Looking for freeware undelete utilty.

Samba_Pa_Ti

could try a card reader.

tomstickland

I've just downloaded a product intended for XD card recovery. It has a whole menu dedicated to scanning external devices, like cameras. But it says that no devices are connected, even though windows explorer shows the camera as connected.

Do you mean that I should buy an external memory card reader?

I found this:

If your camera can only appear in "Scanners and Cameras" section of "My Computer", data recovery software is still unable to access and recover the memory card. Card reader is still required.

Samba_Pa_Ti

tomstickland wrote: »

I've just downloaded a product intended for XD card recovery. It has a whole menu dedicated to scanning external devices, like cameras. But it says that no devices are connected, even though windows explorer shows the camera as connected.

Do you mean that I should buy an external memory card reader?

I found this:

yeah an external one might do it, its not guarranteed to work though, just the only idea i can think of that might fix it.

BritRael

tomstickland wrote: »

...I discovered that the "avi" folder I'd made is totally empty. I must have deleted all of the video.....

I am very sceptical of this. It is virtually impossible to accidently delete a load of files. One, yes, but a load?

Around 15 years ago (when DOS was big) a friend phoned me and told me that his OS was not working correctly. I went round and had a look and sure enough, loads of DOS commands did not work. I looked in the DOS directory and there were only a few commands available. So I did a quick search for one that I knew should be there. Hey presto!! They were all in a neigbouring directory called 'DOS'. My mate immediately turned around and with a slight accusatory tone said to his 10 year old son, "have you been mucking around with this?" He sheepishly admitted that he had. He must have accidently dragged and dropped these files, which is very easy to accidently do (by d and d'ing the directory and stopping it half way through).

The moral of this long story? If you have a file that is missing, do a search for it. In your case (from the root) search using *.avi which will show you every .avi file on your PC and will hopefully include your missing files

Good luck.

johnmc

My first PC (540mb HD) I decided to back up to floppy disks. I knew it would take a while so I opened a bottle of wine.

First floppy in. Right click and select "format"..... etc.

Put next one in, select Format ........ "why won't the PC work?".

Moral;
It's DEAD EASY to accidentally delete / move files, although a bottle of wine certainly helps.

tomstickland

BritRael wrote: »

I am very sceptical of this. It is virtually impossible to accidently delete a load of files. One, yes, but a load?


The moral of this long story? If you have a file that is missing, do a search for it. In your case (from the root) search using *.avi which will show you every .avi file on your PC and will hopefully include your missing files

Good luck.

Yes, I spent a few hours running searches for *.avi.
Bear in mind that I cleared out the recycle bin, removed almost all of the programs, ran ccleaner, defragged and reinstalled everything between then and now.

I bought a card reader from Amazon for £2 and Recuva has found loads of the files on the original cards. Looks like I've lost 3 or 4 out about 100.

So, big thumbs up to Recuva.
Plus, if recuva won't treat your camera as a drive, buy a card reader.

MothballsWallet

tomstickland wrote: »

I've given up trying to recover from the hard drive - it was all too long ago and I had to reinstall most of the software recently.

I want to see what might still be on the XD memory cards. However, the computer doesn't seem to regard the camera as a drive. My old camera appeared in the explorer as an additional drive.

Should I be able to sort out the camera so it appears as a drive?

Recover My Photos will do this - Mrs MbW had a problem with the Memory Stick from her camcorder that the local photo shop had managed to stuff up - found this, and it was able to get all the pictures back (I did have to buy a licence, but the trial will let you see if it will work on your memory card).

It was so good that all photos on the card were saved, and my sister in law went to the photo shop with the recovered memory stick and asked for all the photos to be printed, they printed off every last one of them, which was expensive for her...

tomstickland

Recuva has done it all for free.