lost photos?

quacks · Mar 17, 2006

Hi, I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, sorry if I'm wrong.
Anyway I lost my photos on my computer recently so I got this recovery programme. It recomends that I save the the photos to a different drive.

Will I be able to save it to one of those Memory Stick things or does it have to be a big hard drive thingy? Sorry about my ignorance

Any info or help at all is very appreciated.
Thanks and good luck.

col

jocose · Mar 17, 2006

it depends on how big (how much memory) your memory stick has. If it's only 50K, probably not, if it's a gig, probably...depending on how many pics you have.

They (memory sticks) act as any other drive when they're attached.

But I don't know much about computers...there are a bunch of computer savvy folk on this site, and there is a sister forum devoted to computer questions...not sure the link...I'll find it.

BRB

Hi. I'm back. Here you go: http://www.thesupportforum.com/

jcharcalla · Mar 17, 2006

Yes you should be able to save them on a mempry stick, that is if you have enough space and here is why you should do that. I'll try to keep this simple.

When windows deletes the file it basicly just says the space is free now. Your recovery program searches all you free space and finds whats been deleted. If you recover the files back to the same drive you will probably overwrite the space where your deleted images are and then they will be lost for good.

I know this isnt a 100% technically what happens but I'm just trying to give you an idea of what happens.

tmpadmin · Mar 17, 2006

Another idea would be to go buy an exteranal usb hard drive, 120 GB costs about $150 or less. They come in all sizes.

This way after you get your photos back you can use it as a backup drive and periodically copy everything over or just the new ones.

quacks · Mar 17, 2006

Thanks a million for the information tmpadmin, jcharcalla and jocose.:thumbsup:
Sorry for originally posting on the wrong forum

.
Just wondering if anyone has used the programmes I got called Recover My Files or Recovery angel?
You have to pay online again in order to actually recover the photos onto the drive(memory stick), any idea how much this would cost for about 80 photos?
Thanks again:mrgreen: :mrgreen: .
col

Johnboy2978 · Mar 17, 2006

So did you lose the files from your hard drive or from your memory card of the camera? If you lost them from your hard drive on your computer, they may be gone, but not forgotten. Try a free download called, PC inspector File Recovery. You'll have to Google it, or you may find it on download.net. But as Jcharcalla said, in Windows, if you delete a file from your pc, windows, basically says to itself, "I can use these sectors for whatever I need". Once deleted, windows can then save anything to any space not already allocated for another program. Therefore, you could technically delete something then recover it years later, provided windows didn't happen to choose that space to save a lot of other information in the mean time. The hard drive just searches for free, unallocated space when saving something new, and doesn't necessarily spin the hard drive to find the space. It's possible that your files haven't been overwritten yet. I'm not sure how a memory card goes about this process though.

In the future (hindsight 20/20) you will want to back up photos like anything else you find important to at least a couple of different places. I have mine on one hard drive, then again on an external hard drive, then again on DVD. Hard drives are inexpensive now, and you can expect to spend a dollar/gig of space roughly. That is, 100gb HD can cost about $100 (for external...even cheaper for internal). I wouldn't waste money on a "pen-drive" or thumb-drive (those little usb drives you can carry in your pocket) when a good HD is so cheap provided you don't need that type of portability. You can also get a decent dvd burner for about $60 now to back files up to that if you wish. Ideally, if it is "really" important stuff to back up, you want them off-site incase of fire, theft, natural disaster like an online site, or backup your stuff periodically to an external drive and leave it at a friends house.

just my .02