Photographers' worst nightmare

[MNJRR]

I'm sure all of us have been here atleast once or may be in this situation. Your buzzing along on your computer organzing things deleting unwanted folders when suddenly you end up deleting the wrong folder. Well thats what i did, deleted around 400-500 pictures from a recent trip. Alot of odd power unique shots and the place is 5 hours away. And if you've ever done this its the most annoying thing ever, but thankfully theres a life saver, photo recovery programs which is what i'm doing now. Anyone else done a similar thing? What did you do to get your photos back, if you did?

[Ween]

Ummmm...go to the Recycle Bin, highlight the folders you want to keep, and click Restore?

[MNJRR]

not when it was deleted right off the memory card on the computer, they dont go to the recycle bin.

[E3429]

If you haven't reformatted the card since deleting them you can still get them back from it. Search out 'card recovery'. There are several programs out there.

[Joe the Photog]

I never delete anything off my cards while I'm at the computer. I transfer the shots to the computer, then make sure I physically take the card out just in case I'm somewhow looking at a folder on the card. When I'm assured the shots are all on the computer, I then reformat the card in the camera. (Usually I don't bother til I'm out shooting again.)

It sounds like you were going through the card trying to decide which shots to load and which not to load. Since I now have multiple cards (one of hwich being large enough I have not yet filled it up at one time) I don't delete anything off the card now. I've caught myself previously trying to get rid of one shot but almost about to delete all of them. I can weed out the bad stuff on the computer better and more safely than on hte camera.

[cblaz]

Memory space is so cheap now (can get a hard drive that will take years to fill for $50) that if you're deleting individual shots off a card at your computer, you're doing something wrong. Download everything to a hard drive (or two, as a backup) then go through and clean out the bad pics. Once that's done, and you haven't deleted anything by accident (which you can replace by putting the card back in the computer), reformat the card in the camera and you're good to go.

- Chris

[chuckman]

I had about 20 beautiful pictures of a warbonnet leading a train up here in February that I deleted. I found this program on the internet and I am wondering if it is not only safe to download, but more importantly, I want to make sure it won't make it impossible to use another program if this one fails to recover my stuff. Does it look like something that could damage the files?
http://www.cardrecovery.com/download.asp

[Freericks]

This is what I used. It costs money, but it works, so I'll stick with it.

http://download.cnet.com/Digital-Photo-Recovery/3000-2248_4-10257774.html?tag=mncol

Regarding the formatting issue, I've been told that formatting does not make the images unrecoverable (and in some cases can actually make erased images viewable to one of these programs if the card was corrupted). I state this with no personal knowledge, just what I've been told by others in the know.

[Chase55671]

I don't delete anything off of the memory card (mainly because it's hard to tell what is what when you're using CR2, as the thumbnail is the RAW logo, rather than the image).

As Chris said, hard drives are the way to go. I'm getting a new external one soon, as I don't want my hard drive here on the laptop to be full of CR2's. I'd say you could probably get 1TB for $90.

Chase

[ottergoose]

Memory space is so cheap now (can get a hard drive that will take years to fill for $50)

Who doesn't shoot RAW? Oh yes... :lol:

[Walter S]

Im trying to start shooting RAW, the day is getting closer HAHAH

[Chase55671]

I highly recommend it, Cassman.

Chase