Backup utility corrupted my jpeg files. Please offer advice

[Jeremy J]

Symantec Powerquest Drive Image 7 corrupted thousands of my jpeg photos!

I am desperate to restore a few thousand corrupted jpeg photo files. They include many treasured photos from weddings, Christenings, holidays, birthdays, kids’ activities and so much more.

This is how they became corrupted:

I backed up my desktop hard drive to an external hard drive using Symantec Powerquest Drive Image 7. Later, when I restored my desktop hard drive from the backup, my photos did not restore fully. They weren’t all corrupted, but probably 95% of them were. The photos show maybe a half, a third or even less of the photo. The rest of the photo is black or grey or otherwise gone or distorted somehow. All thumbnail images are whole and appear to be fine. Drive Image 7 has also appeared to erase the date/time stamp most of the photos also.

I don’t know if the photos didn’t backup properly or if they just didn’t restore properly. I hoped it just didn’t restore properly because I still have the backup file and maybe I can still recover. Unfortunately, I think it didn’t backup properly to begin with. I only say this because I’ve tried several times to restore the backup file using Drive Image in a desperate attempt to recover the entire image but I had no luck doing so.

I’ve also tried a few freeware or shareware photo restoration programs on the corrupt files but had no luck yet. One of the programs I tried, JPEG Recovery, did not correct the problem. However a message appeared on the photo that read, “Missing Pixels at (1072,168) - (975,1191)”. The number range varied with each picture. I fear that if pixels are actual missing, then it is unrecoverable. But I’m not willing to throw in the towel just yet.

I was using Windows XP at the time which I still have on the desktop computer that I maintain the photos on. I do have Vista available to me on my laptop if needed.

I am willing to pay for a good photo restoration or repair program. I’d be extremely grateful to anyone who can provide any solution.

Jeremy,
Willowick, Ohio

 

[Alex_B]

Oh dear! the huge letters you used are a pain, but I will not grumble about it since you are probably in worse pain at the moment.

Hmm, I am not a comouter geek, but I hope someone else can help!

Good luck!

 

[Flash Harry]

Have you no other backups on cd or dvd, have you formatted the computer/HD the backup is from, if not you may be able to recover from this. Most here will probably tell you they back up to other mediums rather than just a program backup, personally I think your goosed, you might be able to get some reasonable crops from the files you have but otherwise I reckon KAPUT. H

 

[Northsider]

Which programs did you try? Were any of them sort-of-successful?

 

[Garbz]

Symantec are an expert in drive imaging. I highly doubt their product would make a backup and not do CRC checking in the process. I was once backingup my drive using Symantec Ghost and it gave an error in the middle and asked me to start again.

For now assume the backup is still good and try and restore again. It can't be any worse than what you have now. Then I'd contact Symantec about it.