Learn from my mistake (Page 2): Wrong. They are there until overwritten.

MtnMan Loc: ID

speters wrote:

Well, I'm sorry but I think you're out of luck. If you just had deleted them ok, but you formatted the card and that means they are not retrievable anymore.

Wrong. They are there until overwritten.

insman1132 Loc: Southwest Florida

I think most of us are un-perfect also. Some years back I decided to run 3 cards in rotation for my camera. When I move pics to my computer I put another card in my camera to work with next. The pictures remain on my old card until it comes back into rotation two cards later -- which is usually well after I have checked/addressed the pics I copied onto the computer, thus knowing they are all there -- and only then do I reformat the card.

blackest Loc: Ireland

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec works well and it is free cross platform it's generally best to work on a disk image which is easy to create on linux and OSX. As long as you do not write to the card you should be able to recover everything. Working with a disk image you can make mistakes safely.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

speters wrote:

Well, I'm sorry but I think you're out of luck. If you just had deleted them ok, but you formatted the card and that means they are not retrievable anymore.

Hmmm.... Think again!
I accidentally formatted the wrong card (the used one, instead of the new one).
Got a free program "Recuva" from Piriform and 15 minutes later had all my photos back!
At least using my SanDisk SD cards with Olympus E-5 and Olympus OM-D E-M1, the photos may be deleted and the card re-formatted, and (at least in some instances) the photos are recoverable.

What will likely kill the photos on the card, is, if after re-formatting the card, you start to take more photos on it, and so overwrite what was left on the card.

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

We all make some of these mistakes from time to time... I do my formatting *before* a shooting session, so the photos remain on the card for however long it is between sessions. If I am shooting a lot, or over several days, then I leave them on the card even longer - my cards are all 32GB or bigger, so there is plenty of room! It's just nice to have that extra level of backup until the computer has incorporated them into the ongoing backup process.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I've made lots of mistakes, but not that one - yet! I always check the last image # on the card, then check in the folder where they were copied to to make sure it's there. If the first and last ones are there, I assume all of them are there. So far it has worked. Now if you want to know of MY stupid mistakes. . . . .

Mark-VA

I think just about everyone has a file loss horror story. This shortcut may help prevent what happened to you: to select all files in a folder highlight one file then hold down the CTRL key and press the A key. This selects all files in a folder. I haven't used it on a Mac so I'm not sure if it works there, but it's been in Windows for a very long time.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Bluetick wrote:

Here's one that I made recently that I'll bet no-one in the group has ever made. I attended a friend's 75th birthday party a couple of weeks ago and took quite a number of images. Was intending to make him a photo album. When I got home I went thru the normal saving of the images to my computer and supplementary external hard drives. I checked the computer to see that the images had been saved and having confirmed that, proceeded to reformat the card. The next day I decided to work on the file to do the customary deletion of near duplicates, some enhancements, etc. Then, about 1/2 way thru the exercise I realized that a significant portion of the images were missing! Horrors! Double horrors! What had happened to them? I had seen them in the camera. Where are they now? Going back thru every card I have produced nothing. So, I surmised that I had made the grievous error of highlighting only a portion of the images when I went to copy them from the card onto the computer. That portion was transferred successfully but I obviously left the others behind only to bite the dust when I reformatted the card. At the moment I am frantically trying to determine if the images can be retrieved using a special scanning software designed to restore lost photos, documents, e-mails, etc.. Nevertheless, what was the root cause of the error you ask? Remember I said I checked the computer to see if the images had been saved? Well, I apparently didn't scroll thru the entire file to assure that the entire group of images had been saved. I had the computer set on large icons and having seen that some images were there, proceeded to assume all were there, which they were not. The rest is history. So, I learned an important lesson the hard way. Always assure that ALL images are saved to multiple hard drives before reformatting your memory card. Sound perfectly simple and basic doesn't it? I've been into digital photography for over ten years and have never done something so #@$%& stupid. Well, yes - I did back in 1972 with film but that's another story.

Here's one that I made recently that I'll bet no-o... (show quote)

That's awful. I have no idea how to recover the lost images, but it looks like you got some good advice. I make it a practice never to delete images from my card until I have edited all images and backed them up. So far that has worked well. Good luck !

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Bluetick wrote:

Here's one that I made recently that I'll bet no-one in the group has ever made. I attended a friend's 75th birthday party a couple of weeks ago and took quite a number of images. Was intending to make him a photo album. When I got home I went thru the normal saving of the images to my computer and supplementary external hard drives. I checked the computer to see that the images had been saved and having confirmed that, proceeded to reformat the card. The next day I decided to work on the file to do the customary deletion of near duplicates, some enhancements, etc. Then, about 1/2 way thru the exercise I realized that a significant portion of the images were missing! Horrors! Double horrors! What had happened to them? I had seen them in the camera. Where are they now? Going back thru every card I have produced nothing. So, I surmised that I had made the grievous error of highlighting only a portion of the images when I went to copy them from the card onto the computer. That portion was transferred successfully but I obviously left the others behind only to bite the dust when I reformatted the card. At the moment I am frantically trying to determine if the images can be retrieved using a special scanning software designed to restore lost photos, documents, e-mails, etc.. Nevertheless, what was the root cause of the error you ask? Remember I said I checked the computer to see if the images had been saved? Well, I apparently didn't scroll thru the entire file to assure that the entire group of images had been saved. I had the computer set on large icons and having seen that some images were there, proceeded to assume all were there, which they were not. The rest is history. So, I learned an important lesson the hard way. Always assure that ALL images are saved to multiple hard drives before reformatting your memory card. Sound perfectly simple and basic doesn't it? I've been into digital photography for over ten years and have never done something so #@$%& stupid. Well, yes - I did back in 1972 with film but that's another story.

Here's one that I made recently that I'll bet no-o... (show quote)

My only comment is this, I never reuse a memory card, they are soooooooooo cheap, I label and store mine, I take the best of the best shots off each and have them copied onto three thumb drives. I have each memory card labeled and have a list of what great shots are on each. This way I will never be in that situation.

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

jdubu wrote:

Camera reformatting only erases the directory showing where the files are, telling the camera that written space is available for new data. As long as you don't rewrite over the existing files, then Recuva can find most, if not all photos on your card. Rewriting would require shooting new photos over the old ones or a computer reset formatting to 0's.

That's not quite true with SD cards. Most people only format the directory when they do an in-camera format because they don't check mark the box that, in Canon cameras, is called a "Low Level Format". Other manufacturers no doubt call it something different. When that box is check the entire card is formatted, making any recovery attempt useless. The same is true of the difference between a quick and a full format if done in the computer. One note: Because of the way they write data SD cards will, over time, lose write speed. A full, or low level format will restore it. A quick format will not.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

Well at least you have ways to recover your photos. A long time ago, I went to an important event with a film DSLR, and forgot to put in the film. I buy a few SD cards around 16gb, and do not reformat until everything is finished. SD cards are so inexpensive now, you don't always need to reformat your previously used card continuously. I remember when a 4gb SD card, class 4, was very expensive. Now you can get them for about $5. No one buys them anymore. Not even for point and shoot cameras.

DavidM Loc: New Orleans, LA

Usually I check the number of photos between the card and target location of copied photos. Then I create a second copy to another drive or run a backup program.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

MtnMan wrote:

Wrong. They are there until overwritten.

Yup. OP: they may still be recoverable. Don't use the card until you try to recover your deleted (file names). A simple delete would be no big problem, reformatting has probably complicated things. Seek expert help!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Bluetick wrote:

Here's one that I made recently that I'll bet no-one in the group has ever made. I attended a friend's 75th birthday party a couple of weeks ago and took quite a number of images. Was intending to make him a photo album. When I got home I went thru the normal saving of the images to my computer and supplementary external hard drives. I checked the computer to see that the images had been saved and having confirmed that, proceeded to reformat the card. The next day I decided to work on the file to do the customary deletion of near duplicates, some enhancements, etc. Then, about 1/2 way thru the exercise I realized that a significant portion of the images were missing! Horrors! Double horrors! What had happened to them? I had seen them in the camera. Where are they now? Going back thru every card I have produced nothing. So, I surmised that I had made the grievous error of highlighting only a portion of the images when I went to copy them from the card onto the computer. That portion was transferred successfully but I obviously left the others behind only to bite the dust when I reformatted the card. At the moment I am frantically trying to determine if the images can be retrieved using a special scanning software designed to restore lost photos, documents, e-mails, etc.. Nevertheless, what was the root cause of the error you ask? Remember I said I checked the computer to see if the images had been saved? Well, I apparently didn't scroll thru the entire file to assure that the entire group of images had been saved. I had the computer set on large icons and having seen that some images were there, proceeded to assume all were there, which they were not. The rest is history. So, I learned an important lesson the hard way. Always assure that ALL images are saved to multiple hard drives before reformatting your memory card. Sound perfectly simple and basic doesn't it? I've been into digital photography for over ten years and have never done something so #@$%& stupid. Well, yes - I did back in 1972 with film but that's another story.

Here's one that I made recently that I'll bet no-o... (show quote)

Sorry to hear of your disaster. You've gotten some good results. But I do have one question or am confused about one thing, why do you manually copy or move your image files by selecting them (highlighting them) and then move, copy, or drag them? I only do that with devices that I do not have synced to my Adobe Camera Raw File Transfer program. I may have to manually work with files on my Smartphone, PNS Camera, etc. as Photoshop is set to my DSLRs. Windows or Mac/OS usually looks at a "new" device to see if it has new files to transfer. I normally only manually transfer photos when putting them on a Cell Phone for later viewing w/o the computer!

That was not the dumbest photo error I've ever heard of. A friend of mine once "developed" the paper backing from a roll of 120 format film. While the film was left on the floor! Needless to say (well maybe it is these days) the film was ruined when the room lights were turned on as the film was thought to be in a developing can.

Garydah

Such a bummer! Usually as long as you have not taken new photos on that card you can recover them. There is FREE software to do this at transcend http://us.transcend-info.com/Support/Software-4/