Only about HALF of my Images were recovered from my SD Card

[PassionateScribe]

Hi there. I recently bought a Tablet PC from HP and my boyfriend had this stupid idea of buying a 4GB SD Card to somehow make the laptop "faster" than what it already is. Tsk tsk.

 

He bought a new 4GB SD card from Target yesterday and put it on the memory card reader slot of the new laptop before going to the gym. While he was at the gym, I replaced the new SD card with the 4GB SD card from my Canon digital camera to send some pics to my sister via Yahoo Messenger. Then I went back to the desktop PC to chat with my sister because the file transfer option of her messenger didn't work. So there was no pics transferred at all.

 

My BF came home and started messing with my new tablet pc...after chatting with my sister, I remembered that my digital camera's SD card is in the memory card reader slot of the new laptop so I went to the living room and took it back. My bf's eyes grew large and akse dme what the heck did I just put in the laptop and I said I took my digital camera SD card from it. Then he said he just deleted the folders from the SD card cuz he thought it's the new one. How the heck can he delete folders from a new unused SD card when there shouldnt be any folders there at all. My canon saved the images into four to five folders named ICM something and one MISC folder. He deleted them all.

 

I ran a RECUVA in it and I was lucky to recover about 800 of the images but most of the newer ones that I havent uploaded are not there. It basically started at about the second folder or third folder of the lost files and ended with the second to the last one. I think I dont have the first and last folder images. ALthough the recovery didn't come with folders, I knew the pictures came from the middle folders. Any ideas on how to recover ALL the files that was deleted? The SD card was not used after the incident. He didnt' reformat the card at all nor saved anything else there. Although i see the usual Readyboost file whenever i open the F drive.

 

ANy ideas? I dont think any file was overwritten at all. No reformatting and no saving of files happened. Please help. I need the newer pics. At least the last folder lost recovered. Thank you very much!

 

 

UPDATE: SO probably the main issue here is that..can all images from an SD card used for readyboost for a laptop be recovered entirely? Is there any overwriting involved in this?

[Augeas]

The only think I can suggest is that you scan using the Options/Actions Scan for Non-Deleted Files and Deep Scan. Oh what the Hell, tick all five scanning options. Recuva will display everything it can with these ticked.

[PassionateScribe]

The only think I can suggest is that you scan using the Options/Actions Scan for Non-Deleted Files and Deep Scan. Oh what the Hell, tick all five scanning options. Recuva will display everything it can with these ticked.

 

Hi Augeus, I did all of those already. Even including the C and D drives when scanning. To no avail. I just don't get how the files are just gone like that and how recuva was able to recover half of them and not the other half. It doesnt make sense as well that the other and NEWER files would have been overwritten by ReadyBoost while the older ones were still there.

 

I just found out that my 10 megapixel camera and the 4GB SD card would hold about 1300 images. I found about 800. Using recuva though, it found about 60 other images from the Sd Card but I couldn't open them. The Vista photo gallery says that the file is not supported. Anyone know what I can do to open these remaining 60 files? I may be able to get many of the Images i need from these additional 60 files.

[computerhelpsource]

Hi, I am a trained computer technician and I have a possible explanation for why the Recuva software couldn't recover all the image files including the 60 found but un openable. The computer when it saves a file saves the information on how to find the file in a table in the reserved memory of a card or hard drive (beginning of the drive for HDD's), this is the same whether you use FAT32 or NTFS, and then writes the files in the first available memory spot. When you delete a file from the recycle bin or from a card/drive it only deletes the entry in the drive's file location table but not the file itself but it reports that the space and location of the file is available for use. The Recuva software works by searching a drive's contents for known file formats and can restore the file location information to the file location table as long as another program has not already written over the file that you want to locate. In your case when your boyfriend deleted the files it only deleted the info on how to locate it but as soon as the computer saw that the space was free it claimed a portion of it for Windows Vista's ReadyBoost. (Readyboost does speed up a laptop's speed and increases stability by loading information into the card as if it were RAM and decreases the access time to the information.) ReadyBoost only claims as much space as it needs unless you have specified a ReadyBoost filesize. Once ReadyBoost started to write files it was just really writing over your pictures. The reason why your older files are still there is that Windows writes to the quickest spot available and files can sometimes be written on a drive in random order especially in the case of SD cards which have no true beginning or end, if it was a traditional HDD the oldest ones would have most likely overwritten. As for the 60 it found but couldn't open the software found enough fragments of a file to recognize it but not all of the file making it impossible to open. Any file(s) can be recovered but in your case you would need to send it to a lab that specializes in that or get specialized card reader and that can get expensive. A file is not officially been erased until it has been overwritten at least 7 seven times.