now.

Rather, system's security is dependent on time and resources available to crack the security. Zeroing a drive and breaking apart the cover will certainly stop the pizza-faced nerd next door from finding your porn stash, but spies will certainly want to give a try at the same drive containing the top secret vital to their national defense.

I already made a thread a while ago about IronKey if you're feeling a bit paranoid, but the premise remains: if all you have is personal stuff, the chance of someone spending immense time and effort to get the access is low.

[Enki]

Originally Posted by Wrao It's just kind of surprising is all. If $20 software can recover photos from a fragged memory card with 90% retention. I can't imagine what million dollar computing arrays and R&D projects might be capable of. Reminds me of that scene in one of the Mission: Impossible movies where they get some HD from an exploded laptop and the R&D guy shows the disc and it is burned and fragmented all over, but he's still able to 'recover' about 30% of the contents(including the next plot device, conveniently). Who says digital technology is an impermanent medium?

Nothing odd there. Deleting something from the directory, either by corruption or purposely will not overwrite the existing data, just remove the reference to it. Recovering the file itself is a very straight-forward process called file carving. File carving off flash for images is about as trivial a situation as it gets.

Originally Posted by Banana Wrao, it bears to remember that there is no such thing as completely secure system. That was true before the digitial age, and is still true right now. Rather, system's security is dependent on time and resources available to crack the security. Zeroing a drive and breaking apart the cover will certainly stop the pizza-faced nerd next door from finding your porn stash, but spies will certainly want to give a try at the same drive containing the top secret vital to their national defense. I already made a thread a while ago about IronKey if you're feeling a bit paranoid, but the premise remains: if all you have is personal stuff, the chance of someone spending immense time and effort to get the access is low.

If the flash (or any file on any rewritable media) was erased via over-write it would be just as impervious to recovering anything off it as IronKey drives are. IronKey is very very good about maintaining your data privacy when you loose physical control of your device.