Digital BW, The Print

Kip,

I've never needed to recover files from a CF card but I have used Data Rescue on spinning drives and was assured by a technician at Prosoft that the program has a good chance of retrieving files from CF cards. 

http://www.prosofteng.com/blog/recover-deleted-pictures-from-a-compact-flash-card/

Dale


On Dec 26, 2012, at 1:53 PM, Kip Babington wrote:

> Somewhat off topic, although any of my files that get printed are done 
> in B&W, so . . .
> 
> Anyway, last night (Christmas Night) I took 150+ shots with my Nikon 
> D70S. All RAW files, stored on a Sandisk Extreme 4GB CF card, which was 
> formatted in the camera before beginning. About 60 of the files show up 
> with a weird format to the file name - DSC_9:32.NEF, DSC_9:33.NEF, etc. 
> The rest of the files have the typical file name format, DSC_9334.NEF, etc.
> 
> It appears that some of the files just have a colon replacing the second 
> digit in the file name, and those files are unreadable in any software 
> I've tried and cannot be copied from the card to the hard disk. I've 
> tried the XP file manager, an third party file manager, Lightroom, 
> Breeze Browser, Fastone Image Viewer, Nikon Capture 4, and Photoshop CS5 
> - none of them can see the images in the strangely named files, and some 
> don't even see the file.
> 
> There are any number of "file recovery" software packages offered 
> online, many of which offer a free look at what they can do, and several 
> show images for all of the files on the card, including the funny ones. 
> But all of the packages require purchase before you can download any of 
> the "recovered" files. I gather there are thumbnail images connected to 
> NEF files, and I don't want to pay $50 for software that only recovers 
> thumbnails. (The pictures I print all end up as 8x8 inch B&W prints, 
> some rather seriously cropped from the original, so a thumbnail won't be 
> useful.)
> 
> SO - does anyone have experience with software that has been reliable at 
> recovering corrupted NEF files from CF cards? If so, what did you use? 
> (I HAVE downloaded and backed up the "good" files, but have not done 
> anything but read from the CF card
> 
> Thanks for any help. These are among the most valuable images of the 
> year as far as the family history is concerned, and if there's a way to 
> save some or all of the ones with the funny names I'd sure like to. 
> Willing to pay to get it done, but just want to be sure that it WILL get 
> done if I pay for it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Kip