Lost and gone forever: Yesterday I downloaded the files from my SD card onto my computer. Since I was shooting at two different locations I made a folder for each location. One for the...

jkm757 Loc: San Diego, Ca.

Yesterday I downloaded the files from my SD card onto my computer. Since I was shooting at two different locations I made a folder for each location. One for the park and one for the zoo. Today when I went to open the zoo folder it was empty. All the files in it were gone. The folder for the park still has all it's files. I ran Recuva, but it wasn't able to find them either on the hard drive or the SD card. I'm not so concerned about recovering the files(the shots were not all that great) as I am about finding out why they disappeared in the first place, where they disappeared to and why Recuva can't find them.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Did you do anything in whatever OS file manager you use? Is there a recycle bin with a deleted folder? In Windows, I open File Explorer and do a wildcard search, in my case for RGP*.* which will find all my files with my current prefex. Then sort the results by date and see if the missing images are located. You might have inadvertently copied them to the wrong place. I've done it many times.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

One policy you might want to put in place is checking the files after you transfer them from card to computer. This will catch this sort of thing prior to losing any information permanently. That assumes the files were on the card in the first place.
--Bob

jkm757 wrote:

Yesterday I downloaded the files from my SD card ... (show quote)

jkm757 Loc: San Diego, Ca.

Thanks rgrenader and Bob. After some more searching I found the files. They were in the folder I created for them. The folder just wasn't where it was supposed to be.

tinplater Loc: Scottsdale, AZ

jkm757 wrote:

Thanks rgrenader and Bob. After some more searching I found the files. They were in the folder I created for them. The folder just wasn't where it was supposed to be.

It seems, at least in my experience, the computer is generally smarter than I am.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

That is great news. Knowing how computers work, the folder was where you told the computer to put it. I've had many discussions with my systems over the years. I've found that they do exactly what I tell them to do, not what I think I told them to do.

I'm glad that you let us know they weren't lost.
--Bob

jkm757 wrote:

Thanks rgrenader and Bob. After some more searching I found the files. They were in the folder I created for them. The folder just wasn't where it was supposed to be.

blue-ultra Loc: New Hampshire

As a policy when I move photos from the SD card to the computer, I use copy so in case of an accident I still have them on the SD card until I am satisfied they were properly transferred. Just sayin!

Bob

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Search your computer, bottom left is search, for the image #... probably the computer put them in a file you had not intended.

Haydon

blue-ultra wrote:

As a policy when I move photos from the SD card to the computer, I use copy so in case of an accident I still have them on the SD card until I am satisfied they were properly transferred. Just sayin!

Bob

That is essentially what I do. I manually copy my images from my SD/CF to a folder onto my computer through Window Explorer. I then import them into LR. Once I'm assured they no longer need to be on card I replace the card back into the camera and format. Your files can temperoary become lost by misplacing a drag/drop. That is when it's necessary to understand some basic searching skills with wildcards as rgrenaderphoto mentioned. (*)

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Haydon wrote:

That is essentially what I do. I manually copy my images from my SD/CF to a folder onto my computer through Window Explorer. I then import them into LR. Once I'm assured they no longer need to be on card I replace the card back into the camera and format. Your files can temperoary become lost by misplacing a drag/drop. That is when it's necessary to understand some basic searching skills with wildcards as rgrenaderphoto mentioned. (*)

Why the extra step. Use LR to import them to whatever folder you want the images in and then LR Know where the images are located

Haydon

mborn wrote:

Why the extra step. Use LR to import them to whatever folder you want the images in and then LR Know where the images are located

Because I trust my own work more than a program. It's a control thing :)

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Haydon wrote:

Because I trust my own work more than a program. It's a control thing :)

But you control LR You determine where and what folder the images go to just save a step

Archboo3 Loc: Central Florida

you may also want to check how you are set for download. I remember at one point you had to remember to make sure that when you downloaded your pictures for a disk to the computer you didn't had the download set to auto clean your disk, so you could check and make sure your images were indeed downloaded. I wouldn't reformat a disk before I have download the image to another storage disk.

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

Haydon wrote:

Because I trust my own work more than a program. It's a control thing :)

Best,
Todd Ferguson

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

rmalarz wrote:

That is great news. Knowing how computers work, the folder was where you told the computer to put it. I've had many discussions with my systems over the years. I've found that they do exactly what I tell them to do, not what I think I told them to do.

I'm glad that you let us know they weren't lost.
--Bob

"I've found that they do exactly what I tell them to do, not what I think I told them to do."
That is so true!