Compact Flash Data Recovery for your Digial Photographs and Images

Compact Flash Data Recovery I honestly hope you never come looking for this page! Unles it's as a "pre-emptive strike!"

Most digital cameras use one of the varieties of "digital film" cards to store your photographs. Compact flash is one of the most popular, because of it's high capacity and stability. It's what I use in my Nikon D70.

However, the universe being what it is, unpredictable for most of us, compact flash data recovery should be an important consideration for you, and all your treasured photographs, in case your flash card fails.

Here’s an example of the freakish things that can happen. My friend Ian is an aspiring professional wedding photographer. He's been in the biz for about a year and working hard to gain a solid reputation.

He’s a very artistic photographer - he'll do very well. Anyway, a newly engaged couple had been referred to him by one of the top photographers in town, who was completely booked for the season. The busy pro assured the couple that Ian’s work was top notch and that his style was exactly what they were looking for. And he was available!

When Ian recounted the rest of the story to me, he became so upset again, that it actually brought on a panic attack.

Here’s what happened.

He was with the happy couple for the entire day including the reception, shooting away no problem. I should mention though, that Ian likes to use as few compact flash cards as possible – he’s scared he’ll misplace them.

So, he shoots over 324 wedding images on his one card. Next morning he goes to his computer to begin processing.

He sits at his keyboard and selects all the images to copy them onto a CD – the first thing most of us do. So far so good. But right then his German Shepard dog comes over to him and lays his big fat dog head on the keyboard ...and in the process, somehow manages to press the DELETE key.

All 324 images were gone, just like that! NO recycle bin, no “ctrl Z,” no NOTHING! Can you see now how this might induce a panic attack – I’m surprised it didn’t give him a heart attack!

It's times like this when you need a reliable digital picture recovery system. But really, why wait for a crisis? Time may be critical. Choose a solution now, so your panic will be diminsihed and your last photo won't one be of you in the Obituaries!

My process after hearing Ian’s story, was to do some testing myself to make sure I could use a proven compact flash data recovery tool or method to get my images back, in case I needed it (make that "when I need it!").

Here’s what I did, to prevent any sudden acute medical situations, and a total disaster!

I compiled a list of Compact Flash Data Recovery software from a search on Google, and integrated that with information I received as recommendations from other photographers.

Then I downloaded the demo versions of the software, or the app itself, if it was free.

Then using both my D70 and my Olympus 5050, I took a variety of photos on 2 different CF cards – a Lexar 256MB 12X card and a Lexar 1GB 40 WA card. Both cards had been used extensively prior to this, but all the images had been deleted, so I began this experiment with “empty” cards.

On the Olympus, I shot 3 images, a JPG, a TIFF and an ORF, Olympus’ RAW format. On the D70 the same but using NEF, Nikon’s RAW format.

Then, in the computer I deleted them from the card by just selecting them and hitting delete - just like Ian's dog did.

The I put the compact flash data recovery software to the test!

I found out that most compact flash data recovery software (next page)...