Install free tools to possibly recover media card files

Feb 10, '06 06:24:00AM

Contributed by: tahiti

I may not be the first, nor the last, but when someone you know loses pictures from their memory card, the only thing you can do is help -- espcially when the card contained wedding photos!

After some searching, I found a site thats presents a solution for data recovery on OS X from external media, such as memory sticks, SD cards, etc. The author of that page located a couple of free and open source programs (TestDisk and PhotoRec), and he discusses how to use those programs and what files they may be able to recover.

I followed the instructions on the above site, downloaded the package (522KB TestDisk/PhotoRec download), and installed it. It's a command-line program, so no GUI, but it worked like a charm after installing it in Terminal:

./configure
make
sudo make install
Note that a reboot is required after installation. Also, it will never write to the media it's trying to recover, so there's no danger of further damage. It really helped me recover the missing wedding pictures.

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