Rescue photos off memory cards with PhotoRec
Jun 28, '10 07:30:00AM
Contributed by: Anonymous
There are a lot of good tools out there to restore data from corrupted memory cards but most of them are for Windows. I remembered using an open source command line tool for this purpose. It is called PhotoRec and is cross platform as well. Although their web site has detailed instructions on how to use the software I still wanted to share my straightforward procedure for doing so on a Mac (you are still doing it at your own risk).
Here is a summary of the step-by-step procedure.
- Download PhotoRec (the latest version is 6.11.3).
- Extract the files in the Finder (I downloaded it in Downloads folder and assume it is located there).
- Open the Terminal and type (watch out if you have a different version number):
$ cd Downloads/testdisk-6.11.3/darwin/
- Run the PhotoRec with typing (no need to be super user or root, PhotoRec will show only external Fat16/32 drives): $ ./photorec
- Select the appropriate disk (memory card) with arrow keys on the keyboard and proceed (press the enter key on the keyboard).
- Select Intel/PC partition type with arrow keys and press the enter key.
- Select your FAT partition with arrow keys and press enter.
- Select 'Other' and press enter.
- Select 'Whole' and press enter.
- Type 'Y' (no need to select other folders to store photos in) and it should start extracting photos.
After it's done you'll see the window similar to the one below. You can close the Terminal. Your photos will be placed in Downloads/testdisk-6.11.3/darwin/recup_dir folder. If everything was OK of course.
For more details, including screenshots of the procedure, see my blog entry about this.
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one.]
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