What's the latest on recovering corrupt files?

Baldy

I saw some older threads about this but nothing recent. I shot on a new Lexar card and LR couldn't retrieve the files, so I sent the card to Lexar and they sent me a couple DVDs full of them. Unfortunately, LR refuses to read 269 of them and some of the ones they do read look like this:



They're RAW files from a 1D MKIV. Anyone have a fav program (Mac) to recover corrupt CR2s?

ziggy53

Assuming that you still have the card, my favorite is "Zero Assumption Recovery", or ZAR for short. Originally this was developed for HD recovery, but it's been expanded to recovering card files too.

Free for personal use of image file recovery and non-destructive to the card.

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/zar92setup.exe

Instructions for use

Baldy

ziggy53 wrote: »

Assuming that you still have the card, my favorite is "Zero Assumption Recovery", or ZAR for short. Originally this was developed for HD recovery, but it's been expanded to recovering card files too.

Free for personal use of image file recovery and non-destructive to the card.

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/zar92setup.exe

Instructions for use

Thanks! I don't have the card but they dumped the files on a couple of DVDs.

I tried various recovery programs on the card but none worked, so I sent it to Drive Savers, but they couldn't fetch anything. But Lexar eventually did after 5 months of trying, it's just that 269 of the files can't be read by Lightroom.

ziggy53

Baldy wrote: »

Thanks! I don't have the card but they dumped the files on a couple of DVDs.

I tried various recovery programs on the card but none worked, so I sent it to Drive Savers, but they couldn't fetch anything. But Lexar eventually did after 5 months of trying, it's just that 269 of the files can't be read by Lightroom.

Without the card it's almost impossible to gain any further recovery. What you have, on the DVDs, is what Drive Savers could recover, but it's not necessarily the same as what was originally on the card. (Drive Savers is awfully good at what they do, so probably that's all you can ever expect to recover.)

Sadly, it does look like the card's EM/RFI shield broke down and the high-frequency signal from inside the camera was likely recorded, yielding those strange patterns. In that case, there is no further recovery possible.

On a dual card capable camera, like the Canon 1D MKIV, it's best to use both card slots to record the same files redundantly. That way, even if something happens to one card, the second card gives a measure of safety.

To set up the camera for redundant storage:

Camera Menu
- Setup Menu 1 (first "wrench"):
-- Record Func. + Media Folder Sel. (second selection)
--- Record Func.
---- Rec. to multiple

This information is also located on pages 55-57 of the User Manual, which you can also get as a PDF here:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/13504.pdf