A few weeks ago I did something really stupid.
I was happily engaged in shooting some videos with my Sony camera for a DVD that would show my granddaughter, Evelyn, some beautiful Oregon scenery and how her grandpa/grandma hike along the Metolius River.
Then, even though I have a 8GB camera card, the camera stopped working and an error message popped up on the screen. "Out of storage," or something like that.
Damn, I thought, we're only halfway through this hike and I want to show Evelyn some shots of what is coming up next. I decided to delete some old photos and videos that I'd already transferred to my computer, but had neglected to erase from the Sony's camera card.
What I didn't want to do, though, was delete a bunch of videos that I'd shot the day before during a two-hour hike on a different section of the river. I'd captured some interesting and unrepeatable footage that hadn't yet been copied over to my MacBook laptop.
So I carefully selected only photos and videos in a certain date range, figuring (incorrectly) that what Sony meant by a "date range" was everything shot on that day. Actiually, it seems, what I was doing was deleting everything from a certain date up to the present -- which included the videos I'd just taken, plus those I'd shot yesterday.
While my wife waited for me to finish fiddling with my camera, I went about deleting (as I mistakenly thought) everything on the card prior to the recent videos that I wanted to keep.
After a few minutes the camera presented me with another screen message which basically said "No content on card."
Holy shit!
At first I couldn't believe it. Then, after I looked for recorded images, I reluctantly became a believer. I'd deleted every freaking photo and video on the entire freaking card! All that time I'd put into shooting videos the past few days... wasted.
I was deeply irritated. So much so, I walked (OK, stomped) off, heading back to our cabin, yelling at my wife, "I don't feel like going on a hike now, I'm so mad about losing all of those videos."
Once I'd calmed down a bit, I began thinking about what I'd do when I got back to my computer. Double-check that the camera card indeed was empty. Then, if it was, see if there was any way to retrieve the deleted files.
Fortunately, even though the result of the first task was a "yes," so was the second. A Google search for "restore deleted camera card photos" led me to CardRescue. I was happy to see this offer:
Download Free Evaluation Version (v5.10) to quick scan on your memory card and see the recoverable pictures
It took quite a while, about twenty minutes, for CardRescue to check the many files that I'd deleted on the camera card. I watched my laptop's screen the whole time as CardRescue did its thing, seemingly recovering each and every deleted file.
After the scan was done, I saw that the recent video files had been recovered, along with everything else. Then it was a no-brainer to get out my credit card and pay for the full version, which let me save the recovered files.
Yeah, $40 was quite a bit of money. But I was pleased to pay that much to get back video files that I'd spent several hours shooting.
CardRescue worked like a charm. It undid my stupidity. Watching the recovered video files I felt great. $40 great, for sure. So if you ever do what I did and erase photos or videos that you didn't mean to, and want to get back, check out CardRescue.
Thank you. Its great help and life saving!
At first i thought it s not gonna work for my case but we decided to buy it anyway. Its so unbelievable that it can really get all the files back!
Thank for your useful story, it gave me hope.
Posted by: Pla | March 21, 2012 at 05:27 AM