TechoCrunch

photo credit: kolix

Nothing’s worse for a photographer then seeing the dreaded “Card Corrupt” or a similar message on your camera’s LCD. A lot of us have gone through that, most of the time you can’t do anything besides crushing the card manufacturer.

Recovering photos from corrupted cards usually impossible. Yet still with some photo recovery programs there’s still a possibility.

Before you use these photo recovery tools I would suggest 3 steps before going through the inevitable.

a. Don’t Panic

Don’t start panicking and start doing things that could further damage the photos. Take a deep breath and slow down. Take the card out of the camera and try it in another camera. Sometimes reinserting the card does the trick in most cases.

b. Don’t format your card

Most of us freak out and hit the format button. Normally corruption occurs because the Table of Contents(TOC) messes up. The error scanning mechanism of windows also known as Scan disk can also be use to fix it, do so.

c. If nothing works, try software recovery

Before using software recovery tools, I would recommend duplicating the corrupt disk. dd is a duplicating program that will copy your disc block by block, making an exact duplicate of your disk so that you could restore to it again if something goes bad with the recovery process. After making a backup we can now proceed using this few tools to recover your data.

Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery recovers files like gif, jpeg, tiff, crw(canon raw data), cr2, orf etc from hosts of media types like CompactFlash, MemoryStick, SmartMedia and so on.

Flash File Recovery can recover any previously deleted image file. Plus, it is capable of salvaging pictures from damaged or corrupted flash drives, which includes camera’s built-in memory.

Flobo Recovery is another cool application for recovering files and images from office, files and other removable.

Restoration is an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows, and it is also able to recover photos from a Flash card that had been formatted.

PhotoRec is free; this open source multi-platform application that lets you lost files including video, documents and archives.

PC Inspector Smart Recovery lets you recover files from Flash Card, Smart Media, Memory Stick, Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card or any other data carrier for digital cameras. It supports almost all file types ranging from jpeg, to raw files of different camera manufacturer.

RescuePro is a java based recovery solution for digital media from, guess what SanDisk themselves.

PhotoOne Recovery is easy-to-use and powerful image recovery software designed exclusively for digital camera users. PhotoOne Recovery recovers deleted, formatted and lost digital photos, images and pictures from almost any types of media cards used by digital cameras.

MediaRECOVER lets you easily restore deleted photos, files and home movies, there are two versions Pro costs around 49.95 and the standard cost $29.95.

If you do have a favorite photo recovery program, please let others know by posting in the comments section at the bottom of the post, we all benefit from the interaction.

Pranjal