Technical Help!

[kc2aqg]

Hey guys!

I am hoping some of you with some technical expertise can help me with this one. I was on a flight to Dallas a few weeks ago and I usually shoot MPEG movies with my little Sony DSC-P5. Well we were coming up on 31L pretty fast so I wanted to change memory sticks to ensure I would have enough memory time to shoot the departure and climbout. Well I (like a total idiot) wasn't looking at the little red LED that indicates that it's writing to the memory stick and I pulled the stick right before it finished writing the file. Now when I go to download the files from the stick via a USB MS reader, there is no file anywhere on the stick. However, when I view the properties of the card, it says that it's mostly used, which is consistent with the amount of video time I took on it. I really don't want to lose the video as it's got the whole push and start sequence on the 757 (I had previously recorded this and lost the files due to a hard drive failure several years ago, so I was really looking forward to actually getting this one!)

So has anyone encountered this with either pictures or video and does anybody know of any good file recovery tools that can rebuild parts or all of the file? Thanks for any help you can provide!

[moose135]

I don't know of one specifically, but if you don't get any better responses by Monday, I will talk to the photo lab manager (it's still called that, even though it's all digital) here at work. I know I've heard him talking about something they use for when our photographers have a problem with a card.

[emshighway]

The FAT (file allocation table) probably wasn'y finished being written so all you have are a bunch of 1s & 0s but no file to associate what they mean. Have you tried reading the card in the camera.

Try this, there is a free demo:
http://photorescue.us/

[kc2aqg]

I have attempted to read it in the camera. It says the same about remaining free space, enough that should be left over after taking a movie of its size. However when I go to the playback function, it says "no file". Doesn't look like even the camera recognizes it as a file. Is there no known tool to piece the 0's and 1's together and recreate the FAT?

[nwafan20]

If you can't recover it, just format your memory card, that should wipe everything on it

[kc2aqg]

That's kind of against my original point since I wanted try and recover the lost data. I'll use that as a last resort.

[nwafan20]

Yeah, that's why I said if you can't recover it. I havn't been able to recover any of my lost photos. But your chances for recovering it are much better if you don't use the camera, the more you use the camera, the more stuff that will be deleted forever.

[kc2aqg]

Yeah I stopped using the memory stick since it happened, not wanting to compromise the data. But I'm completely stuck as to how to recover it. :roll:

[emshighway]

Is there no known tool to piece the 0's and 1's together and recreate the FAT?

Did you try this? there is a free demo:
http://photorescue.us/

[Jonesbeach]

Here's another program you may want to try. I had pretty good luck with it recovering data on a disk I had formatted and installed a new OS on top of.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

[kc2aqg]

Thanks so much for the replies guys! I'll try them out this weekend and let you know how it goes. Here's hoping!

[kc2aqg]

I tried the CG Security suite first and it worked! I can't believe that it actually was able to find the lost movie and recreate it as a standard MPEG file. I am forever in your debt for your excellent suggestion! Now I've got my RB211 start-up video, and you have made me extraordinarily happy :D