Photo recovery following hard drive crash

[hobbymandoc]

On a recent trip my laptop hard drive crashed and some of my files were not recorded on the external HD. We have been able to do a recovery onto an external HD. It is possible to open in PS Bridge to see photos which I want to open. When opening in photoshop only an upper left corner of the photo opens and the rest of the photo doesn't appear, or is jarbled. I can see the entire image on bridge but am not able to open, copy to open in another format, etc. Other similar photos respond equally bad.

Has anyone else experienced this or have a solution?

[Manfred M]

It looks like you have corrupted data on those files. Based on your description this likely means that the file has been lost and you won't be able to recover the images. Sometimes (rarely) copying and saving the file with a new file name will work.

[hobbymandoc]

Thanks for the reply but not what I wanted to hear. Will give your suggestion a try.

[xpatUSA]

I am unfamiliar with PS Bridge but can offer general comment.

It seems that you are able to see an embedded preview JPEG that can be found in many image files. While realizing that these previews are normally of lower resolution and quality, you could make a partial recovery if the image content is important e.g. a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

Open the entire image in Bridge to cover as much of your screen as possible without stuff being on top of it.

In Windows XP I can do a screen image capture by going Shift-PrtScn - your OS may vary. You now have the whole screen image at approx 96 dpi in the Clipboard. In PS File menu, select New, then Image from Clipboard and Voila! you can trim off all the screen toolbar, etc, stuff then edit as well as you can then save as the replacement image.

There are also apps that can extract embedded JPEGS, typically from RAW files. I have one for Sigma X3F files but there must be others for the popular formats.

Sigma embeds a thumbnail and also a quarter-size image. The thumbnails show up in Sigma's 'Photo Pro' viewer page and the quarter-size image shows enlarged in the Photo Pro editor window while the raw file is loading.

Here's one that I extracted:



Not wonderful, but better than nothing.

Up-res'd and de-saturated a bit to simulate moon-light . . .



Good luck,

[hobbymandoc]

Thanks so much Ted. That is great information as I have not yet been able to retrieve the photo. Yes, it does show in bridge but renaming or similar changes have not been effective. I have just followed your advice and so far I have been able to copy my entire screen image but not the preferred photo. Some more practice may prove successful. Likely is some software available for extracting such files and will investigate that as well. This occurred following a recent trip to Africa so not easily reproducible. Fortunately 95% of all my files were on the external HD. Next trip it will be 2 HDs plus the laptop. Thankfully my most valued pics are good. Thanks so much to both of you who have helped me with your valuable advice. John

[Colin Southern]

What you're probably seeing in Bridge are cached lower resolution versions which are embedded with the originals.

The "ducks nuts" for data recovery are www.drivesavers.com they're not cheap, but they ARE cheaper for photo recovery -- might be worth a look.

[xpatUSA]

I have just followed your advice and so far I have been able to copy my entire screen image but not the preferred photo. Some more practice may prove successful.John

Sorry, I should have made it more clear. With the screen capture you get everything that's on the entire screen - of which your image is, hopefully, the biggest part. When you paste all that (no choice there) into a new editor image file, you then have to crop off all the toolbars, etc. stuff that surrounds your original image. Then get editing to tart it up as best as you can . . .

I'll try to demonstrate:

I open a file in Sigma Photo Pro and capture the screen (shift-PrtScn) and all of this goes into the Clipboard:



I open a New File in Photoshop Elements, 'New from Clipboard' here's how it then looks:



I did juggle the view around to get more of the pic part in Elements editor window. Then I crop off everything that's around the pic, leaving only the pic in the editor 'working area' and save it as a jpeg, voila:



A bit clearer, I hope.

[Colin Southern]

Sorry, I should have made it more clear. With the screen capture you get everything that's on the entire screen - of which your image is, hopefully, the biggest part. When you paste all that (no choice there) into a new editor image file, you then have to crop off all the toolbars, etc. stuff that surrounds your original image.

If you can see the embedded files then you can probably just copy them from Bridge's Cache.

[Anjelina Methews]

I think the software didn’t recover your photos perfectly that’s why they are not opening in photoshop. I have seen one photo recovery tool named as Remo Recover on internet, it may assist you very well.

[PhotomanJohn]

In reference to Colin's remark, my son works for DriveSavers and they are very good at what they do. When they have problems recovering data it is generally when people have fooled around using recovery programs or worse taken the computer to the shop down the street that claims he can do it. The message here is that if you have photos on your drive that are really important to you, it is best to send the drive to someone who actually knows how to recover the files BEFORE you or someone else mucks around and further corrupts the files.

John

[Colin Southern]

In reference to Colin's remark, my son works for DriveSavers and they are very good at what they do. When they have problems recovering data it is generally when people have fooled around using recovery programs or worse taken the computer to the shop down the street that claims he can do it. The message here is that if you have photos on your drive that are really important to you, it is best to send the drive to someone who actually knows how to recover the files BEFORE you or someone else mucks around and further corrupts the files.

John

Infinitely true!

In all honesty, if I had my life over again, DriveSavers would be one of the few places where I'd love to work.

They really are the gold standard in data recovery -- it's just unfortunate though that what they need to charge for a quality service can be well beyond the means of the average person, so it becomes a bit of a gamble of "cheaper but not as likely to succeed" -v- "virtually guaranteed to succeed, but expensive".