Photo recovery

I accidentally made my photos into shortcuts, so downloaded Recuva to try to open them. It found the files but says they are unrecoverable and "this file is overwritten by G:\.DCIM\......and then another jpg photo #, (not the original one) . Am I totally out of luck in actually viewing these photos? Thx for your help, I am in uncharted territory!

Hi Lesley, and welcome to the forum.

If a file has been overwritten, then that's usually end of story, but I'm puzzled as to what you've done, and how you accidentally made your photos into shortcuts.

What did you do exactly?

Have you not just made shortcuts that link to your photo's?

I uploaded my photos and then, highlighted them and then selected, move them to my desktop, which made them shortcuts. Then I deleted them out of my pictures, or wherever they were. So, essentially, there is no reference point for them to go back to. I can see them as thumbnails, but cannot open them, send them etc. That is what I was trying to recover, the real image, rather than this shortcut, which goes no where. Make sense? Thx!

move them to my desktop, which made them shortcuts.

I do not see how that can be.

You can select a file and drag and drop onto your desktop EITHER the file itself OR create a link to the file, depending upon what keys you happen to hold down.

If your photos were on drive G:\ and your system partition was on drive C:\ then your action could only create on the desktop :-

a link to the file on G:\ ;

or a copy of the file.

Either way the original file should still reside on G:\ until you deleted it from G:\

Make sense?

Kinda, but not totally.

By "uploaded them" do you mean transferred them from your camera (or phone or whatever) to your "My Documents" folder?

And then you used the "Move" command to move them from your "My Documents" folder to your desktop?

If that's about right, them you should have copies of those photographs on your desktop and not shortcuts.

Or, have you mistakenly used the right click "Send to ... Desktop (create shortcut)" by mistake?

As Alan says, the photo's will still physically be in your "My Documents" folder, although if you've used that drive since deleting them then they could be overwritten.

What about where you originally uploaded the photographs from to your "My Documents" folder? Did you delete them as well?

Thank you for your responses. I viewed my photos from the camera icon link, clicked on the ones I wanted and from there I believe I did as you said, mistakenly right clicked to "send to my desktop". I never sent them to my documents, as I chose desktop instead. Then I put those shortcuts in a folder, thinking all was well and deleted the photos from the G drive. So now all I have are shortcuts, which I can do nothing with.

"this file is overwritten by G:\.DCIM\......and then another jpg photo #,

I am confident that the above message indicates your photos were held on G:\.

It is very unlikely that your photos have ALL been overwritten unless you have written a large amount to G:\ subsequent to moving / deleting those photos,

so you should have at least some success with at least some photos if you use Recuva to scan G:\.

It is quite possible that you may have been scanning something other than G:\, such as your desktop or C:\ and there are too many unknowns for me to predict what could happen that way.

Agree with Alan. Scan your G: drive. Try a normal scan first, and then if no luck try a deep scan which depending upon the size of your drive, can take some time.

Also to start with, make sure Recuva is set up as shown in the highlighted section of these screenshots ...

post-8751-0-35027700-1376080534_thumb.jpg

post-8751-0-62929400-1376080547_thumb.jpg

This will enable you to delve straight into your "My Documents" folder after the scan has completed. And files will be recovered to a copy of the original folder structure they were in albeit on another partition or drive.

Of course never recover to the drive the photo's were on as you will overwrite what you are trying to recover.

Another drive of any kind, or a separate partition on the same drive will do.

Also, have you deleted the photo's from the camera or whatever it was, that you took them with?

If yes, you may be able to scan that location as well if we know what exactly it was. Camera, Phone iPad?

could someone pls tell what I did wrong cause I recovered all my pics from sd card but when I click on them it doesnt want to open them ? : (

Hi tomiceva, and welcome to Piriform.

Can you start a new topic with a title something like "Help. Can't open recovered photographs".

With your own new topic you will maybe get a better response than tagging onto the bottom of someone else's.

Also provide some details such as do the photos carry the correct file extension, and do they appear to be the correct size, ie they're not zero byte files.

And which program or programs have you tried opening them with and do you get any particular error message displayed.

Thanks.

:)

Thanks for all the tips. The latest issue in trying to recover, has happened twice now....I select the jpg's that I want to recover on a deep scan, which takes a long time. Then I hit "recover" and soon after get a repsonse that says, "the application recuva has quit unexpectedly". And then it closes and I have to start all over! Any insight into this? Thanks!

I have no idea why it should quit like that Lesley unless it was the number of files you are trying to recover in one go.

Maybe try recovering a small batch of them first, and see how that goes. Quite some time back I did a 100% recovery of some music albums by recovering a selection at a time.

When I tried to recover them all at once I got a poor result with many tracks missing. Why this should happen I don't know, but it worked for me.

Also, have you deleted the photo's from the camera or whatever it was, that you took them with?

If yes, you may be able to scan that location as well if we know what exactly it was. Camera, Phone iPad?

Any confirmation on that question?

I did delete them once they were uploaded (or so I thought). I did not realize also, that also deleted them from my sd card in my camera, which was of course attached to the computer. I will try recovering them in small batches...there is 93 pics total.

If you haven't used your SD card too much since you deleted the pics from it, then stick your card in the computer card slot and scan it. An SD card is a drive like any other.

You never know.

If you don't have a card slot then try one of these USB adapters, which is something I use all the time. Much much faster than a card reader.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000VY80AM/ref=pd_luc_ts_04_01

Ok, again thanks for all the responses! I did not get an error when I scanned 1/2 the amt. I see the jpg #'s in the file that I scanned them to, but when I try to open or preview them, it says there is no preview available. Maybe I am at the end and they will,not be able to be recovered?

And I meant to add the response from Recuva was: total recovered 49 files, (which is the amt that I chose), fully recovered 0, partly recovered 49.

Hi Lesley.

If the only error you get is "No preview available" then I've had that exact issue before, and I've successfully opened most of the files I recovered displaying that error with IrfanView.

IrfanView: (Free)

If you're lucky, and IrfanView opens some of the pictures, you will have to save each one off again from within IrfanView as a new file, which will give you a normally working intact image.

It isn't a cast iron guarantee that it will work on your files, but as it's a free program it's worth a try. If that fails, I'm out of suggestions I'm afraid as you do say the images are "partly recovered" which means they are not 100% intact.

Let us know how you get on, and fingers crossed for you.

Thank you for the idea..I did download Irfanview and all the images in thumbnails have a green circle w red line thru it. On trying to open any of them it states: can't read the file header! Unknown file format, empty file or file not found! I appreciate all the help you have given me!

I'm really sorry you haven't had any success Lesley, but it sounds like you're out of luck.

You did try scanning your camera didn't you, or whatever it was you took the original pics with before you transferred them to your computer?

Short of that, I can't suggest anything else, and the other guys on here do follow these threads and if any of them had anything different to suggest I'm sure they would have contributed.

What exactly do you mean when you say "scan your camera?"