question about how to recover corrupted photos

[jimdagys]

I have a standard USB memory stick that someone let me borrow that has about a dozen photos on it, but I can't view them. When I use the Windows Fax Viewer, or Irfanview, I just get, "no preview available" or "unreadable file". The size of the files are normal for photos, about 700KB. I don't know if the memory stick corrupted the photos, or if the camera is defective, giving corrupted files. I was wondering if somebody could look at one of the photo files and see if it is possible to recover the photo. The file is inside a rar archive at: http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/11/30/441298/san.rar
Thanks for the help.

[classfour]

from an earlier post - I would recommend these : ) and they're free.

recuva.

PC Inspector - completely free.

File Recovery - recovers deleted files on hard drive
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1

smart recovery - recovers files deleted on memory devices
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/smart_recovery/info.htm?language=1

I had to download them to verify it, but I used smart recovery to restore photos from a formated SD card (that had more photos taken after the format) for a co-worker. The program found about 30 photos that had been lost in the format.

I tested it on a PNY USB drive that has been formated, and found 80 files: A few (about 5 or 6) were damaged, but the remainder previewed in windows.

[jimdagys]

These files are perfectly visible (they've not been deleted) but the photos cannot be seen because of some file corruption. I think the situation (file recovery) you are talking about is different.

[jimdagys]

I am still looking for someone to please take a look at this jpg file and see if it is possible to recover the picture.
Thanks for the help. I've got a lot of jpg files that all have this problem.
The jpg file is at:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/11/30/441298/san.rar
Question: If it is not possible to recover the picture, what kind of file corruption would cause this phenomenon? I think the memory stick caused the corruption but I don't know why.

[lingyi]

Here's a possible solution to your problem:

http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/fix-corrupt-jpeg-photo.html

The author seems geniune in his offer to help and the site is an interesting read about what may have caused the corruption.

Note that I don't have any connection with the website or the author, came across the site while searching for a possible solution to your problem (because it's happened to me! )


I recalled something about possibly repairing corrupt jpg headers and came across this link:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=10291113

This is 95% over my head, but basically as I understand it, you need a good picture taken with the same camera to replace the corrupted/missing data in the corrupt file. Your sample file is missing the correct header info.


BUT...something I came across another thread (can't find it now...) points to your file(s) probably being beyond repair. Basically it said that if you can compress your jpg more than 10% (I downloaded your file @ 3Kb and recompressed it to 6Kb) it's a goner. Tried it on a couple of my pics and sure enough, <10% compression. Makes sense since jpgs are already highly compressed files.


BTW, I tried opening the file in Photoshop CS3 and IE (suggested in one of the forums) and no go. I also tried the ImpulseAdventure author's software and jpgcleaner (said to SOMETIMES able to correct corrupt files) with no luck.

Good luck!

[jimdagys]

Thanks for the info. This is mostly to learn about these situations. The photos are not that important.

[Bjs]

Try using a better product such as active @ file recovery ... if it cant pull them , nothing ever will

I have looked at the file you uploaded, and they are beyond binary editing for recovery
The first header is there, thou its patially corrupted, but the rest of the file is too badly damaged to restore