how long should card recovery take?

[Katherine Rosing]

I installed and ran ZAR to try to recover some important photographs I accidentally deleted. The camera used was a Nikon D80, the card is a512 MB SD card. I am reading the card in a card reader which I think is made by Dynex.

The program has been running for almost 5 hours and currently says: Post Processing, Located: 1 file in 1 directory, the status bar is titled "Current operation and its progress" but the bar looks empty (white)

The volume map is mostly white/grey=nothing interesting, with a few dark squares indicating Data fragments.

There are still approximately 20 files remaining on the card, and I deleted at least 20 which I am trying to recover.

How long is this recovery supposed to take? I am not sure if I did something wrong, because even though I did follow instructions in one of the posts, I still didn't quite understand what I was supposed to do. OR -- is this normal and it just takes a long time?

shouldn't it at least locate the 20 files that I did not delete?

thanks for your suggestions (and thanks for offering the use of this program as a working trial!)

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Yes, it should locate at least 20 files currently on the card.

1. First of all, I suggest that you retry in simple volume mode.
2. Close ZAR if still running and reboot the system.
3. Start ZAR. On the first screen, click "Proceed" and it will prompt for a processing mode.
4. Select "Recover files from a simple volume...". In the lower part, select "Recover both "current" files and files normally deleted...". Click "Proceed" for a device list.
5. Select your card from a device list, then click "Proceed". You have already done it successfully, so I think identifying the card would not be a problem.
6. One last prompt will appear, for a volume on the card. There will be only one volume entry in the list (and a "Define manually" which you do not need). Select it and click "Proceed" again for a scan.

If this does not work, I would then need a sample of a file. Please copy one of the files you did not delete, or some archive shot (preferrably taken with the same settings) and email it to development@z-a-recovery.com
Sometimes subtle variations between camera models may affect the recovery. However, without the sample picture I cannot investigate the problem.