New user here. :) ... need to recover lost photos from Canon ZoomBrowser EX software

[zebrastripe]

Hi everyone, I am new here so bear with me...my first post. I have a Canon S30 camera and software on my PC called ZoomBrowser EX. I think the files got corrupted somehow because when I went to the "Image Library One" I could only see the thumbnails of my pics in "My Images"--couldn't open them. I could open "Samples". So I thought I would hit the "refresh" button on the ZoomBrowser screen, and then I had NO pics in "Image Library One" except for the "Samples". I cannot find about 100 photos! So I called Canon and they tried to recover the pics by walking me through something to do with the database files on my PC computer drive. These files end in: .zbd, .dat, .idx and .FCS. e.g. My DatabaseNew.zbd, My DatabaseOld.zbd ... We couldn't get the pics out of these when we did her procedure. CAN ANYONE HELP?? Thank you very much! --zebrastripe :)

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Uh, the pictures were originally on the computer or on the camera memory card?

[zebrastripe]

Hi Alexey,
Thank you for replying. :) I couldn't get on my computer again until now. The photos were taken on my camera with the memory card inside the camera. Then I used a card reader to transfer the photos to the hard drive of my PC. I have used the memory card several times since as it was 4 years ago that I put the photos on my PC hard drive. Each time the memory card was full I would download and erase the photos on my memory card so I could take more photos. So, now 4 years later I was trying to open up the photos in the Canon ZoomBrowser EX software to get them out and into a different place on my computer but I couldn't open up the thumbnails... (see more details in 1st post)... Any hope?? I'll check back for your reply in the morning. Thanks so much. --zebrastripe

[Alexey V. Gubin]

So there is nothing on the memory card, sure.

I can only suggest you install ZAR onto something which is NOT your hard drive, like onto USB flash drive, and try the unformat procedure (as described at http://www.z-a-recovery.com/unformat-tutorial.htm). You should have ZAR recover "both current and erased files" and then try to locate the images.

However, I believe the optimal solution for you would be to contact some sort of a local expert, maybe you have a friend who is really into computers, so they review the system and the situation and make sure we are not missing something obvious. And also have them perform the procedure I described above, in anticipation that they can spot something you do not see and I cannot predict from here.

The images just should not disappear on their own, so there must be some sort of a malfunction in the system, but we do not see what it is.