Older files from camera memory chip recover well, newer files don't?

Hi,

I'm trying to help my father out with recovering some lost pictures. Not quite sure what actually happened, but it had something to do with him changing the name of a folder (after transfering them to his computer) and then having all the pictures from that folder disappear (according to him).

Anyways, I figured the best way to recover them would be to do it from the camera memory chip itself, since they just recently got deleted from there (automatically when he transfered them to his computer) and no new files have been added since then.

But the weird thing is that Recuva recovers well a bunch of older pictures (from january/february), but the latest ones (from july, which are the ones I need) seem to be all corrupted. I thought that those last pictures would be "safe", since nothing new has been stored on the memory chip since then. So how can this be, the older files being fine but the latest ones being all corrupted? Wouldn't it make sense that if any pictures where to recover well, it would be the very latest?

- I've tried opening the recovered (and corrupted) files with irfanview, but still no luck. That was just to see if some other (and better) viewer could do what the default Windows viewer couldn't.

- The file sizes of the corrupted files are about right (2-3 MB).

Can anyone help?

I'm trying to recover from his computer as well, but I think that's a lost cause since he's already stored a bunch of new information on that hard-drive. That's why I thought the camera memory chip would be my best bet, since it hasn't been touched since the latest pictures got deleted (automatically as he transfered the pics over to the computer hard-drive).

Understand that the old files on the memory card are more likely to be contiguous, and therefore easily recoverable. Newer files are likely to be fragmented as the card is used with time. A normal and 100% just fine condition. ALL memory cards typically use FAT/16/32/ex as their file system and are not as robust at NTFS on a full-size internal disk in a computer (when it comes to tracking deleted file segments). On the other hand, NTFS-formatted cards and devices are much easier to work with. All the segments of a fragmented file are "tracked" and easily identifiable by Recuva and similar programs.

You're going to need software that can scan for and properly assemble those fragments. There are payware solutions that can do some of this. You might also want to Check your PM, I've recommended an expensive but very capable data carver. They might offer try-before-you-buy to see if it's worth it.

Meanwhile try a free thing -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorec

You can read more about photo recovery here -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_recovery

Your next stop after all that is to get pro-level services from a data recovery company.

Thanks for replying. I'm gonna try out those links of yours tomorrow and report back.