("Recovering files *from* formatted SxS - am I right that there is no hope?" is actually what I had hoped to write!)


Stupidly formatted a card having mistakenly thought that it had been downloaded.

Have run 3 or 4 data recovery tools on it - in fact on several cards just to make sure - none of them are able to recover anything at all, whether te card has been partially written onto since formatting or not used at all.

Would that concur with other peoples expereince following a formatting as opposed to a deletion?

Stuart

4 programs now- nothing finds anything :-(

Have you tried Data Rescue?

The fact that you "formatted" the card doesn't bode well. Usually, if all you've done is "erase" the clips and you haven't written any more files to the card, your original files will still be there. The original files will be unprotected by the ToC (Table of Contents) and are ready to being written over. I've used on Data Rescue II (Mac based) successfully on a Mac-formatted hard drive but I'm not sure if it would work on a FAT32-formatted SxS card. Which apps did you try?

I've used Data Rescue on SD cards formatted for my Nikon DSLR, so it should work on other things not Mac-related!?

Might be worth giving Sony Prime Support a call. There is a media department in France that can recover files provided nothing else has been done to the card.

Hi All,
Just got two new Sandisk 32 gb CF cards which where ship with "RescuePro" software.
It would be nice if Sony shipped such tools with the very expensive SxS cards?

I would love to hear if this Rescue Pro works. Please update us if you try it.

Hi Craig,
I will have a spare card after tomorrow's shoot and I will try it after I have made a copy.
I will let you know.

have tried resue pro and nothing, also kroll ontrack who I understand are the pros in data recovery and - nothing.

Oh well from now on I'll be deleting all clips and not fomrmatting and using shotpout for all then uploads.

live and learn!

S

A good workflow is to use shotput to format the cards. If you never delete or erase cards yourself and use shotput to backup then format your cards, you know that if you put a card in the camera with clips on it, it has not been backed up.

This workflow helps reduce the risk of human error.

have tried resue pro and nothing, also kroll ontrack who I understand are the pros in data recovery and - nothing.

Oh well from now on I'll be deleting all clips and not fomrmatting and using shotpout for all then uploads.

live and learn!

S


This is interesting to me to hear how other people do things. Why would you format a card to begin with? Why bother? All I've ever done is delete the clips on the card after double back-up. I've shot in the hundreds of hours without a single card problem.

I ran the demo of Rescue Pro (just to try it out) and it seems to have successfully recognized every clip on the card after delete. That said, I tried coping one of the files and then opening the file with QT and no luck "this file is not a movie file." Even though it is a .mp4. XDcam transfer won't recognize the file either. There's obviously a lot going on during the transfer process. Perhaps if every file was copied and then that folder was targeted? I can't test this though because the demo limits the number of files that can be recovered.

Well from the technical point of view, there are 2 big arguments in favor of formatting cards.

1. If some error occurs things can be wrong in the file allocation table. If there error is not detected by the cam, it might get worse from use to use. Formatting the card will reinitialize the file allocation table so you start with a clean one where you are sure that it hasn't errors.

2. Depending on device, formatting is better for the card than deleting clips as flash cards have limited number of rewrites (about 10000 if I remember well but might be lower or higher depending on card type). If you delete 100 clips, it might be that the card region containing the file allocation table is written to 100 times depending on implementation where a format operation is generally only one write to this region. Well this was now theoretically, newer cards use a wear leveling algorithm that tries to relocate data so that no region is used to much but I still prefer doing only one write operation.

For these 2 reasons, I always format my card prior to using it for recording new things.

I feel duty bound to defend myself...! Usually I would not format as I like to keep the cameras set up data on the card so I can reset after another cameraman has been fiddling. But it takes abiout 4x longer to delet and I was in a hurry so just this last week I have been formating not deleting....

Yup, shotput is the way I have now gone, had it on my laptop but felt miffed about paying another 89dollars to put it on may main machine. Hey ho - stable, horse, door, bolted, etc etc

As someone already mentioned, I'm pretty sure there's no way to recover data from a memory card once it's been formatted. If you just deleted the files and hadn't written over the top of them with new files, then you would have a fighting chance, but after a format you're out of options.

I went through this scenario, trying to rescue a formatted P2 card for a friend. I was able to get most of the files back, but not without it's complications.

Turns out, the only way to recover formatted or deleted cards is using a pc application that can see fat32 file structures.

Try using a pc-based commercial data recovery application:
FileSalvage, Stellar Phoenix3, Data Rescue 2, Boomerang, UnDelete Plus,
Recover4all

If you are able to recover the movie files and they are damaged (i.e., blocking etc), I know a gentleman who writes a specific movie repair tool to fix the file(s). It's around $150 per repair tool (each repair tool only works with one format, i.e. 108060i DVCProHD.) If you have more than one format, frame rate, or size, you will need to purchase multiple repair tools. Once you have the repair tool, you can keep it, in case it ever happens again.

If you can get your files from a windows-based file recovery program and there are no issues with the files, you are in luck. If the files play but are damaged, then PM me and I will send you the contact of the man who writes the movie repair apps.

Larry

I ran the demo of Rescue Pro (just to try it out) and it seems to have successfully recognized every clip on the card after delete. That said, I tried coping one of the files and then opening the file with QT and no luck "this file is not a movie file." Even though it is a .mp4. XDcam transfer won't recognize the file either. There's obviously a lot going on during the transfer process. Perhaps if every file was copied and then that folder was targeted? I can't test this though because the demo limits the number of files that can be recovered.

You probably just have to re-wrap the files as .mxf usin gSony's mxf tool...

You probably just have to re-wrap the files as .mxf usin gSony's mxf tool...

These guys have solutions that enable Final Cut to be able to read the native mp4 files from an EX1/3.

Calibrated Software (http://www.calibratedsoftware.com/)

Used their mp4 to Final Cut plugin the other week when I couldn't transfer a file and it worked a treat.

These guys have solutions that enable Final Cut to be able to read the native mp4 files from an EX1/3.

Calibrated Software (http://www.calibratedsoftware.com/)

Used their mp4 to Final Cut plugin the other week when I couldn't transfer a file and it worked a treat.

This looks great. The combo of Rescue Pro and the import plugin should fly. We just need a testimonial from someone willing to try or buy!

This looks great. The combo of Rescue Pro and the import plugin should fly. We just need a testimonial from someone willing to try or buy!

The software will let you play the first 30 seconds without paying. I downloaded it, the software happily played the first 30 seconds (going blank after that) so I knew it would work so I purchased it.

That software saved my backside the other week. Be warned though, when you register it you can't transfer the licence to another computer. You are stuck with it where you install it.

Hi,

ffmpeg might also be worth a try. Somtimes it does really good job on recovering damaged files.

At first I would try something like

ffmpeg -i damaged.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy salvaged.m2t (I am choosing m2t as transport streams seem to be more fault tolerant than mp4. Data will only be wrapped in another container, so there will be no quality loss.)

If this is failing I would try:

ffmpeg -i damaged.mp4 -vcodec dnxhd -acodec pcm_s16le -b 185Mb salvaged.mov (This will convert video to a dnxhd compressed mov file.)