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[Smudge]

All right kiddo's here we go.

My computer crashed and had to be reformatted. I have retrieved most of my photo's but some are (and I am having difficulty in describing this) if you are viewing the pics as thumbnails, the properties of the pic show me how large the pic is etc but you cant view it. When you try to open up the pic, a little red square appears.

How do I try and recover these (what I would call corrupt pics).

Cheers, Emily

[ATJ]

Emily,

How are you viewing the thumbnails? What software have you got to view the images?

[Smudge]

Emily,

How are you viewing the thumbnails? What software have you got to view the images?

Firstly in explorer view, then picture manager, then all my canon software.

Some pics are perfect, just like their owner....... and since the computer had to be reformatted, I have lost quite a few of my pics.

[ATJ]

Emily,

I suspect the pictures may have become corrupted. The thumbnails probably display alright because of the data in thumbs.db that Explorer writes to the hard disk. You could verify this by moving thumbs.db to another directory on the hard disk that doesn't have any pictures in it.

Do you have the pictures backed up anywhere? I guess any pictures you have uploaded for web viewing you can get back.

[Smudge]

Emily,

I suspect the pictures may have become corrupted. The thumbnails probably display alright because of the data in thumbs.db that Explorer writes to the hard disk. You could verify this by moving thumbs.db to another directory on the hard disk that doesn't have any pictures in it.

Do you have the pictures backed up anywhere? I guess any pictures you have uploaded for web viewing you can get back.

Need to clarify, even in explorer, the pics dont view, but the properties of the pic, tell me how big it is etc, just cant view, see it.

No, dont have the pics on disk. Big fricking mistake.

Is there any software that I can try and recover these?

Em

[ATJ]

Need to clarify, even in explorer, the pics dont view, but the properties of the pic, tell me how big it is etc, just cant view, see it.

Ah, I understand now. That sounds like you have the directory entry for the file but just no file.

Is there any software that I can try and recover these?

I'm sure there would be some programs that could attempt a recovery, but I don't know what. If you are going to attempt a recover it would be best not to make any changes or write anything to the hard disk so there is a hope of recovering the data.

[gstark]

Em,

Let's go back a step: you say your computer crashed and had to be reformatted.

Are you saying that, with respect to the disk upon which the images were located, you reformatted that drive, and then installed a fresh version of your OS over the top of that?

All without attempting to recover your data from the drive beforehand?

And now you want to try to recover files that used to live on that disk before it was formatted and written to?

[Smudge]

Em,

Let's go back a step: you say your computer crashed and had to be reformatted.

Are you saying that, with respect to the disk upon which the images were located, you reformatted that drive, and then installed a fresh version of your OS over the top of that?

All without attempting to recover your data from the drive beforehand?

And now you want to try to recover files that used to live on that disk before it was formatted and written to?

to all of that...yes. the dicks that were reformatting my computer didnt think about what I had on it.

[gstark]

Em,

Let's go back a step: you say your computer crashed and had to be reformatted.

Are you saying that, with respect to the disk upon which the images were located, you reformatted that drive, and then installed a fresh version of your OS over the top of that?

All without attempting to recover your data from the drive beforehand?

And now you want to try to recover files that used to live on that disk before it was formatted and written to?

to all of that...yes. the dicks that were reformatting my computer didnt think about what I had on it.

There's a couple of technical terms for this situation.

"not a good thing" comes to mind.

As does "up shit creek"

The problem, as I'm sure you're aware, is that there is a very serious risk that segments of your data will have been overwritten during the reformatting and reinstallation phases.

At this time, if you really value those images (and any other data that may have been compromised) it might be time to break out some forensic recovery software. Ordinary recovery software may help, but (as an observation) you're way past the point where that will be of use.

[xorl]

Depending on how the disk was formatted it might be possible to recover some images. Have a look at photo recovery tools like PhotoRec. Ideally you should immediately stop using the disk which contained your photos, any further use is likely to reduce what you can recover.

The system should be booted into a separate OS or rescue disk and then the drive can be recovered onto another disk. If you are unfamiliar with this process I would recommend finding someone with some experience in this area.

Hope it works out for you.

[Glen]

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_re ... language=1


Emily I have used PC Inspector (link above) with succes and they have a free trial. That said, it sounds like you are up the proverbial creek and really i would take any images you got back as a bonus. One big clue is to stop working on that PC now as any further use will write more files over your images.