asked on

Cannot view or open recovered jpg's which had previously been deleted in error, though file size would indicate file is complete

Recently, whilst trying to free up some HD memory, I wrote some images onto a dvd and then deleted the images on my HD. To my horor when I subsequently tried to view the images on the dvd, they were not there.

Using Active File Recovery software, i managed to recover most if not all of the files, but whilst some are ok and open fine, most of them, cannot be opened or previewd or anything.

These images are very important to me and i could lose a very important contract if I cannot resolve this, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

IMPORTANT: I do not need recommendation for recovery software that will find the files and recover them, i have already done this and unfortunately cannot redo this with other software, as a problem with my OS required formating of my HD and reinstallation of WinXP, so it is unlikely that I would be able to recover anything now. What I really really need is some way of fixing the corrupt files that i have already recovered.

I found the following question on this site but it does not adequately resolve the issue.

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Title: How to repair corrupt JPG and AVI files ?
asked by distant_memory on 01/20/2004 07:47AM PST
This solution was worth 125 Points and received a grade of A

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Thank you in advance for any help you can give.
Sam

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

war1

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samviv

ASKER

Thanks War1,

The image file were recovered from the HD before it was formatted. It doesn't look like the images copied to the dvd at all.

I downloaded irfanview and when I opened an image with it, it gave message, "cant read file header, unknown file format"

can you suggest anything else

cheers

sam

war1

Sam,

Looks like your image file is damaged. I was hoping Irfanview is able to recovery it. You can use Pixrecovery to repair the file

http://www.officerecovery.com/pixrecovery/

samviv

ASKER

tried pixrecovery, message it givs is "no data to recover detedted"

The impression I get whilst watching the process as the program tries to recover the data is that the program sees the file as complete and not i need of repair.

It looks like I need a program which can repair headers to allow the image to be viewed or at least partially viewed.

.....I'm getting desperate..............

Thanks for your help!

SOLUTION

lherrou

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samviv

ASKER

Thanks for your advice LHerrou, I've tried jufsoft, it goes through the recovery process and tells me recovery was successful but when i try to view the image it says image corrupt or invalid.

I don't suppose I could send you one of the files to play with, could I?

Cheers

Sam

lherrou

Sam,

EE frowns on interaction via email, because it does not allow other experts to contribute. You are welcome to post a link to a couple of files, and I (and perhaps others) will take a look at them...

samviv

ASKER

I'm afraid I dont know how to do that.

lherrou

Simply sign up for free hosting at any of a number of sites, from http://www.onesite.com/ to http://geocities.yahoo.com/ and upload a couple of the images. Post the address here when you have it up and running, and we'll take a look.

samviv

ASKER

your too kind will give it a go tomorrow night hopefullu (UK time)

SOLUTION

Mark_FreeSoftware

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samviv

ASKER

Thanks Mark,

I've downloaded hexedit, but its all french to me, can you give me a very basic description of how to copy the header of a healthy file to a corrupt one. Thanks Sam

Mark_FreeSoftware

i hope you can follow this, if i'm going to fast for you just call me back :P

!!!!!!!!before proceding you have to make a backup of all the images you are opening with hexeditor!!!!!!!!!!!!!

just to be sure ;)

i assume that you have 3 or more jpegs from the same source with the same size!!!!!,
2 correct, and one broken

open both correct files in a hexeditor, and look at the begin of the files

it should begin with FFD8

and then a bunch of other hex numbers

compare the first numbers until they differ.
if you have more correct images, you can do this with more images for an accurate header.

now open the corrupt file, and look at the first few bytes.
if they are like 00 00 00 00 or FF FF FF FF you can overwrite them, else you have to try if the first numbers are already part of the image or part of the corrupted header

that is just trial and error, that's why you have to save them before!

some notes:
if they jpegs are from different sources the header will be different
the width and height is stored in it, but also the encoding and compression and such stuff, so you can't use the header of a fil from paint with the header of a file from photoshop

very much succes with it!!!!!!

Mark_FreeSoftware

what about split between

war1,lherrou and me?