Absolute Beginner's Guide to Digital Photography

Recovering Specific Images

After PC Inspector File Recovery scans bad media, it lists the files it found in a File

Recovery window. You can select a specific image and have PC Inspector File

Recovery copy the image from the corrupt media to a healthy hard drive or disk.

The following steps walk you through the process of selecting and recovering files

from the File Recovery window:

1. The File Recovery window should be onscreen. If it isn’t, follow the steps in
   the preceding section. The File Recovery window will display three main fold-
   ers: Root, Deleted, and Lost. Expand all the folders. You should see a DCIM
   directory under Root or Deleted. Continue expanding until files appear. If the
   drive is especially corrupt, you might see garbage filenames. These files are
   probably history, although something might be salvageable.


2. Select a file and right-click on it. Only select one file—do not select multiple
   files just yet. The right-click menu will appear. Click Save To.
   Do not select multiple files in the right window until you ensure that you can
   recover one file. If you select multiple files and the software can’t recover one
   of them, the software will hang and it will be difficult to close it. A hang is
   often worse than a crash because your system slows down so much you can’t
   close an application.


3. In the Select Directory dialog box, select where you want to save the file.


4. If the drive was formatted, make sure you select No Fat (Consecutive) in the
   drop-down list. Otherwise, it should say FAT 1. If you experience problems,
   try FAT 2.


5. Click OK. The file will appear in the directory.

If no files appear, it’s possible the flash media drive was formatted or a logical drive

wasn’t detected. Return to step 3 and change settings in the Select Drive dialog box,

such as Use FAT and Skip Bad Clusters. If a logical drive wasn’t detected, highlight

the drive and click Find Logical Drives.

Partially Corrupt Files

Images recovered from badly corrupted flash media will occasionally be partially

missing. This happens when newer files have overwritten the image’s data, or

because the recovery software doesn’t know how large the file is. The latter can be

remedied. To determine whether the entire image can be restored, try the following:

1. Choose Object, Options, Files. Make sure the Find Lost Files check box is
   checked.

102 ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TODIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY