Recovering Photos From A Corrupt Compact Flash (CF) Memory Card

I recently returned from a holiday trip in Seoul (Korea) and took a lot of photos using my old Canon 400D DSLR. This camera still uses the compact flash (CF) memory card and I had used two 1Gb cards during my 7 days excursion. The second day after I returned home, I went ahead to plug-in the card reader to my Mac to start downloading my photos for storage.

I plugged in the first CF card and my Mac gave me a warning not to unplug the card without first ejecting it as it would cause errors. I was confused as I have only plugged it in and haven't pull it out. There was no eject option so I unplugged the card reader and plugged it in again, with the same outcome. I did it a few times before it finally started reading the card. I went the folder where the photos would be and I could see all the files, but when I clicked on those picture files, nothing showed up and every file was just 16kb in size! Then my Mac was telling me there is 1Gb free space on the card! Can you imagine my horror?

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At this time I was panicking so I pulled the CF card out and put it back into my DSLR hoping that the DSLR could show me the pictures. To my horror, the camera could only show me thumbnails and told me the CF card was corrupt and no data could be retrieved! I was devastated. Not because the CF card may be damage and I would have to spend money to buy a new one. But because those pics that I have taken are priceless and no money could ever return those moments that I have taken! I tried every possible means I know to try and retrieve my pics but to no avail. I was so shaken up and frustrated I could kill anyone who's going to interrupt me now.

So the next thing I did was to go to Google and starting searching for "how to retrieve photos from a corrupted CF card" and any other search strings that will resemble retrieving corrupt data, etc. Most results Google gave resulted in some paid app. At this point I would pay anything just to retrieve my pics, but I am also skeptical as to whether these apps work as it is advertise. Many tools in search results could be bogus and they know people looking for these solutions are desperate and will be willing to part with a fortune just to retrieve their precious data.

Being a skeptic, I found a tool finally which does not mention anything about being a trialware or shareware. I proceeded to download and started using it. It does not come with a GUI and is purely command line run. I ran it, followed the online options and let it run it process. It took about 10 minutes and then there was a file about 1Gb in my folder. It was gzipped but after unzipping, there was nothing. I was devastated again. I decided to give it another run this time choosing another option. After another 10 minutes or so, lo and behold! It retrieved every picture I had taken in Seoul! All in its original state and file size! And not only that it even retrieved 2 photos I have taken and deleted in August 2011!

Now imagine my joy! I would kiss anyone's ass at that time. Without thinking twice, I made a decent donation to the page where I downloaded this app from and I certainly think it was worth it. What is the tool I'm talking about? Its called PHOTOREC and if you are having this problem, go ahead and download it at:
[LINK]

Remember to leave a donation for the publisher (not me!) if it helped you. I do think the publisher deserves it. This is a wonderful tool and it does its magic. I do not have any link whatsoever to this publisher or this website that you can download this app from, but I highly recommend it if you have the same problem I have. And I think it will retrieve from any form of data storage devices, not only CF cards. Good luck!