PhotoRescue Expert Technical FAQ

Q : PhotoRescue locks up hard - what do I do next ?

A: Photorescue, as an application, does not cause hard lockups by itself. Therefore a lockup that requires a reset is almost always caused by a severe physical card failure, at the surface level, from which the reader's driver can't recover. What should you do in those case?

  • try to use the recovery range limitation feature to avoid the area that is causing a crash
  • if the lockup happens when Photorescue tries to guess the media size, you can avoid that phase by unticking the "Determine the card size box".
  • if the lockup happens at the end of a recovery, try to specify a card size that is inferior to the total card size by a margin that depends on when you begin to have trouble.

Will PhotoRescue work directly with my camera/printer/device ?

It may, but there is no guarantee that it will. Not all cameras or printers are created equal: some of them use the USB Mass Storage protocol, which is good. Others, unfortunately, either use a partial implementation of the USB mass storage protocol, use the WIA protocal (unusable for data-recovery) or even TWAIN drivers. This is why the recommended configuration for photographic media is always an external dedicated USB,Firewire or eSATA card reader.

I sent my card to XXX datarecovery service and they sent back pictures that will not load or display. Will Photorescue fix them ?

No, unless you have kept the original card/microdrive untouched, PhotoRescue will not be able to rebuild pictures from data that simply is not there. PhotoRescue can often recover data even after ill-informed attempts at data recovery have damaged the situation further, but it needs the original media (SD card, Compact Flash, memory stick, hard disk, etc...to be available.

How do I contact you?

DataRescue sa/nv
40 Blvd Piercot
4000 Liege
Belgium

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