Tag Archives: digital image recovery

Recover RAW photos using JpegDigger

JpegDigger is a JPEG carver. As such you may not expect it to be useful to recover RAW photos. However I have been able to put it to good use in a number of cases where: RAW photos were lost or deleted Photos appear corrupt on memory card RAW photos were corrupt after recovery JpegDigger… Read More »

Photos on SD card are corrupt

When you discover photos on your SD card are corrupt or the memory card itself is corrupt you should: Do as little as possible (read: nothing) with the card. Do NOT run chkdsk on the card itself! Do not format the card even if it asks you to! Instead: Create a disk image of the… Read More »

How to fix and open recovered photos?

Unfortunately it is a common problem that you are unable to open recovered photos after using file recovery, undelete or photo recovery software on a SD card. In this post I will make some assumptions: Photos are on a memory card and therefor: File system is a variation of FAT  (FAT32, exFAT) File type is… Read More »

Bottom half of JPEG is missing or grey or solid color

There’s basically three things that can be wrong if a JPEG opens but is partially grey:

1. File is too small. Let’s an average JPEG shot with same camera and settings is 4 MB and the ones that are damaged are like 1 MB or 2 MB. Then probably half the data is simply missing. These files can not be repaired.

2. Normal file size. Either part of the file does not contain image data or file does contain image data but is interrupted by some invalid data.

If part of the file does not contain image data then this is sometimes easy to spot using a hex editor. All of a sudden ‘random’ binary data stops and changes to FF FF FF or 00 00 00 etc.. Repair: Impossible.

In case the data is however is there but it is interrupted repair is often possible. JPG-Repair tries to detect and will try to get rid of the invalid data, however this does not always work. Current version detects invalid JPEG markers, common damage due to bad sectors and some type of corruption I observed a few times with images shot with certain Samsung phones.

Can corrupt Canon CR2 RAW photos be repaired

Can corrupt Canon CR2 RAW photos be repaired? As expected there is no yes/no answer possible top this question. If you’re unable to open the file at all then perhaps, but definitive answer is only possible after closer examination of the file. Windows Photos will simply state: “It appears we don’t support this file format”… Read More »

Recover Canon CR2 RAW photos

Recover Canon CR2 RAW photos. Canon CR2 raw files contain unprocessed raw sensor data. Depending on the camera’s resolution they tend to be quite large and due to typical usage patterns (preview photo > dismiss/delete file > shoot new file etc.) the files become easily fragmented. Shoot video too? Then fragmentation is very likely to… Read More »

MP4 video recovery observations

I recently did a MP4 video recovery from a memory card (SD). It contained combined JPEG photo and MP4 video data, shot with a Canon EOS 600 D. Previous recovery attempts done by the customer resulted in the majority of the files being corrupt. All MP4 video was unplayable. Most recovered MP4 videos were tiny… Read More »

Photo recovery: Easeus Data Recovery vs JPEG Recovery LAB

Comparison between various tools for photo recovery The case of the corrupt JPEG files Sometimes it turns out photos can not be repaired after recovery. Best thing to do then is to use better photo recovery software and recover the files again. Files were originally recovered using Easeus Data Recovery. Case: Contacted via Facebook Chat,… Read More »

Corrupt CR2 and NEF files due to file fragmentation

There are many tools available to recover lost or deleted digital photos from memory cards. Most of them are unable to recover non contiguous or fragmented files. As a result fragmented files recovered by such tools will be corrupt. In such cases JPEG Recovery LAB can help you recover fragmented files. However, recovered files may… Read More »

Recovering fragmented photos and videos – the file system matters

One of the most frustrating things after file recovery is to discover your files are corrupt. Corruption can be caused by a few different things, IF we assume the software didn’t make errors like guessing the wrong file system. Parts of the file were overwritten after deletion. Overwritten data can not be recovered. File occupied… Read More »