Unusual data recovery question

[RJM62]

I have a Sony CyberShot camera that saves to a Pro Duo memory stick. I was sitting in the passenger seat of a go-kart shooting video when the driver crashed into a wall. The impact knocked the batteries out of the camera (seriously), so the file wasn't closed properly. It shows up as a zero-byte AVI file.

I've scanned the card with half a dozen different data recovery utilities, and none of them can find the actual data. I know it had to be saved somewhere. Any suggestions about how to recover it?

-Rich

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Could have been cached in the camera's internal memory and not yet written (flushed) to the external memory. The data might be gone once the battery power was removed from that internal memory source.

 

[RJM62]

Could have been cached in the camera's internal memory and not yet written (flushed) to the external memory. The data might be gone once the battery power was removed from that internal memory source.

That's kind of what I think, too; although I'm surprised the camera's internal memory is big enough to cache video files.

I thought the scene of us crashing into the wall would make a good closing for a YouTube video....

-Rich

 

[SkyHog]

That is the down side to some digital video cameras. Had it been done on an oldschool tape system, it would have recorded up until it broke into a million pieces.

I don't think its recoverable, unfortunately.

 

[JOhnH]

It could also be that the files were written to disk, but they were not close properly so the index does not contain sufficient header information to read the file.

I suggest taking it to a competent camera shop. We have one around here that advertises that they can recover lost photos. I have heard several good reports about it. They don't charge if they don't recover.

I on the other hand (being a former data processing "expert") managed to format my camera disk and lost everything immediately. We were on vacation in Rome Italy and my wife wanted to know if our digital camera could take pictures in landscape format. Without reading the manual, I discovered a menu option that said "format?" Don't ask me why, but I thought it would ask me which format I wanted. With no warning, after I selected the option, the camera announced "formatting disk". I immediately hit any stop, exit, escape cancel or power buttons I could but to no avail. Our whole week in Rome on pictures was lost. I had to take her back again the next year to make up for it.

 

[Keane]

What usually happens with these cameras is:
-File is opened, 'header' information is set at zero.
-Data is written normally, some sort of counter for length is kept track of.
- File is closed, 'header' information is set correctly.

SO, the data is definitely on your memory card, however the file header info hasn't been set correctly.

You could potentially open the disk in a direct-hex view, and see if you could distinguish the end of the file, and repair the header.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Try looking here:
http://digital-photography-school.c...eeping-memory-cards-healthy-and-data-recovery#

Here:
http://digital-photography-school.com/memory-cards-how-to-extend-their-life-and-keep-them-healthy

and here:
http://digital-photography-school.com/13-tips-for-using-and-caring-for-memory-cards

There may be something useful in one of the links. They do talk about data recovery and none of them is a long read.

 

[RJM62]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm still working on this (not full-time, of course).

I've managed to recover AVI files I deleted months ago (with at least one card format in between). Typically these are partially overwritten and have to be fixed before they'll play. Good practice, I guess, if I ever want to do serious recovery.

As for the one I'm looking for, I've found a few frames (they're recognized as JPEG files), which gives me a clue where to look, at least.

Another reason to wish my friend Stefan was still alive... He was very good at this.

I did call a local photo guy and explained what I'd tried already, and he told me that's basically as far as he would go with it unless I wanted to pay him many dollars, and the file's not that important. But he did give me some advice for additional things to try. One was to delete the partition altogether and re-scan the raw card, which he said was a last resort to try when I'd given up all hope of recovering the file.

Thanks again for all the advice.

-Rich