Damn good software: photorec (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

A few weeks ago I read about PhotoRec on the Life Hacker website (a productivity blog). PhotoRec is a handy commandline utility that will help you retrieve lost pictures (and other files) from borked memory cards.

PhotoRec will search any device you point it at for a variety of file types. Before running the search it'll ask you some in-depth questions (partition type, file system, etc) and then it'll run until it's covered all of the device.

In my case I needed to search through my Powershot's CF card, since apparently the old Canon doesn't deal well with cards that've been mounted through a normal USB reader. PhotoRec worked like magic and retrieved all of the pics still on the card. Now I can safely re-format the CF card for reuse.

I cannot recommend PhotoRec well enough. The best thing? It's both free and cross-platform! So it'll run on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and various other Unices. Awesome!

Posted in: camera , cgsecurity , photorec , picture , recovery