Sometimes JPEG photos simply can not be repaired because the majority of the data inside a file simply is not JPEG data. I had one of those cases earlier this week. Good thing was that a reasonably sized thumbnail could be extracted.

The case: a Samsung Galaxy 5

Photos were taken using a Samsung Galaxy 5. Photos were 1600 x 1200 pixels and 90 – 95% of each photo was invisible. Within the actual JPEG bitstream there were thousands of invalid JPEG markers. An invalid JPEG marker is often just the tip of the iceberg. If you see 1 invalid marker, it is often surrounded by more corrupt data. An invalid JPEG marker is a byte that accidentally was turned into a marker: One flipped bit can do the job (FEh -> FFh).

My software JPG-Repair can get rid of all these invalid markers within the JPEG bitstream. But this alone is not enough to repair a severely corrupted JPEG. I have given examples in the past where cutting data surrounding the invalid markers greatly improved a photo to the point where it was view-able again. In the below example, hundreds of bytes around the invalid marker had to be removed.

In the case of the Samsung however, about 30% of the data was corrupt. And that is too much when you only have a 600 KB or so file to work with.

Extract Thumbnails: JPG-Repair vs Stellar Repair for Photos

In most cases thumbnails in JPEG file are useless. They are just too tiny, often only 160 x 120 pixels. In this case however resolution of the embedded thumbnail was just acceptable to the customer: 512 x 384 pixels.

In this case you can extract the thumbnails using the free demo version, it will save them as BMP file though.

Every now and then I compare what you can accomplish with JPG-Repair with other photo repair software. And sometimes the results are very surprising.

In this case I asked Stellar Repair for Photos (previously Stellar JPEG Repair) to repair the same photos. It was unable to repair the photo which is what I expected because it’s just too corrupt. However, like JPG-Repair, Repair for Photos indicated that it would be able to extract the thumbnail. What I do not understand is why it isn’t able to extract/preview the thumbnail intact. Below you can see JPG-repair and repair for Photos processing the exact same file and displaying the exact same thumbnail:

The post Extract thumbnails, JPG-Repair vs Stellar Repair for Photos appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

With Network Attached Storage or NAS for short becoming more popular, the demand for quality DIY solutions for NAS data recovery software increases. I will introduce two of those, and will expand the article in the future with other solutions I come across.

What is a NAS?

Basically a NAS is what we used to call a file server, no more no less. But people need new terminology every now and then I guess. A few decades ago file servers were often Microsoft Windows NT or Novell Netware powered servers that made storage capacity available over a network. These were often expensive and beefy machines with SCSI disk interfaces and were maintained by full time and often certified system and network administrators.

A modern NAS box essentially does the same thing but is often found in homes. The majority of NAS devices is in fact a PC running a Linux based operating system with several hard drives attached. The entire OS is hidden from end users and functions can be configured through a web based interface. And, as NAS servers are often Linux based, file systems often used are EXT, XFS, and BTRFS.

RAID

As with the ‘old’ file servers, hard drives within a NAS are often configured as RAID set. It means disk work as a group and data stored on one disk is often meaningless without the data on the other disks. Most common RAID levels are RAID 0 and RAID 5. As a consequence, if one disks fails the data on the remaining disks is potentially in jeopardy as well. This being said, several RAID levels are able to compensate for loss of one disk due to the availability of ‘redundant’ data available on the remaining disks. This redundant data reduces the total capacity of all disks combined.

NAS Data Recovery software requirements

From the description of what a NAS is, we can already tell that to recover data, the software needs to know and understand:

• Linux RAID
• Linux file systems such as EXT, XFS, and BTRFS

This means many of the usual and popular goto solutions like Easeus and Recuva can not be used.

However, since Linux itself ‘speaks’ RAID and can work with those file systems, it can often be used to recover data from disks from inaccessible NAS devices. If you know your way around in Linux, I suggest you try this first.

In this article however I will address Windows based solutions that target a non-professional end user.

Preferably the PC non which the recovery will be performed runs a 64 bit version of Windows and the recovery software itself is 64 bit too. Typically a NAS contains hundreds of thousands of files. For each file, the software needs some memory to keep track of it, and 32 bit software will run at some point into memory problems.

NAS data recovery hardware needed

Below points are true regardless the software you will be using. For many, the hardware related matters will be most challenging.

1. Of course you need the disks from the NAS. If the RAID level was RAID 5 you can still recover the data even if one disk is missing.
2. You need a PC to which you can connect the disks. I recommend at least 8 GB RAM.
3. You need disks you can copy recovered data to.
4. You need the hardware to connect all those disks. Directly connecting disks to SATA ports is fastest. If that is not possible SATA to USB adapters and disk enclosures are an option, it will however slow down the recovery. It is possible to mix SATA and USB attached disks if it can’t be avoided.

And then there is this. A professional data recovery engineer will even need more disks as he will first clone the source disks (the disks that came out of your NAS). He will make sector by sector disk copies, and use those copies to recover the data from.

Not enough SATA ports? Use an adapter to connect to USB.

Easy to use NAS data recovery software – ReclaiMe Ultimate

94% success rate – Unconditional, no questions asked, 30 day money back guarantee!

Download

The big advantage of ReclaiMe File Recovery is that it is very powerful, but at the same time it is super easy to use. Once you have downloaded and setup the software your NAS RAID disks will show up under the “Linux MD RAID” or “Linux LVM” section. Pick the largest one! Click start and ReclaiMe will scan the disks.

Wait until ReclaiMe already starts displaying your files. As the scan detects more files, it will continue adding those to the directory and file list. It is not required to sit out an hour long scan as is usually the case with other software. So you can now already:

• Browse and locate your files
• Preview files
• Copy files

If you can’t see the array in ReclaiMe, then download ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery software and determine the array configuration parameters. Note that to recover the RAID configuration you need to know what RAID type was used in your NAS. When the parameters are determined, click “Run ReclaiMe to recover data” in ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery tool and back here.

For pros: UFS Explorer RAID Recovery

Required license: RAID Recovery

UFS Explorer is actually the goto logical data recovery tool for many data recovery experts. It allows for greater control but this of course adds somewhat to complexity too.

Download

After launching the program, you will see the navigation tree on the left side of the tab where all detected storages will be shown together with partitions, disk images and complex storages (RAID). You can either choose the needed storage from this top-level structure or use the Open button on the upper panel.

Click the Start scan button to proceed to data recovery.

The scan results include all found files and folders that can be recovered. You can now browse and save the needed recovered files just like in an original file system.

The post NAS Data Recovery Software appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

In this post I’ll give you some tips on evaluating file recovery software. To tell good from bad data recovery software. If you have just lost data and are now searching for a solution you will find that are hundreds of tools available that all claim to be the best in getting your data back. Sad truth is that 90% of the software is really subpar. These are some things to consider and look for.

Things to look for in good file recovery software

File system reconstruction

It is always preferred to use software that can ‘virtually reconstruct’ the file system using file system meta data. If the software is able to do that it offers several advantages:

• You get back original file names
• You can recover files in original directory structure
• File attributes that are stored in file system (creation date, last access data etc.) can be recovered too
• Depending on the file system it solves the problem of file fragmentation

Most software is able to reconstruct the file system if there is only minor corruption. However if corruption is more severe, the lesser capable software will quickly resort to ‘RAW’ recovery: Rather than displaying your original directory structure it will show a tree where files are sorted by type, e.g. JPG, DOC, ZIP etc..

With this RAW type recovery you lose all the advantages of file system based recovery. So you will not be able to recover the original file names, directory structure etc..

So, you look for software that shows you the directory tree as it normally shown in a normal file browser.

Good file recovery software displays a directory tree close to how you expect it. 1% into the scan and it is already almost complete.

Disk image creation

Good file recovery software is able to create a disk image and process it as if it were a hard disk or other storage medium. In my opinion this should be a RAW disk image and not a proprietary format that can not be processed by other software. A disk image for data recovery purposes is a sector by sector copy of the source. It includes all used and unused areas.

If the software can not create a disk image then it should at least accept a RAW disk image as a source.

A disk image provides several advantages:

• It is a safety net
• Bad sector only are accessed once rather than several times during file system reconstruction
• It ‘freezes’ the source from which you need to recover data. IOW once you have the image no data is written to it.

A disadvantage of course is the fact that you need storage space to store the disk image.

The software should be easy to use

Chances are that you do not recover data on a daily basis and that you do not have an in depth understanding about what is wrong with your data. It is up to the software to fill in the gaps.

In my experience many people regard a computer as a user device that should not require in depth knowledge about for example the file system of their hard disk. So file recovery software should not rely on the end user to determine the file system of a corrupt drive.

If you don’t have a clue how the data was lost, the software should not ask you if you want to perform partition recovery or format recovery.

The more decisions the software asks you to make, the worse it is IMO. Ideally the software asks you to select a disk and to click start, no matter the file system or how the data was lost.

Good file recovery software is easy to use. Select the drive and click start. Easy peasy.

A picture preview facility

Good file recovery software should be able to generate previews of popular image type formats on the fly and I’ll explain why.

If file recovery software is able to show you directory and or files you may assume that it will be able to recover those directories and files. But this far from the truth. It is very well possible to generate a file list while the majority of the files will be corrupt after recovering them.

If the software for example gets the cluster size wrong during file system reconstruction to name one vital parameter, virtually every file that you recover will be corrupt.

Another example: If you are recovering data from a degraded RAID array and the software gets RAID parameters wrong, every file that is larger than the stripe size will be corrupt.

Files containing a picture in some form are the easiest way to evaluate if you will be able to recover intact files. If larger pictures you preview are intact (1 MB and larger to be on the safe side), you can assume the software got all parameters correct. Files of different formats (movies, documents etc.) will be okay too.

Good file recovery software generates previews of most common image file formats. Again, 1% into the scan and you can already preview and evaluate the quality of the recovery.

The post Tips on selecting good file recovery software appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

Okay, for starters, this may be confirmation bias. Keep that in mind. Okay?

And also: Would you pay for this crap? Would you pay in order to be able to use Google Search? I would most certainly not. So they were smart enough to offer it for free. And since every body likes a free ride we now have to live with it. Would I pay as a webmaster to have my site included in their search index? Well, certainly not with the current performance and lack of service.

Observation 1. Google AI is actually quite stupid:

I make a tool called JPG-Repair Toolkit. Google’s presumed AI is too stupid to determine that JPG-Repair is closely related to JPEG REPAIR and that it is all about repairing corrupted JPEGs.

Observation 2. More Google artificial stupidity:

Google presumed AI ranks totally irrelevant results for a search like JPEG repair above my website. I don’t mind losing to excellent content. That would actually prove artificial intelligence. Current algorithm however proves Artificial stupidity.

Observation 3. Either I got more stupid, or Google did:

Either I have gotten significantly worse in coming up with correct search phrases, or Google’s AI has gotten more stupid. Fact of the matter is that search results I get from Google are worse than what I got, say 5 – 10 years ago.

Observation 4. Google search smartassery:

When I enter a search phrase I am sort of okay with Google suggesting ‘did you mean ..’, or ‘other people also searched for ..’. Sort of okay. It doesn’t make me happy though. Lately I notice Google takes smartassery to the next level en simply replaces my search phrase. Modifies it. But it still kindly offers me to search for what I actually typed in. So kind. If anyone in real life would do this, you’d slap them. That is how annoying this is.

Observation 5. Smart snippets are useless and annoying:

I have never seen a smart snippet that in itself was a sufficient answer. So, despite the snippet I need to access the actual page the snippet is referring to anyway. So, IMO utterly useless. Add to this, that the snippet is often totally irrelevant.

Observation 6. Algorithm updates suck:

First of all I have the feeling they are not an improvement. After all I explained that IMO search results get worse over time. But also, as a webmaster I notice it is not uncommon for a website or part of it simply disappears for a while. Gets de-indexed. That means a significant drop in visitors for a few days, and less visitors often implies a drop in revenue.

Observation 7. Google Support is non existent:

It has happened to me two times that my website got de-indexed because Google detected malware. On both occasions however it did not specify the malware. I had to use a third party website to get a clue. Contacting Google about this issue was impossible. Yes, there are volunteers in support forum who were only able to give me canned answers. Finding the presumed malware took me a few hours. It then turned out there was no malware. It was a suspicious file. It was suspicious because Google never saw it before. Which was correct because it was a new tool.

So, Google flags your website and tells people not to go there (danger ahead!). Google does not tell you what file it has a problem with. Support is non existent. And that sucks!

The post Google Search SUCKS appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

I smoked for years, then got into vaping and then unfortunately started smoking again.

Vaping

First time vaping

When you want to get into vaping, the options are overwhelming. Honestly I do not know even half of it, and each day I see and read new stuff. Tanks, mods, coils. AIOs (all in ones), pods, kits, e-cigarettes, pens and what not. Mouth to lung, direct lung, VG, PG, ‘sub-ohming’, tooo much information! Vaping, much more than smoking is like taking on a new hobby.

The first device I got looked like a pen. Like one you write with. It was terrible. It leaked e-liquid, taste was bad (burned) and it had to be re-charged all the time. The whole experience was frustrating and stressful. I decided to give it another try and ended up buying an Aspire Premium Kit. That was more like it! Good taste and satisfying clouds of vapor.

The Innokin VTR

I ran into a second hand Innokin VTR and bought that too. I tried all kind of e-liquids and it was fun! This is what makes vaping more fun than smoking. Trying different liquids, tastes. With smoking you always have the same taste. You smoke automatically, I hardly ever really enjoyed it. Vaping is real fun. You can enjoy the taste like a good glass of wine. And you undeniably feel better and healthier. Your taste gets better and you smell better.

The trap

There are three things that trapped me into smoking again.

1. People offering me smokes. I said no 100 times. And then I accepted one cigarette. The did not smoke for several days which was easy. Which then in turn makes you think that is easy to smoke every now and then ..
2. It is easier to get tobacco than e-liquid, you have to order it online. So when you run out you can not simply go to a gas station and buy some. However the gas station does sell cigarettes.
3. Trouble with the equipment. Batteries that wear out. Leaking tanks. Smoking is easier and less of a hobby.

So yeah. I ‘picked up’ smoking again. For more than a year. A year in which I trashed my Innokin because it was broken.

Back to vaping

So when I wanted to go back to vaping it appeared as if the market had exploded. I didn’t know where to start. I had forgotten about VG and PG. Had no idea what device to get. The Innokin was no longer sold and although I enjoyed it, it wasn’t ideal. So I Googled ‘starter kits’. I can’t remember exactly why anymore, but I settled for a Justfog FOG 1.

I had fun trying different e-liquids. But the ones I liked were sweet and ‘thick’. And the FOG 1 coils didn’t handle that very well. A few days and a brand new coil started to taste burned. Rather frustrating and expensive.

I chatted with the online store where I purchased the FOG 1 and most of my liquids and they recommended using a different device. Another starter set. The Vaporesso Veco ONE. And they were right. Coils last for weeks. Taste is better than the Justfog. The Veco ONE has a bigger brother, the Veco ONE Plus which I purchased as well.

My Vaping kit

The Veco ONE and ONE plus from Vaporesso

The Vecos are considered starter kits. But I see myself using these as long as the internal batteries last. They use the same coils which I find very convenient. They cope very well with high VG (Vegetal Glycerin), which is the fluid in which Nicotine (if desired) and tastes are resolved. I also like sweet liquids which tend to clog up coils as well, but not with the Veco ONE. Coils easily last me at least 2 weeks and they are cheap compared to other coils.

Basically, you always need:

• A tank into which you poor the liquids
• A coil, which heats up and vaporizes the liquids
• A MOD which contains a battery

In case of a starter kit, you get all of that. They’re also called AIOs which means ‘all in ones’. Differences between the ONE and the ONE Plus is battery capacity (1500 mAh vs. 3300 mAh) and tank capacity (2 ml vs 4 ml).

The MOD or battery is simple and only contains a fire button. You can not adjust anything. It is ‘unregulated’ which means you will get less power as the battery gets emptier. It does not bother me as I don’t notice it. The battery is internal so you can not change it. It is charged using a USB cable which I mostly have connected to my laptop.

The tank is connected to the MOD or battery using a 510 thread which means it can be used with most other mods too. If you even want to upgrade the mod because you want more options, you can continue using the Veco ONE tanks.

E-liquids

Mainly you have VG (vegetable glycerin) or PG (propylene glycol)or a mix of both, based e-liquids. The liquid is vaporized and this is what you inhale and transports flavor and nicotine. PG is thinner and delivers more of what’s called a throat hit. That throat hit feeling is what ex smokers may be after. I am more into the high VG liquids, which in general are sweeter and produce bigger clouds and better taste.

Illusions e-liquids. Hmmm, nice!

Liquids are almost always a VG/PG mix. In general, you get what you pay for. Cheap liquids, IMO also taste cheap.

Vaping. Do or don’t?

If you are a smoker I’d order a starter kit right away. It is nice, it is fun and you will feel better in a matter of days. If you’re not a smoker, then don’t.

The post Quit smoking – Start Vaping appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

Repair-JPEG.exe is the utility created by Wim Vanmaele that inspired me to add patching to my own JPEG Repair software. I can locate only one source on the internet that refers to this program. If that for some reason would seize to exist all references to it will be lost, which is why I will host it here as a backup.

Please note that mirroring the file here does not imply I can offer support for it. Is offered as-is and use on your own risk. As far as I know the program is freeware.

If you want to download the file, click.

Below is the accompanying Readme file.

JPEG-Repair Instructions (English Version)

Introduction

Who hasn’t encountered the similar examples of corrupted Jpeg files as below (see fig. 1-3):

fig. 1. – Part of the photo appears faded.

fig. 2. – Part of the photo has turned a different color.

fig. 3. – There is a strange often colorful artifact in the middle of a photo.

With a lot of patience you can cut and paste but you still might lose part of your photo.  You can, using Photoshop restore the pictures but that is an expensive program to buy…Maybe there is another way.

JPEG (files ending with extensions .jpg or .jpeg) is a form of file structure which stores a picture in a compressed format. The complex algorithm is very difficult to hack and to understand.  It is lossy compression and that doesn’t make things easier.  What does lossy mean you ask? It means once saved the picture loses some detail, and this detail can not be recovered. Then again the advantage is the small file-size.

During my testing, I discovered that by adding one byte at a certain position in the jpg file the corrupted picture was restored. So all we need is a tool that would add a byte at a user-defined position. JPEG-Repair, the program I wrote, will allow you to do this.

As with any software, use it at your own risk!

Screenshots With Things to Keep In Mind

• Although this looks like a DOS program, just double click on repair-jpeg.exe to open the
  program as in fig. 4.

fig. 4. – What repair-jpeg looks like when you first start it.

• Under the File Menu, select a corrupted jpeg and click OK to start editing the file.  See fig. 5.

fig. 5. – What the program looks like with a photo loaded.

• Key functions, glossary and mouse actions in the program are as below:

Key Mappings

Glossary

Mouse Actions

• The program will warn you if you tell it to add a byte or bytes beyond the end of the file as it currently is configured.  See fig. 6.

fig. 6. – You told the program to add a byte(s) beyond the end of a file.

• Adding or moving Bytes will change the Picture. This is quite normal and is the reason of your corrupted file in the first place.  See fig. 7.

fig. 7. – A change induced in a photo by inserting a byte or changing one.

• To correctly fix a photo use F3 and F4 to get to the bit where the picture begins to be defective See Figure 8 below which is using a magnified view, which you will probably want to use to zero in on the beginning of the error.

Fig. 8. – using F3 and or F4,  move to the correct position of the Byte insertion point.  This is where the file begins to become defective

Steps to Recovering a Corrupt jpg File:

1. Select the File and click OK
2. Choose working mode (F1)
3. Move bit by bit through the file using F3 and F4, and maybe using F5 and F6.
4. Adapt the step size (F7 F8 F9 F10 F11). The changes are sometimes difficult to notice.WARNING the zoom-in and zoom-out commands NEVER reflect the latest update!!!.  Zooming is actually performed on the ORIGINAL picture; all other actions are performed on the .REPAIR.JPG stored in memory.  Change the values if necessary.
5. Once you get close to the corrupted area, use F5 and F6 while carefully watching the screen. You CAN NOT stop or halt a loop, therefore do not use large loop values. Remember your offset position and Use F3 to go back.

1. The default step value is 1 (bv)

1. Once satisfied with your results, click the X (top right window corner) to exit the program.

Restart the program to edit another file

Please note, the .repair.jpg file cannot be over-written by the program. If you want to edit the picture again you have to remove this file.

Nothing is perfect, but out of 1000 Pictures there were only about 10 that were not fixable. 75 were only marginally correctable.

Below are the fixed files:

fig. 9. – washed out section fixed

fig.10. – bottom blue section fixed

fig. 11. – Horizontal Blue Artifact fixed

The post repair-jpeg appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

I noticed Stellar renamed their photo repair tool from ‘Stellar Phoenix JPEG Repair’ to ‘Stellar Repair for Photo’. ‘Photos’ suggests that rather than being limited to repairing JPEG, it also supports other formats. I visited their website and downloaded the new version. This is just a short post of my initial observations.

You can download Stellar Repair for Photo here.

Edit 1 (May 4, 2019): I noticed Stellar Repair for Photo is able to repair JPEGs that Stellar JPEG repair can not. This good news in case you need to repair JPEGs for which you do not have sample/reference files.

Edit 2 (May 4, 2019): I had a few times where the software crashed while doing an advanced repair using a sample/reference file.

Stellar Repair for Photos now supports reference files

Stellar Repair for Photos now offers support for a reference or sample file. In case it can not repair a file it will offer the option for ‘Advance repair’. Click it and it will ask for a sample file.

Ow, where I wonder, did they get that idea?! I will never be able to prove this, but I think Stellar is actively monitoring the competition and kind of stole my idea. By no means I want to claim I own the idea, but I think they thought to themselves, let’s do that too. Which is what I would have done in their shoes as well, so no hard feelings there.

Repair of invalid JPEG Markers

I also noticed that this version of the Stellar software strips invalid markers from the JPEG bitstream. I am not sure if previous versions already did so, but this one does. Below image did show lower half as a solid gray block due to an invalid marker in the JPEG data stream. After repair it is corrected and lower part of image shows (albeit including image shift and color errors).

I decide to test how it handles JPEGs with restart markers, because if the above image would have had those implemented, it probably would have been repaired almost to perfection.

I ‘feed’ Stellar Repair for Photo a JPEG with restart markers that suffers from invalid data within the JPEG data stream. It took the software 15 minutes to process the file after which result was rather disappointing, it only recovers tiny thumbnails (120×160):

JPEG with restart markers suffered from invalid JPEG markers: Stellar only extracted thumbnails, however advance repair option is available. Since the header of the file is intact I wonder what good a sample file will do. I point to a sample file, unfortunately the software then soon crashes (reproducible).

Same file can be repaired using JPG-Repair without requiring a sample, so it is very well possible.

After JPG-Repair fixed ‘fatal’ errors in the image, due to presence of restart markers the image recovers itself from errors. This is the high resolution JPEG!

Supported file types

This is the one I was most curious about. The Stellar website lists an impressive list of supported file types, which apart from JPEG all appear to be RAW digital photo formats:

JPG, JPEG, ARW, CR2, CRW, DNG, ERF, JPG, MRW, NEF, NRW, ORF, PEF, RAF, SR2, SRF, TIFF and RW2.

So, now my guess is, that the Stellar software does not actually repair all these image formats. Correct me if I am wrong, but all these formats support embedding of JPEG photos. And, at this point and still guessing, I figure that it is all the Stellar software will be doing: Extract JPEGs from all image formats except for JPEG. JPEGs it can actually repair, some times without, and other times with the help of a sample file. So .. Shall we find out?

Repair of RAW photos using Stellar Repair for Photo

So for the test I pulled a bunch of corrupt NEF (Nikon RAW format) files from my library of corrupt photos. I fire up the Stellar software, click ‘Add files’ and browse to the corrupt files (for some reason it always starts in my system32 folder which is annoying. If you’re reading this Stellar I suggest you change that). I select the NEF files and click repair. See results:

My suspicion is that Stellar Repair for Photo does not repair RAW files at all, but simply extracts embedded JPEGs. It did so in this test and I suspect it will do it in all cases. This is not per se a bad thing, but in my opinion you should be more transparent about this. JPG-Repair can also extract JPEGs from RAW files, and that’s what it also calls it: Recover JPEG data from corrupt RAW files. Speaking of JPG-Repair:

JPG-Repair recovers the full size JPEG data from the same corrupt NEF files

See how the Stellar software extracts 1080 x 1620 JPEGs from the NEF files? Using those same files, JPG-Repair extracts 1080 x 1620 but 7360 x 4912 JPEGs from the files as well!

Conclusion

One thing I need to mention before going to the conclusion: You do not purchase a license for the software I noticed, you buy a one year subscription to stellar Repair for Photo and is set to auto renew. Which I find odd for a product you typically only hope to use once.

So, in conclusion I think it is nice that there are a number of situations where Stellar Repair for Photo can repair JPEG photos without a sample. It must be noted, that from my experience the number of scenarios in which this is possible is quite limited. Which is why the Advance repair option using a sample file is a good idea. Basically, with a sample shot with the same device and settings you should be able to fix any damage to the JPEG header.

This version also corrects invalid JPEG markers in the JPEG data stream which is nice. What is disappointing is that it fails to correct this type of errors in a JPEG with restart markers because specially in those files you can get very good results.

Support for RAW photos is a bit disappointing since all Stellar Repair for Photo does is extract embedded JPEG data. On top of that it misses the high resolution JPEG data in the NEF test files I used.

JPG-Repair Toolkit

DIY JPEG photo repair

JPG-Repair is a unique DIY JPEG photo repair utility! 

Price: only 14.99 EURO / 16.99 USD! (for home/personal use, ex. VAT)

• Repair corrupt and damaged JPEG files
• Fix corrupt JPEG header
• Repair Invalid JPEG markers
• Repair damage due to bad sectors
• Improve corrupt JPEG image data by patching JPEG bit stream with visual feedback
• Recover JPEG data from corrupt RAW photos such as CR2 and NEF
• Does not re-encode JPEG image so original quality is preserved!
• Preview of repaired file
• Does not alter original files
• No need to upload photos to remote servers
• Free version shows previews + saves low resolution examples.
• Now includes a photo heal tool to remove unwanted objects (such as grey lines caused by JPG-Repair!

You can use this download to update a registered version. Simply copy files over existing files. JPG-repair Toolkit will continue to work with your license key.

Virus Total Scan Result 0/70.

More info ..

Download43760 Downloads

The post Software review: Stellar Repair for Photos appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

JPEG visual corruption

In general there are two kinds of symptoms that indicate a JPEG image is corrupted:

1. Photo can not be viewed at all; Windows Explorer fails to display thumbnails
2. JPEG can be opened but there is visual corruption in one form or the other

In case 1 it is safe to assume at least the header of the file is damaged. Usually if there is visual corruption then there is corrupted data within actual image data (rather than in header).

However, recently I got a number of cases where the photos were visually corrupted although there appeared to be no corrupt data within the JPEG bitstream: No invalid JPEG markers were present and the JPEG decoder returns no errors.

Coincidentally I found some very similarly corrupted JPEGs on my own hard drive. This is the type of visual corruption I am talking about:

JPEG visual corruption – no corrupt data in JPEG bitstream

Even if the cause would be in the JPEG bitstream, due to the number of shifts in the image data, patching it would be close to impossible. Because it appears the image data is shifting at a very regular interval.

Regular Interval

It then occurred to me that this regular interval could be due to ‘some variable’ that is vital during the decoding of the RAW JPEG data ‘being off’.

JPEG is encoded and decoded in blocks that are typically 8×8, 16×8 or 16×16 pixels called MCUs (minimum coded unit). Once a block is decoded the decoder moves to the next block. Then at some point the decoder needs to drop a line or the resulting image would be either 8 or 16 pixels in height. Of course the image width is the most logical variable for determining if the end the line is reached (total width in pixels / MCU width in pixels).

When doing header repair and picking a wrong size resolution reference file you could also see this type of corruption.

Example

Assume a JPEG of 64 x 64 pixels and MCU size 8×8 pixels. The decoder (built into your image viewer or photo editor) first needs to decode 8 MCUs and then drop a line. Then it decodes the next 8 MCUs etc..

If for some freak reason the image dimensions would be incorrectly recorded in the header then the decoder would drop a line too early or too late. Which would in turn cause visual corruption: ‘shift’. In the first Table image dimensions are correctly 64×64 pixels. In second table Image dimensions are 56×64 so decoder drops a line one MCU early causing image data shift.

How to repair this visual corruption?

Assuming all image data is actually present and no other errors are present steps to repair include:

1. Find correct JPEG image dimensions
2. Patch the JPEG header to reflect correct dimensions so the decoder will use them

JPEG-Repair Toolkit allows overriding dimensions since version 2.1. Both width and height are adjustable so you can experiment to find the correct values and store them once the correct values are known.

Procedure:

• Run JPEG-Repair > Patch > Select file > Click Repair.
• In the File Properties section check ‘Override’.
• Use up/down arrows next to Width and Height properties to experiment. Values are always a plural of 8.
• Click Apply to test values
• Click Save button (next to Apply) to save the JPEG

Experimenting becomes a lot easier if you know valid dimensions for your camera type. The user guide often shows you exact values for size settings L(arge), M(edium) and S(mall).

The post JPEG Visual corruption due to bad header appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

Not a week goes by where I am not confronted with loss of digital photos caused by fake memory cards. The sad news is that as these photos were never actually saved to the card they can’t be repaired nor recovered by tools like JPEG-Repair or JPEG Recovery LAB.

A 32 GB card that you may have purchased on some obscure website is in reality a 2 GB card. It masquerades its capacity to look and feel like a 32 GB file, and initially, while you are filling the first 2 GB with data, everything is fine. But once you go over the real capacity, any data that you write to the card is lost. The card doesn’t complain, the operating system or your camera don’t notice. Everything seems to work, but in reality your movies and photos are never written to the card.

Fake memory card explained

A fake memory card offers less memory space that the value advertised or displayed on the physical card. The cards firmware is ‘hacked’ to make your camera believe that fake capacity too. And even when photo data is written to no existent memory, the firmware reports to the camera that all is well.

As file system structures on FAT based file systems as used on memory cards such as the ROOT folder are typically towards the start of the drive, all appears okay from this perspective as well. Files appear with valid names, dates, attributes etc.. However, assume 2 GB actual capacity vs. a 32 GB advertised capacity, all data written past 2 GB is never actually saved. By definition this data is beyond repair or recovery.

• Actual capacity lower than capacity displayed on the card
• Hacked firmware

— ROOT ————– | actual capacity > files written this point beyond don’t exist
— ROOT ————– | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | Advertised capacity

ROOT is a directory structure containing files and folder stored in the root of the drive (like DCIM). As this located at the start of the drive, all files appear to be present.

Typical symptoms

Just prior to the corrupted photos there is one in which only the top half is present and the lower half is grey

Customer comment

Files saved at the start of the drive (memory card) can be viewed and opened normally.

Then often there is a file where the image is partially displayed while the bottom part of the image is typically grey / solid color. From that point of the photos can not be opened and do not show previews in Windows Explorer.

When opened in a hex editor the file that partially displays contains only zeros from a certain point on. Files after that contain zeros only.

Camera created a file, with a filename, but the data was never stored.

Prevention

It is not easy to recognize fake cards but in general they will be less expensive than the same brand and type of card from a reputable website or dealer. If it looks too good to be true then it probably is.

After purchase you can check the card using utilities specially designed for the purpose, Raymond.cc lists several.

The post Fake memory cards appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

Changes to JPEG- Repair from version 2 >

I feel quite confident in saying, that IF a file is repairable (so, contains JPEG data + we have reference header), JPEG-Repair Toolkit can help you do it. So if you need to fix corrupted photos, you may want to give it a try.

• MCU aware pseudo JPEG decoder with (decoding) error detection
• Improved navigation through image using image view (up/down line of MCUs, up/down MCU)
• JPEG preview in file browser
• Resolution override settings (to fix corruption like this)
• Patch now sort of guides you through first repairs, repair invalid markers and prompt to load repaired file
• No longer needed to copy to folder with corrupt files and rename reference file to sample.jpg. You will be prompted to select a reference file.
• Append option: Appends selected JPEG header to any file, so cool!
• Error report window, fired if repair fails or encountered errors
• RGB info added to magnifier which I find to be useful for images where it is difficult to visually match colors in different areas.
• Changed nagging dialog in trial, less pop-ups, trial must be usable to some degree
• Changed trial limitations in PATCH mode: Now possible to go through several iterations of file repair.

Append option is particularly powerful! Check video for an example, none of the competing tools (Stellar, HetMan, PixRecovery, Picture Doctor, JPEG Recovery Pro) is able to repair images like these. Apart from example in video several others (more interesting pictures) were fixed using this method.

These are the different stages:

1. Basically the file is binary blob with no recognizable JPEG structures. However entropy suggests JPEG data. JPEG Header is glued to file.
2. After JPEG header is glued to file and data was stripped from byte combinations that upset photo viewers (JPEG decoders).
3. About 1/6th of total data in file was cut to get us at stage 3. Just tiny amount of corruption + overriding header width/height settings + cropping end of file gets us:
4. Almost final file. Image is copied to Windows clipboard and further cropped and color corrected using PhotoDemon.

Thanks to append option we can virtually repair any JPEG, as long as it contains JPEG data and we have a suitable donor/reference file.

Various improvements and bug-fixes in PhotoHeal companion app.

• Filename is automatically generated for images pasted from clipboard
• Added preview in file/open save dialog
• Fixed bug with scrollbars

The post Recent changes to JPEG-Repair Toolkit appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

Unfortunately it is a common problem that you are unable to open recovered photos after using file recovery, undelete or photo recovery software due to file corruption. 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 JPEG or,
• a proprietary RAW format, such as CR2, ARW, NEF, etc..
• and up to date codecs are present on PC.

Possible causes recovered photos being corrupt

Memory cards in digital cameras use some variant of the FAT file system. FAT stands for file allocation table. This file allocation table keeps track of clusters allocated to specific files. If a file is deleted or the card is formatted this table is zeroed. However, in most cases filenames remain intact as well as the actual file contents. Filenames are no longer visible though, unless special software is used.

Recovery software that relies on file system meta data can locate the filenames, size and start position of the lost files. Carvers rely on file contents to recover files (magic bytes). An example of file recovery software that (mainly) relies on file system meta data is ReclaiMe File Recovery. PhotoRec is a free though excellent carver.

Recovered file was partially overwritten

One explanation for files being corrupt after you have recovered them is they may be (partially) overwritten. Data that is written over can not be recovered. If the file is partially okay then reconstruction and repair can be attempted using photo repair software and a photo editor.

File fragmentation

Due to the fact that the FAT is zeroed after file deletion or formatting of the memory card, nor file recovery or undelete, nor photo scavengers can determine where the different fragments for a non contiguous file are located. Such fragmented files may be simply incomplete, corrupt or mixed with other photos.

Solutions

Better recovery methods

So, if files are incorrectly recovered the obvious solution is trying to recover them again, only this time right. So a likely cause for file corruption after file recovery is fragmentation. Piecing back the different fragments of a photo is easier said than done though. To do so using software, this software needs to be able to:

• Verify or validate if it has a valid photo or not
• And if not, it has to scavenge the card for matching pieces of the puzzle
• For this to be successful it needs methods to recognize if a possible match is detected. If not, the number of possible combinations would be ‘endless’.

Fragmented file recovered using conventional file or photo recovery software

DiskTuna offers JPEG Recovery LAB for such adventures. As the software has to ‘know’ the file structure, only a limited amount of file types is supported. JPEG Recovery LAB supports JPEG, CR2 (Canon RAW) and NEF (Nikon RAW). It supports some video types too: MP4 and MOV.

Fragmented file recovered using JPEG Recovery LAB

To use JPEG Recovery LAB you need a Windows 64 bit PC with at least 8 GB of RAM.

File repair

If the original data is no longer available then repair can be attempted as a last resort. As I explained it remains to be seen if the the original data is available within the corrupted file(s). Due to this fact there is not just one repair strategy. Techniques I have developed can be found back in the JPEG-Repair Toolkit.

For example, if a file does not open then normally you’d attempt t repair the file header. But such an exercise will prove to be fruitless if the original image data is absent. So, experiments will have to show what works:

• Extract: I have had success with this quite often. With corrupt RAW photos it is the only thing to try as I know of no software that can actually repair RAW photo formats.Also with regards to JPEG, as file recovery software sometimes appears to dump arbitrary clusters into JPEG files, if you’re lucky it put a JPEG in there somewhere. For example, I was asked to repair this 3456 x 2304 image:
  
  I assumed that either the image contained invalid data in the JPEG bitstream (the image data) or data of the 2nd half of the image was simply missing. Indeed the 2nd half was invalid: Because it simply contained another 3456 x 2304 JPEG:
  
• Repair header (using reference file). If the recovered photo does not open at all you can first try to repair the header. If that fails but entropy is somewhere between 7.60 <> 7.98 bits/byte then I have had success by simply patching a header onto data in the corrupted file and then weeding out obvious corruption (see example. 1.jpg is original file, 4.jpg final file).

  Although it seems hopeless, this recovered photo was repaired (and so were multiple others using the same technique)

The post How to fix and open recovered photos? appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

With Network Attached Storage or NAS for short becoming more popular, the demand for quality DIY solutions for NAS data recovery software increases. I will introduce two of those, and will expand the article in the future with other solutions I come across.

What is a NAS?

Basically a NAS is what we used to call a file server, no more and no less. But people need new terminology every now and then I guess. A few decades ago file servers were often Microsoft Windows NT or Novell Netware powered servers that made storage capacity available over a network. These were often expensive and beefy machines with SCSI disk interfaces and were maintained by full time and often certified system and network administrators.

A modern NAS box essentially does the same thing but is often found in homes. The majority of NAS devices is in fact a PC running a Linux based operating system with several hard drives attached. The entire OS is hidden from end users and functions can be configured through a web based interface. And, as NAS servers are often Linux based, file systems often used are EXT, XFS, and BTRFS.

Well known NAS vendors include QNAP, Buffalo, NETGEAR, LaCie, Seagate, and Synology.

RAID

As with the ‘old’ file servers, hard drives within a NAS are often configured as RAID set. It means disk work as a group and data stored on one disk is often meaningless without the data on the other disks. Most common RAID levels are RAID 0 and RAID 5. As a consequence, if one disks fails the data on the remaining disks is potentially in jeopardy as well. This being said, several RAID levels are able to compensate for loss of one disk due to the availability of ‘redundant’ data available on the remaining disks. This redundant data reduces the total capacity of all disks combined.

NAS Data Recovery software requirements

From the description of what a NAS is, we can already tell that to recover data, the software needs to know and understand:

• Linux RAID
• Linux file systems such as EXT, XFS, and BTRFS

This means many of the usual and popular goto solutions like Easeus and Recuva can not be used.

However, since Linux itself ‘speaks’ RAID and can work with those file systems, it can often be used to recover data from disks from inaccessible NAS devices. If you know your way around in Linux, I suggest you try this first.

In this article however I will address Windows based solutions that target a non-professional end user.

Preferably the PC non which the recovery will be performed runs a 64 bit version of Windows and the recovery software itself is 64 bit too. Typically a NAS contains hundreds of thousands of files. For each file, the software needs some memory to keep track of it, and 32 bit software will run at some point into memory problems.

NAS data recovery hardware needed

Below points are true regardless the software you will be using. For many, the hardware related matters will be most challenging.

1. Of course you need the disks from the NAS. If the RAID level was RAID 5 you can still recover the data even if one disk is missing.
2. You need a PC to which you can connect the disks. I recommend at least 8 GB RAM.
3. You need disks you can copy recovered data to.
4. You need the hardware to connect all those disks. Directly connecting disks to SATA ports is fastest. If that is not possible SATA to USB adapters and disk enclosures are an option, it will however slow down the recovery. It is possible to mix SATA and USB attached disks if it can’t be avoided.

And then there is this. A professional data recovery engineer will even need more disks as he will first clone the source disks (the disks that came out of your NAS). He will make sector by sector disk copies, and use those copies to recover the data from.

Not enough SATA ports? Use an adapter to connect to USB.

Easy to use NAS data recovery software – ReclaiMe Ultimate

94% success rate – Unconditional, no questions asked, 30 day money back guarantee!

Download

The big advantage of ReclaiMe File Recovery is that it is very powerful, but at the same time it is super easy to use. Once you have downloaded and setup the software your NAS RAID disks will show up under the “Linux MD RAID” or “Linux LVM” section. Pick the largest one! Click start and ReclaiMe will scan the disks.

Wait until ReclaiMe already starts displaying your files. As the scan detects more files, it will continue adding those to the directory and file list. It is not required to sit out an hour long scan as is usually the case with other software. So you can now already:

• Browse and locate your files
• Preview files
• Copy files

If you can’t see the array in ReclaiMe, then download ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery software and determine the array configuration parameters. Note that to recover the RAID configuration you need to know what RAID type was used in your NAS. When the parameters are determined, click “Run ReclaiMe to recover data” in ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery tool and back here.

For pros: UFS Explorer RAID Recovery

Required license: RAID Recovery

UFS Explorer is actually the goto logical data recovery tool for many data recovery experts. It allows for greater control but this of course adds somewhat to complexity too.

Download

After launching the program, you will see the navigation tree on the left side of the tab where all detected storages will be shown together with partitions, disk images and complex storages (RAID). You can either choose the needed storage from this top-level structure or use the Open button on the upper panel.

Click the Start scan button to proceed to data recovery.

The scan results include all found files and folders that can be recovered. You can now browse and save the needed recovered files just like in an original file system.

The post NAS Data Recovery Software, ReclaiMe and UFS Explorer appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

Why GoPro video recovery is difficult but possible

GoPro video recovery is difficult but possible. Before arriving at this page you may have already tried recovering your lost video using free software like PhotoRec or Recuva, or even payed software, only to discover recovered video files are corrupt and won’t play.

There are two major factors contributing to why it is so difficult to recover GoPro MP4 video files, much like why it is so difficult to recover Canon DSLR videos.

1. The file system on SD Cards. Commonly SD cards are formatted with a FAT32 or exFAT file system. If data is lost due to deletion or formatting the card, all meta data pointing to specific clusters that make up a file is lost. 
   
   As a result file system based file recovery software can no longer determine which specific clusters were assigned to any specific (video) file.
   
   
2. MP4 video files recorded by GoPro (and also Canon DSLR) cameras are often highly fragmented.
   
   File carving software typically looks for the start and end of a file and assume all clusters in between part of the file. In case of fragmented files, adjacent clusters may belong to different files however.
   
   As a result file carving software such as PhotoRec can not locate the complete files. File carving software only works on unfragmented or contiguous files

GoPro Video recovery using JPEG Recovery LAB

JPEG Recovery LAB is an advanced file carver capable of reconstructing non-contiguous or fragmented files. Rather than relying on header/footer (start of file and end of file) detection. By examining different fragments JPEG Recovery LAB reassembles these fragments to produce a view-able video whenever possible.

Producing view-able GoPro MP4 video files takes:

• Lots of time
• Lots of memory and processing power

Be prepared that JPEG Recovery LAB will need a lot of time and requires a beefy PC to recover GoPro video footage. When you have the choice picking a PC consider:

• 8 GB memory (minimal)
• More CPU cores is better. Choose the one with more cores over speed.

Steps to recover GoPro video

1. Download and install JPEG Recovery LAB.
2. Insert SD Card into a card reader. A card reader is always prefered over attaching a device to the PC using an USB cable!
3. Run JPEG Recovery LAB.
4. Select the drive letter for the SD Card. If this is not detected, select the card reader instead.
5. Click Start.
6. Select the file types you want JPEG Recovery LAB to scan for, in this case MP4.
7. Settings: On lower memory systems (( GB and less), you may want to limit the number of parallel threads to 2. For the rest of settings, go with defaults.
8. Click Start and be prepared to wait.
9. Once the can is finished, select files and copy them (licensed version required to copy – Buy Now). Under ideal circumstances JPEG Recovery LAB allows for viewing previews.
   
   However, if files are technically damaged and thus listed as such by JPEG Recovery LAB, they may still be largely playable. I recommend to save all files! Use a decent video player to examine the files after recovery (recommended VLC).

The post Recover lost or deleted GoPro video from SD cards appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

In this post we’ll look at some MP4 Video Repair tools. Digital video and digital photography is booming. Today almost every one caries a device capable of capturing digital photos and video, the smart-phone. And on top of that there are millions of people owning digital camera’s and action cams (GoPro etc.) shooting terabytes of footage each day. I read somewhere that 300 hours of video is added to Youtube every minute! It is my estimate that a good portion of all that video is originally shot in MP4 format.

What is MP4?

The MP4 file is a container for digital video and audio, but apart from that it may also include other data.. It is based on the Apple MOV format. The format describes how data is stored much like a file system describes how data is stored on a hard disk. You may probably have seen the phrase ‘H.264’ in combination with MP4. H.264 describes how video data is encoded, it’s called a codec. The video inside a MP4 container is often H.264 encoded. A video player needs to understand both the MP4 format and H.264 encoding to properly play the file.

An MP4 file typically contains a header, data and an index. Problems arise in modern cameras that also include additional data such as thumbnails, audio and low resolution video all in the same container which makes repair of these files complex. A file is typically larger than what the recording device can buffer, so data needs to be flushed to the storage medium regularly, increasing the odds the file becoming fragmented.

Basic layout of a MP4 video file:

• Header  (ftyp atom)
• Video data  (mdat atom)
• Index information  (moov atom)

Typical accidents when shooting video -or- why people are looking for MP4 video repair 

Typical accidents or why people are looking for MP4 video repair tools: Most common incident is probably the video never being finalized due to the device running out of power. This means the container itself is never finalized, but neither the file system (something else we need to include in the equation). In human language it means the the final index for the video file was never written, nor was the file system updated. So, we are dealing with orphan data within the file as well as in the file system.

Another reason that prompts the need for MP4 video repair tools is that files are corrupted after using undelete or file recovery software. Due to the nature of the video files themselves and the fact that they are commonly recorded on FAT32 or exFAT formatted file systems, recovery of such files is difficult. The file allocation table is the meta structure that tells the locations of clusters allocated to files in both the FAT32 and the exFAT file system. This structure is zeroed when for example a memory card is formatted. If a file is deleted, the entries in the FAT for that file are zeroed. It means that the undelete or file recovery software has no way to determine which clusters belong to the deleted file. It will therefor assume the file is stored in one piece (which it often is not).

MP4 Video Repair Tools

In short, video repair tools need to locate the video data. They need to reconstruct a header which contains important data needed to decode the video data. And, then they need add a valid index. It is common for MP4 video repair software to ask for a reference file show with the same camera/device and settings from which it can steal a header.

Video repair utilities and services

aero Quartet:

https://aeroquartet.com/

Pricing is per video.

aero Quartet is a video repair service. It’s service is deleivered though a web-interface or a Mac utility (Treasured). The service requires a reference file. It can also recover video files from a corrupted memory card. Noteworthy it that if you use the Mac application there is no need to upload the entire video file. The software will upload a sample. You do not get a repaired video returned, instead your are sent a ‘solution’ called a repair kit that is then used to locally repair your video file(s).

Stellar Phoenix Video Repair tool

http://www.stellardata-recovery.com

Download

Pricing: $49.99 for a one year subscription

Stellar’s tool will initially try to repair the tool without a reference file, but will prompt for one if repair fails.

Restore.Media

https://restore.media/

Pricing is per video.

Restore.Media is another MP4 video repair service and will also prompt you for a reference file. Before this turned into a paid service, the software behind this service was a freeware. Here you can view a guide and video on using the freeware variant.

Video Repair Tool from grau GmbH.

http://grauonline.de/cms2/?page_id=5

Price is $99

Trial version repair half of the corrupted video. So, for a 2 minute video it will save only the first minute. The tool will ask for a reference file that was shot with the same camera and settings. This software appears to be the one most people report success with.

And why MP4 video repair software might not work …

JPEG Recovery LAB

Download.

Price is $39.95

So, as discussed a few of the common causes are related to the file system. More precise, the file not properly or not all referenced by the file system. Add file fragmentation and the inability of undelete and file recovery software to deal with that and it is clear that repair may not work at all. Repair of video files is limited to video data already inside the file. If parts are missing due to incorrectly recovered video files, the video will be incomplete.

In many cases it may be worthwhile to approach this from a lower level. Ideally we use a tool to scan the media for MP4 video data and re-assemble that into playable video files. Although the name may suggest otherwise, that is exactly what JPEG Recovery LAB does: JPEG Recovery LAB scans the media (memory card) for video and audio fragments and re-assembled that into playable files.

JPEG Recovery LAB will not ask for a reference file as usually it will find one or more while scanning the memory card. To reconstruct a file for orphaned video data it can steal a header from one of the complete files.

JPEG Recovery LAB can reconstruct MP4 video files too.

The post Best MP4 video repair tools | Why they may not work at all appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery.

Disk Drill Review: The other week I was give a PRO license for Disk Drill Pro by my buddy Luke Coughey from https://www.recoveryforce.com/. Yes, this is legal, he was offered licenses to give away for promotional purposes. I have looked at Disk Drill in the past and it appears not much has changed since. Which isn’t a good thing.

Give the guy a white cane please ..

Disk Drill popularity

Disk Drill appears to be a popular tool. I do not have hard numbers to back up this claim, but I see people recommending it on a regular basis in various forums and other online communities. I can forgive an end user a positive review if he has nothing to compare against.

Also review sites often place Disk Drill in their top 10’s or even top 5’s. Fact that ‘professional’ review sites rate the program so high makes me wonder about their objectivity. However a fair amount of reviews covers the Mac version. Maybe it performs better than it’s Windows counter part. Or maybe it is due to the fact that there are not many data recovery tools for the Mac. In this post I will only cover the Windows version and I have no idea how the Mac and Windows versions compare.

Like many other data recovery software vendors, CleverFiles offers a free version of it’s product Disk Drill. Be sure to try that version because purchasing the Pro version is irreversible: all sales are considered final. FWIW I consider the latter reasonably fair with regards to recovery and repair type tools in general.

As with competitors offering free versions, the free part has to be taken with a grain of salt. Typically the amount of data that can be recovered is very limited, somewhere about 1 or 2 GB. Disk Drill free allows you to select and recover 500 MB. Granted, if you need to quickly undelete that one document you have been working on so hard then this may be enough, but in general I consider the free quota nothing but a cheap marketing trick. If the damage is more serious, like you accidentally formatted a whole volume, then  the free part is as good at nothing.

It also helps if you indeed can quickly recover the deleted file but you will be disappointed when you hope to be able to achieve this using Disk Drill. Scanning your disk with this file recovery software is like watching grass grow.

Disk Drill review, scenarios

I will test Disk Drill against 3 typical and common scenarios:

1. Recover and accidentally deleted file, or undelete.
2. Unformat type recovery: After a volume turned RAW or was accidentally formatted.
3. Photo Recovery: Recover photos from a corrupted SD Card (JPEG photos).

Quick undelete a file from the c: drive

If you need to undelete a file, specially from the Windows c: drive, speed is of the essence unless you’re able to ‘freeze’ the drive: Turn off PC > attach drive to different PC > scan and recover from the slaved drive. Reality is, 9 out of 10 people will run the software from their c: drive. So, you need to be quick before the deleted file is overwritten.

Scenario: Windows c: drive, NTFS, 800.000+ files.

I fire up Disk Drill > select the c: drive > change recovery mode to ‘Quick’.

10 minutes into scan	30 minutes scanned	after 1 hour scan time

After waiting 1.5 hours and only a few thousand files detected, and NO indication at all with regards to percentage scanned so far or an ETA, I break off the scan. A typical free undelete type tool like DiskTuna’s own undelete tool or Recuva will recover such files (if recoverable) within a few minutes.

My conclusion is that Disk Drill is completely unfit for undelete type recovery.

Unformat type recovery: recover data from formatted or RAW volume.

Scenario: NTFS volume, approx 600 GB, 800.000+ files. I go with default recovery which includes the quick and the deep scan. Of course this will not increase speed compared to the quick scan. After over an hour of scanning Disk Drill suddenly offers some information on it’s progress! It claims it has been scanning for 3 minutes and remaining scan time is around 2+ hours (although fluctuating up to 3 hrs):

In general, with this type of damage and recovery, the tool should be able to reconstruct a more or less complete directory tree + file names are recoverable too. Reference tools like ReclaiMe are able to reconstruct a directory tree of the same drive in less than 2 minutes.

ReclaiMe detects all files + complete directory structure in less than 2 minutes!

Finally done!

After 2+ hours of scanning Disk Drill presents it’s final result:

In total it detects 146989 ‘items’ (out of 800.000+ expected). Of those only 20407 are sorted in the directory tree and the majority, 126582 are detected by file signature. So the latter is without original file names or their original folders! This is an extremely poor result! Not only it failed to detect the majority of the files at all, it fails to reconstruct a directory structure spectacularly. Even Deep Scan, which I assume is a signature or RAW scan, fails. For example, the volume contains 100’s of intact Canon RAW photos (CR2) of which it manages to locate only 4!

There’s more totally weird behavior: If I search for ‘*.CR2’ no files are found. Using ‘CR2’ as search phrase lists the 4 CR2 files but also a folder full of JPEGs.

Disk Drill is slow, fails to detect the majority of the files on the volume and fails to reconstruct a directory tree. Totally unfit to recover data from a RAW or quick formatted NTFS volume.

I can only come t the conclusion that Disk Drill is not suited to recover data from a RAW or quick formatted NTFS volume.

Scenario 3: Photo Recovery

For this I use a sector-by-sector disk image of a SD Card. Disk Drill allows you to ‘attach’ a disk image and then offers that as location to scan in the disk list. If I go with the default scan the program crashes reproducible.

Disk Drill crash report

Only after I switch to deep scan, which causes the program not to scan for lost partitions, I can get it to scan. The program finds 1000 files: actually double the amount but files under the directory tree (DCIM) and RAW files (deep scan) are the same. So for each file exactly one duplicate. This is the same amount of files as the ones on the reference recovery software. Free software such as PhotoRec can recover the files as well (Tested this already in the past).

Disk Drill: satisfactory results with photo recovery

Conclusion: Disk Drill performs satisfactory when used for photo recovery once you work around the quirks.

Disk Drill Review Conclusion

I am under the impression Disk Drill is a popular tool among end users. After reviewing it I sincerely wonder why as it is far from the best solution available: Disk Drill is extremely slow compared to other tools, delivers poor results and is buggy at some points.

Losing data is often a significant interruption of whatever you were doing. Recovering data with as minimal fuzz as possible is then desired. The file recovery software should be easy to use, quick and preferably recovers the complete directory structure and file names. At too many points Disk Drill fails to meet these requirements. With all that in mind, the price of $89 for Disk Drill against $79.95 for ReclaiMe, the latter being far superior, is plain ridiculous!

My conclusion is that Disk Drill (Windows) isn’t worth your time or money.

Disclosure

I am affiliated with some file recovery products, including Disk Drill, listed on this website. This means I earn a small commission when I refer someone to specific software and that someone decides to purchase that software. However, if I think a product is bad then I will say so. If I think a product is good, whether I am affiliated to it or not, I will say that too.

The post Disk Drill Review | A real review this time appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery | Video Recovery.

Of course there is JPEG Recovery LAB. And yes, I stopped developing JpegDigger because the functionality to extract JPEGs from corrupted RAW photos was added to JPEG-Repair Toolkit. And still I felt the urge to make yet another JPEG carver that helps you recover photos that you deleted or lost from a memory card.

Corrupt photos aren’t always what it seems.

It’s funny how similar cases always come in waves. Past weeks I had a number of cases where all photos on a memory card were corrupt! And in all those cases it turned out the photos weren’t corrupt, but the file system! So rather than repairing the photos piece by piece, extracting them from the memory card while completely ignoring the corrupt file system made much more sense.

I or my client could of course JPEG Recovery LAB for that. But that felt a bit like using a cannon to kill a mosquito: JPEG Recovery LAB isn’t exactly light weight and it occupies all resources on a PC for hours. It is a heavy weight for those really difficult cases. Besides, JPEG Recovery LAB is mainly developed by some one else and I felt like writing my own light weight JPEG carver even though 100’s of photo recovery tools already exist.

I tried them and they didn’t work

To recover the photos from the memory cards that were sent to me I tried several tools. ReclaiMe for starters. Although this is my favorite goto data recovery tool it relies on file system structures to find lost data. And these couldn’t be trusted in these cases. It recovered the files, but they were all corrupt. Same  was true for the excellent myPhoto Recovery. It also takes the file system as a starting point (I confirmed that with the author). Anyway, I tried several and ended up using JPEG Recovery LAB.

How do you repair this JPEG?! You don’t. You use JpegDigger

But as I watched it work, I thought to myself, there must be an easier, quicker way to do this.

I had to do it, try writing my own light weight photo recovery tool

I dug up an unfinished project that I worked on more than 10 years ago. The basic framework was there. It scanned a drive from start to end. I changed it to look for JPEG markers. I borrowed some code from JPEG-Repair Toolkit to process JPEGs it detected. I added stuff to make it scan faster, a certain degree of file system awareness.

I tested it against a batch of memory cards. Real cases sent to me by customers. I ran into some corrupt files that couldn’t be recovered intact (photo viewers and editors complained about unsupported formats and what not). I added some code to repair the photos on the fly to a point where they can be opened.

I ran into some fragmented photos and spend over a week to add code for basic, rules of thumb ‘bitfragment gap carving’. Nothing as advanced that JPEG Recovery LAB does, but again light weight and ‘on the fly’.

fragmented photo recovered without bitfragment gap carver enabled

Same photo with bitfragment gap carver enabled

But with a plan ..

It may sound like I just programmed along. But believe it or not, I had a plan. As mentioned I wanted it to be light weight. The current executable file is less than 300 KB. A second thing I had in mind was that it needed to be easy on the memory card. Again using JPEG Recovery LAB as an example, it accesses the drive intensively. It scans, but later it goes back and forth to piece files back together for hours. To save the files, it needs to access the card again.

So, small, fast and the least possible amount of disk access. Initially it copied files to safety as it detected and processed them. It worked it’s way towards the end of the drive, scanning, repairing and copying files at the same time. To detect a file it needs to read the disk and save that data to memory. It processes the data in memory, so why not immediately save it to another disk?

I needed a name for the tool .. JpegDigger, why not?

JpegDigger, why not? It exactly describes the purpose of the tool. It is available and people already heard about it. I am not a marketing guy, so I don’t know it is wise, but I like it.

JpegDigger – light weight JPEG carver

I expect to release it somewhere in the next few weeks.

The post JpegDigger is back! Now as a powerful JPEG recovery tool … appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery | Video Recovery.

When you discover photos on your SD card are corrupt you should:

• Do as little as possible (read: nothing) with the card.
• Do NOT run chkdsk on the card itself!
• Create a disk image of the card immediately!

There are free and payed ways to try to recover or repair your photos. So I’ll be showing an example of how you can do a JPEG repair using free tools such as the HxD hex editor, JpegSnoop and Paint.NET.

RAW disk image

To create a disk image use the free version of ReclaiMe or Win32 Disk Imager. Most serious data or file recovery software allows you to create such a ‘RAW’ disk image. In turn, a RAW disk image created with one software can be processed by other file recovery software as well. Avoid Stellar file or photo recovery software as they require a proprietary disk image format.

The image format (of the photos) does not matter at this point, whether you are shooting in JPEG, CR2, NEF or any other format. Your first priority should be getting a sector by sector disk image of the entire card.

If you already ran chkdsk and the files on the card were converted to filennnn.chk files

I still strongly advice to create a disk image file of the card! Then copy all files with the filennnn.chk format to a hard disk. Use JpegDigger (freeware) to examine and if possible extract JPEG files from the .chk files.

Photos on SD card are corrupt, what’s causing it:

There are two important factors to consider, the file system on the memory card and the actual content of your files. Both need to be right in order to be able to view your photos (or any other file). In general the file system on a memory card is either FAT32 or exFAT.

1. File system needs to point correctly to all clusters allocated to any specific file
2. The contents of the file need to be intact and un-corrupted

If a file system is severely corrupted you will not be able to actually see any of your files: Usually the type of file system is ‘RAW’. If you can actually see the files in file explorer, it is difficult to determine if whether the file system is corrupt (1), or the files themselves (2). Once you have created a disk image of the memory card it is safe to investigate.

Corrupt JPEG Header will get you this ..

File system corrupt

Option 1: File recovery / Photo recovery software

Corrupt file system memory card: Virtually ALL photos are affected and corrupt!

If the corruption is limited to the file system you should be able to recover the files in general. The safest option is to run file recovery or photo recovery software. If you run this software against the disk image file of the memory card rather than the card itself, it may be slightly faster.

A major factor between success and failure is if the files are stored in contiguous blocks. If they are any decent file recover or photo recovery software will do. There is excellent freeware available such as PhotoRec. Personally I am not a fan of Recuva for reasons I will not get into right now.

If recovered files appear to be corrupt the issue may be related to file fragmentation: Typically if a photo is partially recovered, it is distorted after a specific point in the image (color banding, mis alligned) or a combination of several images. In this case you need to try something like JPEG Recovery LAB (JPEG, CR2, NEF are supported as well as AVI, MP4, MOV and MPEG-2 video formats). If photos are all in JPEG format you can use JpegDigger instead.

Option 2: Safe way to run chkdsk if photos on SD card are corrupt

Although I urged you not to run chkdsk before, there is a possibility to use chkdsk safely on a memory card! I will explain how, but before that:

As chkdsk will change the contents of your disk image, I suggest you work on a copy of this disk image file! After all, the disk image is your safety net.

• Use ReclaiMe to create a disk image file of the memory card
• Use VHD format rather than RAW
• Mount the VHD file in Windows (right click > mount)
• Run chkdsk on the drive letter assigned to the VHD file.

Photo itself is corrupt

Files commonly start with a header, after which the actual file data follows. The header helps software interpreting the data within the file. If the header is intact, the software (image editors and viewers) can use it to decode the actual image data. Most likely you can not open the digital photo at all if the header is corrupt. If the image data itself is corrupt the image will open but look distorted.

For the rest of this article I will address JPEG only. If you shot your photos in a different format (like RAW) you may be able to use JpegDigger to extract JPEGs from those.

Special case: Photo corrupt after file recovery

This can be caused by file fragmentation. File recovery or photo recovery software is thus unable to determine the correct chain of clusters associated with a file. Again, in this case you need to try something like JPEG Recovery LAB.

Corrupt JPEG Header

Step 1:

Open the file in a hex editor (like the excellent freeware HxD). Verify there is actually data in the file. If the file only consists of zeros or a byte patters (like FF FF FF FF etc.) then the file is beyond repair.

Step 2:

Using HxD: Use Search > Find, search for FF DA using HEX data type. If not found the file is beyond repair.

Find the last instance if FF DA using HxD

It is possible multiple instances of FF DA are found, you need the LAST one. There may be a few if the JPEG included a thumbnail and preview.

Note: If you find many FF DA byte combinations then you’re probably not looking at JPEG data but random binary data. The file then is probably beyond repair.

Write down the address (Using View >  Offset base you can switch to decimal numbers if you like). Now search for FF D9. Or, go to end of the file which is where you’d normally find FF D9.

Once found, select the entire block including from the last FF DA upto and including FF D9 > right click > copy.

Open a new file > Paste Insert > Save as ‘image.jpg’. You have now copied the image data to a new file.

Open a known good file that was shot with the same camera, using same resolution and orientation (portrait/landscape).

Use Search > Find, search for FF DA using HEX data type.

Search, set data type to Hex-values

It is possible multiple instances of FF DA are found, you need the LAST one.

Select the block preceding the FF DA bytes all the way to the start of the file (FF D8)

Switch to your image.jpg file TAB containing the image data, make sure you’re at offset 0 (zero) > Paste Insert > Save the file

If damage was limited to the header you should now be able to open your file. Open and Save it using something like Paint.NET (free) to update the file thumbnail (if any).

Alternatives for repairing JPEGs:

Use photo repair software like Hetman File Repair or Stellar JPEG Repair. Or even better, DiskTuna’s JPGRepair.

JPG-Repair Toolkit will patch the header from an intact JPEG on a corrupted JPEG photo and more ..

Apart from trying to fix the header this software also attempts to find embedded JPEGs. Often, this is all they can do if a header is too corrupt. A free alternative for extracting those JPEGs is JpegDigger.

Corrupt Image Bitstream

Here’s where it gets really complicated!

One of the things I initially used is JpegSnoop to find out where the JPEG decoder choked while decoding the image. JpegSnoop will give you the exact byte address. It is the easy way of finding invalid JPEG Markers.

JpegSnoop can help you find invalid JPEG markers

Once a JPEG decoder starts decoding the image bitstream it does so until it hits FF D9. FF has special meaning to decoders. It means a marker follows. In between FF DA and FF D9 there is only a limited number of JPEG markers ‘allowed’:

FF 00 (zero, zero) and FF Dn where n is a value from 0 to 7. Stripping anything that does not follow this rule or replacing FF XX where XX are arbitrary values by FF 00 should get you an image that decodes all the way.

Then you may be able to repair remaining damage or corruption using something like the freeware Repair-Jpeg. It allows you to realign the image and remove color bands etc..

If your image contained so called Restart Markers repair may be simply a matter of editing it with a tool like Paint.NET. Restart Markers prevent corruption propagating further into the image.

This JPEG contains Restart Markers

Example:

This JPEG contains Restart Markers. All I did was strip invalid JPEG markers from the image bit stream. The free software used to repair this JPEG Photo is:

• JpegSnoop
• HxD hex editor
• Paint.NET

Note: I have now started working a utility to automate the above process + it will also automatically fix a JPEG containing restart markers like the example below.

This image can be found here (Kudos to Gracie for letting me use the photo!):

Corrupt JPEG

Same image after removing invalid JPEG markers

Same image after cutting lower part and clone stamping using Paint.NET

Rather than removing all invalid JPEG markers using JpegSnoop and the HxD hex editor, JPG-Repair Toolkit can do this automatically. It ‘knows’ restart markers so it will leave those alone.

Conclusion

It is often possible to repair corrupt digital photos yourself if photos on SD card are corrupt. It is often even possible with free tools as demonstrated in this post.

The post Photos on SD card are corrupt appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery | Video Recovery.

In this post I’ll give you some tips on evaluating file recovery software. To tell good from bad data recovery software. If you have just lost data and are now searching for a solution you will find that are hundreds of tools available that all claim to be the best in getting your data back. Sad truth is that 90% of the software is really subpar.

Software being popular does not mean it is the best software. IMO the wisdom of the crowd is hugely overrated, the number of plugs for certain brands in forums and on blogs is not a good indicator. It merely means the producers of the software are good at marketing (examples: Disk Drill, Easeus, Stellar). And even if a user review is genuine, it may be from a user that is happy he has got even 50% of his data back while he could have gotten close to 100% back, with faster and easier to use software.

Even ‘professional’ review sites like the popular ‘Top Ten Reviews’ are often dead wrong in their recommendations. Bottom line is that reviewers have only very limited experience in data and file recovery.

Things to look for in good generic file recovery software

• File recovery software ideally reconstructs the directory tree and recovers with original filenames
• The recovery software is able to create and process raw disk image files
• The software should be easy to use
• To verify the quality of the recovery the software should be able to ‘preview’ a number of common file formats

File system reconstruction

Good file recovery software is good at file system reconstruction. It is always preferred to use software that can ‘virtually reconstruct’ the file system using file system meta data. If the software is able to do that it offers several advantages:

• You get back original file names
• You can recover files in original directory structure
• File attributes that are stored in file system (creation date, last access data etc.) can be recovered too
• Depending on the file system it solves the problem of file fragmentation

Most software is able to reconstruct the file system if there is only minor corruption. However if corruption is more severe, the lesser capable software will quickly resort to ‘RAW’ recovery: Rather than displaying your original directory structure it will show a tree where files are sorted by type, e.g. JPG, DOC, ZIP etc..

With this RAW type recovery you lose all the advantages of file system based recovery. So you will not be able to recover the original file names, directory structure etc..

Now, there are circumstances where RAW file recovery isn’t necessarily a bad thing or it is even the only thing left to try. For example, RAW recovery often gives superior results when recovering photos from flash memory cards.

So, you look for software that shows you the directory tree as it normally shown in a normal file browser.

Good file recovery software displays a directory tree close to how you expect it. 1% into the scan and it is already almost complete.

Disk image creation and processing

Good file recovery software is able to create a disk image and process it as if it were a hard disk or other storage medium. In my opinion this should be a RAW disk image and not a proprietary format that can not be processed by other software. A disk image for data recovery purposes is a sector by sector copy of the source. It includes all used and unused areas.

If the software can not create a disk image then it should at least accept a RAW disk image as a source.

A disk image provides several advantages:

• It is a safety net.
• Bad sectors only are accessed once rather than several times during file system reconstruction. It is good to access an unstable disk as little as possible.
• It ‘freezes’ the source from which you need to recover data. IOW once you have the image no data is written to it.

A disadvantage of course is the fact that you need storage space to store the disk image.

Good file recovery software should be easy to use

Chances are that you do not recover data on a daily basis and that you do not have an in depth understanding about what is wrong with your data. It is up to the software to fill in the gaps. In my experience many people regard a computer as a user device that should not require in depth knowledge about for example the file system of their hard disk. So file recovery software should for example not rely on the end user to determine the file system or cluster size of a corrupt drive.

If you don’t have a clue how the data was lost, the software should not ask you if you want to perform ‘partition recovery’ or ‘format recovery’. Again, most file recovery software will be able to solve simple cases: For example, you format a FAT32 drive accidentally with a new FAT32 file system. In this case the software will not run into problems determining the cluster size. You may however need more advanced software if you formatted a FAT32 drive to NTFS or vice versa! The software needs to ignore the new file system and recover data from the previous.

The more decisions the software asks you to make, the worse it is IMO. Ideally the software asks you to select a disk and to click start, no matter the file system or how the data was lost. I my days as data and file recovery software programmer I loved windows with lots of options and settings; you could tell the software where to scan, to assume a certain file system, cluster size etc.. That was until I stumbled on ReclaiMe File Recovery software. Under the hood it is comparable to it’s professional bigger brother that is used in data recovery labs. The end user version only requires you to select a drive to scan though. It makes all difficult decisions for you!

Good file recovery software is easy to use. Select the drive and click start. Easy peasy.

A picture preview facility (and other common file formats is cool too)

Good file recovery software should be able to generate previews of popular image type formats on the fly and I’ll explain why.

If file recovery software is able to show you directory and or files you may be under the assumption that it will be able to recover those directories and files. But this far from the truth. It is very well possible to generate a file list while the majority or even all of the files will be corrupt after recovering them.

If the software for example gets the cluster size wrong during file system reconstruction to name one vital parameter, virtually every file that you recover will be corrupt.

Another example: If you are recovering data from a degraded RAID array and the software gets RAID parameters wrong, every file that is larger than the stripe size will be corrupt.

Files containing a picture in some form are the easiest way to evaluate if you will be able to recover intact files. If larger pictures you preview are intact (1 MB and larger to be on the safe side), you can assume the software got all parameters correct. Files of different formats (movies, documents etc.) will be okay too. The ability to preview movies is also a good way to verify the quality of the recovery.

Good file recovery software generates previews of most common image file formats. Again, 1% into the scan and you can already preview and evaluate the quality of the recovery.

Ask yourself what the pros are using.

Another and last property of good file recovery software I will mention is: Good file recovery software is the software that is also used by professionals. Examples are (in arbitrary order):

• ReclaiMe
• UFS Explorer
• R-Studio
• FileScavenger

The authors of such software have access to feedback from professional data recovery engineers in the field. Based on this feedback the software is frequently updated and supports the latest techniques and file systems. Often a simpler to use end user version of the professional software is available too. Simpler to use, but supporting the latest hardware and file systems (and RAID and NAS too) and offering better chances for you to recover your files.

One of the many configuration windows in professional file recovery software (ReclaiMe Pro)

The post Tips on selecting the best file recovery software appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery | Video Recovery.

Stellar Photo Recovery put to the test. If Stellar Photo Recovery is unable to recover photos then that does not mean that recovery is impossible.

Stellar Photo Recovery: no data found

Stellar Photo Recovery is a popular product, recommended on many forums and by ‘professional’ review sites. Is this justified? I don’t doubt that many are able to recover photos with the program, good for them. But does it justify Stellar’s own claim that it is the ‘BEST DIY SOFTWARE’?

In this video I present 3 real life cases in which Stellar Photo Recovery is unable to recover any files. Unlike the made up cases used by review sites 2 of those are real life cases as presented to me personally by customers. The other case is a disk image accompanying this article on PhotoRescue Advanced, also based on a real life case. You can download the disk image to verify my results.

The purpose of this post is:

• Show that if ONE tool can not recover your photos then this doesn’t mean they can not be recovered.
• Illustrate that there is no single best photo recovery tool.

Remarks:

• The scanned drives are disk images mounted in Windows using OFSMount.
• Stellar Photo Recovery was configured to scan for ‘Photo Formats’.
• During the scans disk activity was present and no read errors were reported, so it is assumed Stellar Photo Recovery was also to access the drives.

The cases:

I will describe the 3 cases first, I suggest you read it before watching.

Case 1

Corrupted memory card containing also corrupt large JPEG photos with embedded restart markers. Stellar Photo Recovery fails to detect any images. JpegDigger can restore several hundreds photos, but these are all corrupted and repaired to a state where they can be opened (attempt repair option: enabled). In about 20% of the photos difficult to reconstruct parts (faces mainly) are unaffected and can be photo-shopped to a presentable state.

Case 2

I’ll quote from the original article: “This tutorial uses an real world 16MB compact flash card image. This card was reused many times (leading to picture fragmentation), reformatted on a Mac Intosh. Further, on many occasions, we copied random files and created new subdirectories, overwriting large chunks of data. Finally, we overwrote its MBR (master boot record) with bogus data and it is not recognized by the operating system anymore. As you would expect, the majority of the original pictures are gone. As a matter of fact, I am surprised that PhotoRescue can still find pictures on it! Now, lets go on with the tutorial.“.

Stellar Photo Recovery fails to detect any of the images. JpegDigger (and PhotoRescue in the article too) detects the photos of which many are corrupted. The article continues to describe how PhotoRescue is used to improve results manually. A few of those are achieved by JpegDigger automatically.

Case 3

This is a memory card that shows photos, but they’re all corrupt. The actual issue is the file system linking incorrect clusters to files (file allocation tables corrupt).

Again it fails to detect any of the files. A good 90% of the files is successfully restored using JpegDigger.

The video

The post Stellar Photo Recovery put to the test appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery | Video Recovery.

Recently I was offered a batch of corrupt JPEGs for repair that were recovered from a SD card using Piriform’s Recuva. The recovered files were not recognized by any image viewer as valid JPG files. This does not appear to be an uncommon thing.

Recuva is a popular and the go-to file recovery tool for many probably because it is free and it does a decent job. As a standard undelete tool there is nothing wrong with Recuva. However it isn’t the best all-round recovery tool by a stretch, nor is is the best photo recovery tool. By all means, try and see if recovers your lost photos (the scope of this post). However do not make the mistake assuming that if Recuva can not recover your photos nothing else can’t either.

JPEG recovery using Recuva

File system scan

By default Recuva performs a file system scan to discover deleted files. In the case of a memory card this means that Recuva will scan for FAT directory entries. Using the directory entry Recuva can determine the filename, the size and the start cluster for the file. To recover the file it creates a new file, jumps to the start cluster, and will copy the number of bytes as indicated by file size to the new file. Apart from a simple check for a JPEG ‘magic number’ it has no way of determining whether the copied data is actually a valid JPEG file.

Recuva’s Deep scan option

Alternatively you can have Recuva perform a RAW scan, In Recuva this is called ‘Deep Scan’. If you need to recover JPEGs that were deleted or lost due to accidental format, I suggest you use this Deep Scan option. Rather than scanning the SD card for file system structures, Recuva will scan for JPEG signatures or magic numbers to locate lost files. Advantage is that it is more likely that recovered files will be recognized by image viewers as valid JPEG files. Theoretically it will also detect files that aren’t referenced by the file system at all.

You can enable Deep Scan using both the wizard and the advanced scan.

Click options > Actions > Enable Deep Scan

Enable recuva’s Deep Scan. Limit your search to ‘pictures’.

Using the non wizard mode you can also limit the scan to pictures

If Recuva does not recover your photos (or not intact)

I have come across situations where Piriform’s software failed to recover lost and deleted photos or were corrupt after recovery. However using different tools and methods it was possible to recover these photos. So never make the mistake assuming photos can not be recovered because one tool can’t.

Example:

Corrupt file system SD Card

Recuva, a free undelete tool can not recover the corrupt JPEGs, deep scan + non deleted file option enabled

JpegDigger did recover the JPEGs from the corrupt file system

The post JPEG photo recovery from sd card using Piriform Recuva appeared first on JPEG Repair | Photo Recovery | File Recovery | Video Recovery.