Memory card disaster
09 August, 2006I’m still on honeymoon in Norway (and very nice it is too – the wife, as well as Norway ;), at a quick terminal to see if I can collect some advice.
Shortly before we left, I bought a new 1GB memory stick pro card for my ailing Sony DSC-P72 (I think that’s the model off the top of my head) – it’s just lost 112 photos from the middle of my honeymoon, and I want them back.
When inserted into the camera and into a port on a PC the card registers 190MB worth of photos, but c.360MB used space. The difference is what I guess the space my missing photos should take is and so I suspect that the data which makes them up, at least, is still on the memory stick. There’s nothing else on the stick which would account for this space. I’m on a Norwegian copy of Windows, so I don’t want to push my exploring too far in case I click “Ja” on the wrong box 🙂
The question now is, what do I do? What tool can I use or who can I take it to in order to recover this data? There’s obvious sentimental attachment, but I don’t really want to pay data recovery service-level charges just for some photos. On the other hand, I *do* want them back.
Any ideas or suggestions would be most welcome. I’ll be back in the UK sometime around the 20th August, so I’ll give an update shortly after then.
Comments
Andy
12 August, 2006 at 16:53
flxy
14 August, 2006 at 18:31
Pip
20 August, 2006 at 22:19
Andy
26 August, 2006 at 13:34
First of all I wouldn’t write anything else to the card. Then I’d download the free recovery tool, http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pcinspector.html
I’ve used this to retrieve files after my card ended up blank. Most of the pictures came out perfect, a couple had a bit of corruption on them.
Hey Phil… This might be a stupid question but what brand of memory card did you buy?
It was a Sony MagicGate stick. FWIW, I think it was the camera rather than the stick with the problem, of course I’m not 100% on that.
Andy – thank you! Obviously I stopped using the card as soon as I realised what had happened, and I’ve now been able to retrieve all but ten photos which I thought were lost, and which cover some of the best parts of our honeymoon. Thank you so much! If you’re ever around in the south-west of the UK, then I owe you a drink or five 🙂
Glad it worked – I used to be in the that area on business a couple of years back but unlikely to happen in the future but thanks anyway 😉