Cannot open recovered photos

[hocus999]

Hello. I recently went on vacation, and for whatever reason, my memory card on my Casio EX-S600 decided to go corrupt 2 days into my vacation, having me to buy a disposable camera. I downloaded ZAR, and even though I took way more in my first 2 days, was able to recover 6 pictures total, but for whatever reason, when I try to open the thumbnail, my Dell with Windows XP cannot open the photo. Is there something I am not doing correct? Or is it a lost cause?

Ready to throw my camera out the window! Help!

Thank you

[Alexey V. Gubin]

I'd say beyond repair.

1. Any specific error message?
2. What device reads the card - are you using a card reader, or is a card still in the camera?

[tucsonjack]

After installing a new hard drive I ran the software to activate it. Since it was drive three in my machine I choose three and had it partition it. It turns out that drive was my storage drive for over 30,000 digital images taken over the last few years. Only some are backed up.

I bought and ran ZAR and it appeared to recover all the JPGs and NEFs however they will not open with either Windows viewer or Photoshop.

Is there another option or am I out of luck?

[Alexey V. Gubin]

1. What filesystem was on that drive?
2. You used the procedure as for "unformat", didn't you?
3. Did you write anything to that volume after you formatted it?

[tucsonjack]

My system has three drives all NTFS. I used the first choice which is the unformate you mentioned. I haven't done anything to the drive since the installation setup when I saw my files were gone.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

There should be a file, named C:\Program Files\ZAR\logfile.txt
It should not be that big in default mode, could you please zip it and email to development@z-a-recovery.com for my review. This mailbox will accept up to 12MB ZIP or thereabouts.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Based on what I saw,

1. Delete an old log file, so we start from scratch.
2. Start ZAR
3. On the first screen, click "Advanced Configuration". In there, in "Overrides" tab, set "Sector offset of the 0th cluster" to 0. Do not modify anything else, click OK to close configuration
4. Retry the recovery without exiting ZAR. If you exit after setting the override, you need to redo step (3).

[tucsonjack]

Alexey,
What a wonderful Christmas gift. I made the change you suggested and recovered more than 90% of my 30 K photos. I haven't checked all yet but the number is most likely closer to 99%. ZAR is a wonderful program and I will recommend it to all my photographer friends. And thanks for your help on this forum.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Thats great. Just take care next time

[blasefernandes]

I tried unformatting the memory card but ZAR doesn't seem to work for me... Is there anything more i can try to recover lost photos?
Any kind of help will be much appreciated..