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Lost files on a SD-card, formatted by the cam.

Posted: 28 Jul 2012, 22:19
by rail
I have a HD camcorder Panasonic HDC-SD90.

I happened to accidently formatting the SD-card and I had some very important videos on it.
I have NOT written anything to the card after formatting, so nothing should be overwritten.
There are many programs that can recover data from storage devices where you have erased or formatted media.
I've tried some, such as Card Recovery, Wondershare Photo Recovery, Recuva, and some others but none have been able to recreate these files.

The strange thing is that some of these programs succeed in restoring files that are weeks, yes, even months old from the SD card. You might think they should be over-written since then?

But the latest taken videos they can’t recover, which may seem strange.
These programs boast the fact that they just can recover files from formatted media.

I have experimented with another SD-card and it seems that if you only delete the files most of the programs can recover the files.
But if you format it with the camera none of the programs can recover or find the last files that was created only the old ones despite they claim they can recover from formatted cards.

I wonder what the camera does when it formats the card??
It can’t be a full format since the old files are still there?
How can they still exist but not the newly taken videos??
I have now also tried Photorec but it too only recognize old files.
Any ideas how I can recover those files?
What settings in Photorec is optimal in my case?

Lost files on SD-card formatted by cam.

Posted: 28 Jul 2012, 23:11
by rail
I have a HD camcorder Panasonic HDC-SD90.

I happened to accidently formatting the SD-card and I had some very important videos on it.
I have NOT written anything to the card after formatting, so nothing should be overwritten.
There are many programs that can recover data from storage devices where you have erased or formatted media.
I've tried some, such as Card Recovery, Wondershare Photo Recovery, Recuva, and some others but none have been able to recreate these files.

The strange thing is that some of these programs succeed in restoring files that are weeks, yes, even months old from the SD card. You might think they should be over-written since then?

But the latest taken videos they can’t recover, which may seem strange.
These programs boast the fact that they just can recover files from formatted media.

I have experimented with another SD-card and it seems that if you only delete the files most of the programs can recover the files.
But if you format it with the camera none of the programs can recover or find the last files that was created only the old ones despite they claim they can recover from formatted cards.

I wonder what the camera does when it formats the card??
It can’t be a full format since the old files are still there?
How can they still exist but not the newly taken videos??
I have now also tried Photorec but it too only recognize old files.
Any ideas how I can recover those files?
What are the optimal settings in Photorec which gives me the biggest chance to recover my files?

Re: Lost files on a SD-card, formatted by the cam.

Posted: 31 Aug 2012, 09:30
by cgrenier
Enable the Expert mode in the Options menu, start a Search, use a 512 byte blocksize and use the default value otherwise. Maybe it will give better results.