i have VERY little time to myself these days... work is nutty crazy, husband is travelling, kids have all sorts of activities... whatevs... but lately i've been living for one of my boys' early sunday morning hockey practices... i drop him off and head down to the lake by myself for photos...
went this morning... it was absolutely frigid out... but i took a number of shots, including a few that looked quite nice on the camera's LED screen...
just went to download them - and they aren't there! the computer downloaded shots i took yesterday, but not this morning's... and when i view on the camera, this morning's shots aren't there...
they must be on the card "somewhere" because there is room for 150 fewer shots than there was when i checked the card before setting out this morning... any ideas how i can find them?
i realize it isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things... not even a big deal in the grand scheme of photography... but i was so looking forward to having a few good (and slightly different - for me) photos...
(my 9 year old son just gave me a hug and told me that "sheep happens" - sigh)
Oh, I am sorry! That stinks! There have been times, when I have enjoyed a photo shoot so much or gotten photos I liked so much, that when I left my camera hidden in my car, then thought "what if it gets stolen?" I realized I was worried about loss of the images, not the camera. Sigh. Total image addict. I was going to say "blow on it" because my husband does that when things don't read...I think memory cards was one I have seen him do this with and it worked. But....it sounds like a bad idea now that I am considering it..moisture in the camera...so probably not a good idea. I hope someone can help you!
sheep happens! Bless his little heart!!! I know this sounds really really stupid, but has anything happened to the date on your camera? The only time anything similar has happened to me was when I used a camera where the date wasn't set properly. The pics automatically downloaded to my laptop, but I didn't realise they had because they were way back in my catalogue (I use PSE 8 organiser)
I have used Stellar photo recovery to recover photos from my card. It is a free download and you can try it out. If it does recover your shots, then you can purchase the key code to get your photos. I sure wish you luck and hope you can retrieve your shots!
Make sure you don't use the card again until you've tried to recover the files -- any new files written to the card will overwrite parts of the missing data.
I've used Recuva as well, works well and is free and easy to use.
If that doesn't work, I'd also try Windows error checking on the card -- it sounds like the file allocation table (that tells the computer/camera where the files are stored on the card) is damaged, as the free space is lower than you'd expect if the files had actually been deleted. You can access it by right-clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer, clicking Properties, going to the Tools tab, and clicking 'Check now...'. Try a recovery program first though.
I love 'sheep happens' very cute; is it possibly something so simple that the card was not in properly and the photos are in the camera memory? Although it does seem a lot, happened to me once but then camera only held ten shots, so I knew sooner?????
Hope you can retrieve them
You might also check to see if some sort of sub-directory or folder was created inside the folder where the pictures usually get saved on the card. If that's the case, those pictures could be in that sub folder.
@mikehamm's right; using the card in a 2nd camera can cause photos to be stored in a different subfolder... my D600 and D90 have that issue sometimes, and accessing the alternate folder isn't usually very obvious.
if you can mount the card on your desktop, the folder will become obvious.
everyone else's ideas of card isolation, card recovery, and Windows recovery should be tried, fingers crossed for you.
Recuva saved about 13000 photos that I accidentally (and stupidly) deleted when using Dropbox (which I won't touch with a barge pole now!) and it took a while but recovered 99% of them including my wedding photos! I'd recommend it every time - your shots will most definitely be on the card somewhere so try not to panic :0)
If all fails go to a camera shop and let them test the card...if the card was damaged which happened to us they are lifetime guaranteed..we got a new one in exchange..but I'm sure they will find your pictures..try it!! you can't lose any more by doing so.
My camera only counts to 9999 so when I reach that number the camera creates a new folder and starts loading the new photos into that folder.
I agree with Cameron and Mike that you should mount the card on your desktop and search it manually to see if you can find the missing files. You can manually transfer the photos to your computer.
Tx so much everyone... the images ARE on the card (yay!)... Recuva did not find them, but Stellar Phoenix did... unfortunately, Stellar Phoenix seems to crash when it gets thru reading 96% of the card... i've run it twice now - crashed at the same point each time... :(
I'm going to run it thru one more time with fingers crossed... if that doesn't work, i'll take the card in to the pros sometime during the week... i doubt the photos are worth all this effort, but i hate being defeated by inanimate things...
Try a 3rd or 4th tool. Same went for crashed Mac drives (back when they used to crap out); I had an array of tools that I'd use in sequence to fix the 'unfixable'.
@cameronknowlton ah! yes... well... that would suggest i would even know how to find such a tool... ;p
as it is, i only know of the three referenced in this thread... recuva didn't find them... the tool Nick posted a link to is too technical for me to figure out how to use it properly (i tried - really i did!)...
and as i said, Stellar Phoenix has found them... but crashes before it gets to the end of the search... i might try recuva again... i realized that i had it searching for deleted files and these weren't deleted...
and perhaps i will call upon some colleagues at work who are more technically inclined than i :)
that sounds like you have a bad image right at the end (better than the beginning!) each tool you find will be more or less tolerant of different errors. sounds like you did well, I had about the same recovery rate when I wiped photos that I *thought* had been imported into my computer, but weren't. so glad you did well, you help out so many of us with our challenges.
ok - it's taken me about 4 hours, but i think i've "got" them... will see if they are usable tomorrow... at the moment, i am too tired to see straight!
I have learned a lot in case it ever happens to me! I will e copy/ pasting this thread just in case! I hope our shots are okay, but sounds like they probably will be. Even if shots are not worth it,it is good to learn how to get out of this situation....in case it ever happens again. @northy
@sarajeal I was a out to start using drop box in a very limited fashion...putting up holiday shots for family to access, etc...how did it delete all your pics? Now I am scared....how would it delete them from your card?? I once had sync software with an external hard drive do that somehow to computer files...I had both the drive and my regular hard drive windows open, deleted files from the external drive to clear it off and it deleted the matching file from my regular hard drive....anyway,,,,should I be afraid of Dropbox?
@espyetta I didn't realise that Dropbox was a folder which keeps all of your files and if you delete from Dropbox you are deleting your main folders - yes you can access them from anywhere but you have to remember not to delete things that you want to keep. I use justcloud now which I can choose which files to COPY into it, that way I can have a copy on my external hard drive, a copy on my main computer and a copy on justcloud and if you change anything in the sync'ed folders, it updates the changes in all the attached places for that file x
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I've used Recuva as well, works well and is free and easy to use.
http://www.piriform.com/recuva
If that doesn't work, I'd also try Windows error checking on the card -- it sounds like the file allocation table (that tells the computer/camera where the files are stored on the card) is damaged, as the free space is lower than you'd expect if the files had actually been deleted. You can access it by right-clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer, clicking Properties, going to the Tools tab, and clicking 'Check now...'. Try a recovery program first though.
Good luck!
Hope you can retrieve them
if you can mount the card on your desktop, the folder will become obvious.
everyone else's ideas of card isolation, card recovery, and Windows recovery should be tried, fingers crossed for you.
I agree with Cameron and Mike that you should mount the card on your desktop and search it manually to see if you can find the missing files. You can manually transfer the photos to your computer.
Tx so much everyone... the images ARE on the card (yay!)... Recuva did not find them, but Stellar Phoenix did... unfortunately, Stellar Phoenix seems to crash when it gets thru reading 96% of the card... i've run it twice now - crashed at the same point each time... :(
I'm going to run it thru one more time with fingers crossed... if that doesn't work, i'll take the card in to the pros sometime during the week... i doubt the photos are worth all this effort, but i hate being defeated by inanimate things...
Tx again for all your support and suggestions :)
as it is, i only know of the three referenced in this thread... recuva didn't find them... the tool Nick posted a link to is too technical for me to figure out how to use it properly (i tried - really i did!)...
and as i said, Stellar Phoenix has found them... but crashes before it gets to the end of the search... i might try recuva again... i realized that i had it searching for deleted files and these weren't deleted...
and perhaps i will call upon some colleagues at work who are more technically inclined than i :)
tx!!!
Thank you all once again, for all your help!
@espyetta @peterdegraaff @sudweeks @jantan @exposure4u @httpgeffed @brianl @abirkill @edie @claireuk @mikehamm @nickshore @cameronknowlton @sarajeal @bruni @lstasel
You realise we all have extremely high expectations of tomorrow's uploaded photos, right? ;)