Quote:
Originally Posted by philippa
just found this thread again - thanks for responding Phil.
its good to know that images needn't be lost forever and can be retrieved.
thanks Paul, will check it out.
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No problem but there is one very important thing to remember. If a card goes bad or you have formated it by mistake, NEVER write any more photos or data to that card, hard disk etc.
When you quick format media, the device just clears out the part of the card that acts as a pointer to the files on the card with their file names, directory structure etc. which makes the media appear to be empty. This is known as the File Allocation Table aka FAT16, FAT32 and the more secure NTFS used in secure windows environments. Memory cards commonly use the FAT format as this is a standard across many devices for compatibility.
If you re-use the card you will overwrite the hidden data and no matter what program you use you are going to be in trouble.
Rule of thumb: If you need to recover images, never use the card again until you have already recovered the files.