# Please help! I lost my pictures!



## SSVP

I was transferring pictures from my digital camera (Canon Power Shot SD400 Digital ELPH) to my PC and I left the room. When I returned, I assumed they were finished downloading and erased the pictures from my camera. Now, I find that the pictures are not in the location I specified. The pictures are gone! Is there anything I can do????

Please help.


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## DonaldG

All may not be lost...

First of all - Do not take any more photos until you have tried to recover the deleted ones.

Visit Zero Assumption Recovery website here:
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/digital-image-recovery.htm

Download ZAR 8.4 (don't worry about buying it because the image recovery part is free - read the page at the bottom)

Once you have installed it, plug the camera's SD card into a card reader and point zar at the card. It recover any image that has not been over written.

(Expect to see other images from previous photo sessions too!


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## SSVP

Thanks Donald! I'm relieved to hear that. I've downloaded ZAR 8.4 but of course, I've encountered a snag.

I don't have a memory card reader so I'm hoping that the USB connection will work just as well. (?)

When it prompts me to select the physical device, the camera does not show up. Since it generally does show when I want to transfer photos, I'm thinking this is different because there are no pictures stored on the camera.

Could you please advise?


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## DonaldG

You can try accessing the card via the camera. If it doesn't work pop into your local camera/computer store and buy one (About $10). Using a card reader is much faster than downloading vis a camera USB!

The following will help you to understand what is happening. It is an analogy in simple terms, not specifics....

In very simple terms a computer/camera/memory card filing system is like a book. The first page of a book is the 'Contents Page', It shows the chapters and what pages the chapters start on.

Now..imagine that the chapters are your photographs.
The file names are the contents of the 'Contents Page'

When you delete the images, the images are not deleted. Only he reference to them is. IE: the 'Contents Page' is wiped clean. 

In other words, the filing system will only look on the contents page. As far as the camera and card reader is concerned, the memory card is blank. 

What ZAR does is look a wee bit deeper into the filing system. I am not absolutely sure of the actual mechanics of how it does it.

It is about 3 years ago since I needed to recover some photographs from my daughter's formatted card 
. I seem to remember that I had to point Zar to the card (camera) and get it to scan the card. It seemed to look at the file structure on the card and when it recognised the structure of an image, it copied it... 

You will have to follow instructions that appear on screen...

I hope that helps - let us know how you get on...


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## DonaldG

I have just read the ZAR web page:



> 1 Download, install, then run ZAR 8.4 (click here for zar84setup.exe).
> 2 Attach the camera or insert the memory card into the reader device.
> 3 On the first screen, no adjustment is required, just hit "Next>>".
> 4 Program will then prompt you for an operation mode. Select "Recover images from camera memory card", then hit "Next>>".
> 5 Select your camera from the list of the attached devices. You can identify the camera by its media size or by the model name (if available).
> 6 The rest is mostly automatic. When the analysis is done, select files to recover, specify the directory to place recovered files to, hit "Start copying" and you're done.


A tutorial & demonstration of the FREE ZAR is here


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## Zed101

Don't mean to jump in and spoil anything but just had to ask if you have done a search, using the name of the file that was supposed to go someplace else?
Just for a possibility, try looking in all the places files are stored. As: My Documents, Program files, shared documents etc. 
I did the same thing or just about, but found that they were put in a file under My Documents, in another file by the name I selected!
This taught me a lesson! NEVER NEVER DELETE ANYTHING UNTIL YOU ARE SURE THEY ARE WHERE YOU WANT THEM AND IN GOOD CONDITION!.

Hope you find them as they most likely are hid someplace on the hard drive. The search with the file or folder name just may tell you where they are.
Good luck


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## Net Jockey

Zed101 said:


> Don't mean to jump in and spoil anything but just had to ask if you have done a search, using the name of the file that was supposed to go someplace else?
> Just for a possibility, try looking in all the places files are stored. As: My Documents, Program files, shared documents etc.
> I did the same thing or just about, but found that they were put in a file under My Documents, in another file by the name I selected!
> This taught me a lesson! NEVER NEVER DELETE ANYTHING UNTIL YOU ARE SURE THEY ARE WHERE YOU WANT THEM AND IN GOOD CONDITION!.
> 
> Hope you find them as they most likely are hid someplace on the hard drive. The search with the file or folder name just may tell you where they are.
> Good luck


Very Good Advice...Open up My Computer and Click the on search button...type in the name of your picture...and if it is there you will find it.


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## PegasusNY

Or install Picasa and have it search you hard drive for pictures, in case you don't remember exactly what you named them. Picasa is a good photo manager too.


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## WereBo

Just as an 'aside' - Using a card-reader instead of plugging the camera into the USB port saves a lot of the camera's battery-life too :wink:


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## Arfamo

Hope this might also be of help to some people in understanding how to best recover deleted photos when disaster strikes!!

You can often successfully recover deleted photos from a PC, camera memory card or USB Memory stick, it just depends on what’s happened since the photos were deleted.
When you delete photos the data itself isn’t deleted, just the index entry that says where the data for those files is located. The space containing the deleted photos is also now marked as free space so it is available to the system for any new files to be written there instead. 

If and when that happens, then it becomes too late to recover your deleted photos so it is very, very important to not save any new files or data to the device concerned.
If the deleted photos are on your PC, use another PC to browse the internet for a solution as internet browsing causes lots of temporary files to get written to the disk. Download any photo recovery software, for example, to a memory stick, plug that in the computer with the deleted photos and run it from there. 

If the deleted photos are on a memory card or USB memory stick, just don’t save any new files to it. 

One of the easiest ways to see if you can recover deleted photos is to try some photo recovery software. There are many such products available, both commercial and free – also of varying quality!

A good tip is to try the free demo version of a good commercial product that will scan the device for deleted photos and show you exactly what photos can be recovered. At least that will show you if you can recover the deleted photos at all or if it’s too late already. You can find more useful information on photo recovery at http://www.recoverdeletedpictures.com 

Hope that is of help to folks.


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## DonaldG

Very nice reply Arfamo - good, useful post. Thanks

I have copied your post into a 'sticky' in the Photographer's Corner so that it is on permanant record on the main index page here


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