Author Archives: Joep

My r/datarecovery subreddit FAQ

For over 20 years I have been developing, been involved in development of and supporting data and file recovery software. Some very specific incidents sparked my interest in data recovery and then I wanted to find out how data was stored and lost on and from hard drives. The first tools I wrote were DOS tools… Read More »

Professional grade data recovery software on a budget

Who does not want it, professional grade data recovery software on a budget when you have an immediate need for it? Forget Stellar, forget the Disk Drill and RecoverIt! Although I have been and still am an enthusiastic advocate for ReclaiMe File Recovery, I try to keep an open mind and test other tools regularly.… Read More »

JPEG-Repair, no SOS detected

A common error message that JPEG-Repair reports is ‘no SOS detected’. I have written several posts and made videos to repair JPEG photos in case the Windows photo viewers report errors: The old Windows photo viewer: File appears to be damaged, corrupted or is too large. The new Windows Photos: It looks like we don’t… Read More »

Recover a fragmented, non-contiguous, incomplete JPEG

Fragmentation on FAT file systems and file recovery Most memory cards in camera’s are formatted with a flavor of the FAT file system (FAT32, exFAT). A property of FAT file system is that after deletion or formatting the card, non contiguous or fragmented files can not be recovered in one piece. This is due to… Read More »

Alternative method for half grey or truncated JPEG photo repair

There are various examples on this website of repairs of half grey or truncated JPEG images. In those cases all image data is actually present, but due to an error or corruption only a part of it is visible. If data is simply missing because for example the file is partially overwritten or cut-off, repair… Read More »

Repair, Recover JPEGs encrypted by ransomware STOP Djvu

This article shows repair of JPEGs that fell victim of ransomware. This particular ransomware only encrypts part of the file. Due to this the JPEG header and some 150 KB of JPEG data are lost. Using a reference file and weeding encrypted data we can repair the photo.

Unknown or invalid JPEG Marker

If you get a Unknown or invalid JPEG Marker this means one of two: The photo viewer or editor encountered a JPEG marker it isn’t familiar with. The JPEG file is corrupt. To rule out cause 1, your photo viewer editor doesn’t recognize a certain JPEG marker, update your software and if that does not help, try… Read More »

The corrupt JPEGs that weren’t corrupt

Often I am asked to repair JPEGs that can be opened but don’t display correctly. Many of those look okay for some part, but turn into a grey area at some point. Repairing these files (or recovering them as we’ll see) isn’t always straight forward and sometimes requires some detective work. Half grey photos In… Read More »

Aiseesoft Data Recovery – Short review: Waste of time

Aiseesoft Data Recovery was spammed in https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/, on offer was a free license. So that was a nice opportunity to test the abilities of the software. I paste my comments on the software after subjecting it to a short test, more or less in verbatim. Aiseesoft Data Recovery – short review Okay. As Aiseesoft Data… Read More »