# Recovery of pictures



## Dills58 (Nov 30, 2012)

Hi to anyone that can help me. New here for starters, comprehensive site. I have recently had my computer wiped and my pictures were not backed up. The computer guy had to do a recovery to get what he could. What I ended up with was a lot of jpeg files of the right size ie. 2+ mb but none of them can be opened. If this is the start of a drawn out process then I'm willing to work with anyone who is willing to help me. Any further data required pls ask.

Dills.


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## Pallycow (Nov 30, 2012)

hate to say it but your probly screwed.  do you get an error when you try to open?


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## SCraig (Nov 30, 2012)

They are most likely toast.  The file allocation table is still showing them as active files, however most likely the sectors the FAT references as belonging to the files has been overwritten with something else.  I highly doubt that you'll get them back.


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## Mully (Nov 30, 2012)

Are you on a PC or Mac? If Mac maybe I can help you.


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## Dills58 (Nov 30, 2012)

This ir the message I get from win photo viewer " Windows photo viewer can't open  this picture because either Photo Viewer does't support this file  format, or you don't have the latest updates to Photo Viewer" & below is a screen shot of what was given back to me. Thanks for your assistance, btw I have a pc.


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## Mully (Nov 30, 2012)

Do you have any other program to try.....get a 30day trial of LightRoom or PS and try these.  Also take a few images and put .jpg extension and see if it will open.


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## SCraig (Nov 30, 2012)

Mully said:


> Do you have any other program to try.....get a 30day trial of LightRoom or PS and try these.  *Also take a few images and put .jpg extension and see if it will open.*


By default Windows hides the suffix of known file types.  That so-called "Feature" can be disabled but by default it is on.  The thumbnails he has shown are almost certainly .JPG files and Windows just isn't showing the suffix.


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## skieur (Dec 5, 2012)

Dills58 said:


> Hi to anyone that can help me. New here for starters, comprehensive site. I have recently had my computer wiped and my pictures were not backed up. The computer guy had to do a recovery to get what he could. What I ended up with was a lot of jpeg files of the right size ie. 2+ mb but none of them can be opened. If this is the start of a drawn out process then I'm willing to work with anyone who is willing to help me. Any further data required pls ask.
> 
> Dills.



Needless to say it depends a lot on how the computer got wiped, but a regular computer repair shop is not the best for that sort of problem.  I hope you tried a data recovery service.

skieur


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## boborone (Dec 5, 2012)

By wiped, do you mean that it got reformatted? Or just the shop deleted everything. By the looks of it, they deleted everything.

try
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download
It's free and can bring back any type of deleted files.

Some photogs I know use this
PhotoRescue Home Page - PhotoRescue Wizard, PhotoRescue Expert, PhotoRescue Advanced
But it's paid and only does images.


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## Dills58 (Feb 1, 2013)

Thanks for your assistance & replies, just an update. My hard drive was sent to QLD, they could not recover any more than what I had. On a slightly brighter note I was able to search FB & other web sites & copy some of my pictures back to my drive albeit small file sizes. A valuable lesson learnt, back up.


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## Benco (Feb 1, 2013)

Create two backups if you can, and have one of them kept somewhere safe away from your computer and primary backup. Belt and braces.


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## Moke (Feb 4, 2013)

Did you have a disk that was included with your camera when you bought it there may be a program on that disk that will allow you to view your files.


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## thomas30 (Feb 26, 2013)

Ty some good photo recovery software. I used Stellar photo recovery 5.0 to recover photos from my external 30GB HDD. It could recover 690 photos out of 712 photos. See this Recover Lost photos from external storage device: USB, flash drive, Hard Drive


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## 480sparky (Feb 26, 2013)

Another Image Recovery thread that could be closed before the spammers find it.


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