Corrupt .NEF files, How do I fix them?

Using PhotoRec to recover lost data
Forum rules
When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Locked
Message
Author
TheStigsCousin
Posts: 1
Joined: 24 Jul 2014, 06:12

Corrupt .NEF files, How do I fix them?

#1 Post by TheStigsCousin »

Hello,

So here's the situation. I accidentally reformatted my portable HD that contained all of my photographs, in particular my photos from a trip to the Galapagos Islands. All the files Im trying to recover are .nef, Nikon's RAW file format. I used a previous software, called Data Rescue 3, at the beginning. After it was completed, I looked at some files and they looked good. Prematurely, I put the recovered photos back onto my portable HD only to discover that some of the photos are corrupted. Therefore, the portable HD has been written over ONCE! After this discovery, I haven't touched my portable HD.

A friend referred me to this software but I am piss poor at understanding commands via Terminal on my MacBook Pro. I understand how to do a complete scan and so on but here's where I need your help.

1) Is there a way that this software will be able to look deeper, past the overwrite, to find the photos?

2) How do I use Data Carving to fix my .nef files? I need step by step instruction because the wiki was not very helpful in this process.

bgibson72
Posts: 2
Joined: 25 Jul 2014, 19:52

Re: Corrupt .NEF files, How do I fix them?

#2 Post by bgibson72 »

Have you used Photorec on the drive yet? If not, here is what you do (assuming that you have a testdisk-7.0...tar.bz2 file in your Downloads folder):

1) Unzip testdisk file. Double click on the file and it will produce a testdisk folder.
2) Open terminal and type

Code: Select all

cd Downloads/testdisk-7.0-WIP
(assuming this is the name of the folder)
3) Type

Code: Select all

sudo ./photorec
and your admin password when prompted.
4) You should now have Photorec running in terminal. Select the drive in the list using arrow keys, then enter when you want to proceed.
5) Choose the partition you want to scan or the whole disk, then enter
6) Most likely you will just enter through the next screen for filesystem type if it is a FAT or HFS filesystem. If it was a linux drive, then probably ext2,ext3,ext4.
7) For simplicity sake, save the results to the testdisk folder by pressing C at the next screen.

The recovery could take some time to complete depending on the size of the drive/partition. You should see a realtime report of what type of files are being recovered and how many.

As for the NEF files being corrupt afterward, you could try any of these: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=repair%20corr ... EF%20files

Hope this helps!

Locked