I take pictures of niece and nephews hockey games and always upload to Mac put in folders for editing. Today when I did it it wouldn’t recognize ant image. I tried on my pc as well as a card reader. I tried using free recovery software and they were able to retrieve over 5700 pictures but not the 800 from the games last night.
I always format the card on the camera before each use. Any thoughts .
One thought is the free recovery software holds back giving you all images until you buy the premium versions.
In advance thanks for reading this.

No expertise in recovery apps, but heres a possibly useful idea.

Offload that 5700 to some temporary storage by copy-AND-delete. Then if the 800 are still hiding on the card maybe a second running of the recovery app will find them since they are now supposedly "the only stuff left".

I put that in quotes cuz, as youve now discovered, even after a format, stuff is not ever really gone from a card. But my hopeful idea is that the 800 will now be "less deeply buried" and the app might find the 800 instead of the 5700.
Worth a try.
Thanks
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Since formatting is always risky, maybe youve also proved for yourself that theres no real space to be gained from doing it as constantly as you have been, and yet theres always the risk of a misstep.

Best of luck to you with all this.

I take pictures of niece and nephews hockey games and always upload to Mac put in folders for editing. Today when I did it it wouldn’t recognize ant image. I tried on my pc as well as a card reader. I tried using free recovery software and they were able to retrieve over 5700 pictures but not the 800 from the games last night.
I always format the card on the camera before each use. Any thoughts .
One thought is the free recovery software holds back giving you all images until you buy the premium versions.
In advance thanks for reading this.

One thought would be to quit formating after every use. Its not good for the card. If you wanna clear out stuff, just delete it.

Its great that your camera can see pix on a card thaz been through the rescue procedure. Cameras are usually unhappy with files that have been "meddled with". Most typically even if the camera doesnt see recued files the PC will see them.

The rescue that I have done, just once, renamed all the files. That was enough to confuse the camera but not the PC. But in your case it seems the opposite has prevailed, and good for you !

A few files on camera card failed to view in-camera cuz I had rotated them in a PC viewer. Even after rotating them back via the PC, the camera still could not display them due to that meddling. Rotating back doesnt remove the rotation tag. It just adds a 2nd tag in the opposite direction.

BTW, its clear that youve got your 800 hockey pix back now. When you saw those in the camera, were the 5700 "rescued" earlier pix now showing up again, in the camera as well ?

Depends upon the camera whether you should format or delete. Sony cameras should should be formated or deleted in camera. Sony maintains some sort of file structure that erasing somewhere else doesn't deal with, and holes are left in this file structure. For instance, you can't copy a picture onto a memory card on a PC, and plug that card into a Sony camera, and then see that picture on the camera.

I also have Olympus cameras, and they do not have the Sony behavior.

Don't know what camera the OP was using.

One thought would be to quit formating after every use. Its not good for the card. If you wanna clear out stuff, just delete it.

Its great that your camera can see pix on a card thaz been through the rescue procedure. Cameras are usually unhappy with files that have been "meddled with". Most typically even if the camera doesnt see recued files the PC will see them.

The rescue that I have done, just once, renamed all the files. That was enough to confuse the camera but not the PC. But in your case it seems the opposite has prevailed, and good for you !
No just the ones from the games I had lost. You mentioned I should quit formatting the card after every use and deleted the images. I have always formatted and never had a problem.
A few files on camera card failed to view in-camera cuz I had rotated them in a PC viewer. Even after rotating them back via the PC, the camera still could not display them due to that meddling. Rotating back doesnt remove the rotation tag. It just adds a 2nd tag in the opposite direction.

BTW, its clear that youve got your 800 hockey pix back now. When you saw those in the camera, were the 5700 "rescued" earlier pix now showing up again, in the camera as well ?