Recovery of Images on Leica Q After Inadvertent Delete

[Portra400]

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While chimping a day's shoot on my Leica Q recently, I inadvertently deleted all ofthe images on my card. Still don't know what I did to cause it; maybe hit the

Delete All tab rather than the Single Delete tab while rushing through the day's

shoot? But whatever I did, by taking another shot, and then hitting the Play

button, all of the previously deleted images mysteriously reappeared along with thenew shot. Voila! Just like that!

 

Anybody have any idea what happened in this maneuvre? It is all very mysterious to me.Thanks in advance for for any insights any of you might have.I'm just grateful

to have the images recovered.

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[Iduna]

If you press the "delete" function, the files will not be deleted from the chip immediately. The can be rescued if you do not shoot new shots. The deletion is activated only when new shots a are being taken and old files being overwritten for lack of space.

 

Good that your pictures are saved.

[icantaffordleica]

Iduna, can you elaborate more on this?

I was walking down the street yesterday, turned my camera on C accidentally, and fired the shutter. When I went to view the image, I noticed I shot in C and tapped delete (I only had a few images of space left on my card and wanted to free it up) and accidentally tapped 'Delete All' instead of 'Delete Single'... I deleted all 350 images I had shot on the card

Is there a way a way to recover this? Other than a lot of ads for recovery software, I couldn't find anything useful from the Leica community about this on the internet. I haven't shot over that card yet (which seems to be in my favor?). If anyone has experience here, please let me know ASAP!

[nwphil]

search "SD memory card recovery" - yes, you are going to burn your eyelids a bit, but there a few worthy free applications and many paid for use or license.  Recovery can be obtained as a service provide by a specialized company, but they often way expensive.

With the paid software, take advantage of the trial version - it will allow you to see if it works or not

 

[Leica Guy]

Absolutely. Look for SD card recovery programs. I once “deleted” 600 images in a similar way. I recovered all. 
 

A key is do not take anymore images using that card until you’ve recovered all photos. 

[ruskkyle]

2 hours ago, Steven said:

+1

I cant remember the name of the app but once a nudist (that I hadn't spotted on a beach) made me delete a landscape photo (not my fault if someone decided to walk naked across it). I went home and was able to recover the photo. This was on an M10 + Sandisk SD.

😂 surely you could just as easily have walked over to him and demanded he put some clothes on...

[icantaffordleica]

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On 3/10/2021 at 9:09 PM, Leica Guy said:

Absolutely. Look for SD card recovery programs. I once “deleted” 600 images in a similar way. I recovered all. 
 

A key is do not take anymore images using that card until you’ve recovered all photos. 

Which program did you use?  

[icantaffordleica]

On 3/10/2021 at 7:20 PM, nwphil said:

search "SD memory card recovery" - yes, you are going to burn your eyelids a bit, but there a few worthy free applications and many paid for use or license.  Recovery can be obtained as a service provide by a specialized company, but they often way expensive.

With the paid software, take advantage of the trial version - it will allow you to see if it works or not

 

Any sense why you'd use a paid vs free?  It was ~300 images lost and if I can cull them I'd probably only want to recover a few.  Don't really want to spend an arm and a leg to do that, ideally can do free.  Thanks for your thoughts!

[nwphil]

well, the trial one's likely will have a file size limitation , as output, file type and allowed amount of data to convert - after all it's a trial

the interface on the free one's might be less intuitive.

A paid version, might come as a perpetual license, or limilted time subscription, with ofcourse matching costs 

 

you have to look around what's available, as there's always new stuff...and some gone, then find honest and reliable feedback.....and finally figure out how much those pictures are worth in time and money spent.

not easy....or very simple if results are more important than overall cost

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Leica Guy]

18 hours ago, icantaffordleica said:

Which program did you use?  

Honestly, I don’t remember and it’s been more than 10 years ago. Likely much better programs now. I remember I had to purchase it. I’d guess $40 USD. Good luck. 

[convexferret]

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

 

Free and cross-platform, and it works. Unfortunately the interface is text-only so unless you're comfortable at the command line it might not be for you.

[RoySmith]

I remember when Sandisk memory cards came with a coupon for their file recovery software.

It may have been this one.

[Peter Gallagher]

Deleted file recovery seems to be one of those areas of software development — like ‘virus protection’ — that attracts developers who make overblown claims for (literally) flashy and expensive software that has one trick but makes a meal of it.

A while ago I had erased maybe 30 or so shots of the family; not a big deal but annoying. I wanted something simple that would demonstrate its capacity before I had to fork over my money for a program I hope I’ll need just once. Most of the ‘free download’ trials would scan the card (several taking an hour or more to scan 128 GB!) but none would demonstrate actual recovery of any file before purchase. I didn’t want to pay the ‘going rate’ of more than $A100 for an untried, one-trick pony.

Eventually I found TestDisk (https://cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk): free to use, quick, transparent operations — but a command-line program for Windows, Mac OS (including the latest version, Catalina), Linux and several flavours of Unix.

I installed the software on my iMac in seconds using the wonderful HomeBrew package manager (https://brew.sh).

Command-line software can be awkward, especially if you have to use a bunch of arcane command arguments. But TestDisk is menu-driven once you fire it up. It comes bundled with an alternate interface named “PhotoRec” that I invoked with “sudo photorec” at the command prompt followed by my log-in password (it needs to run in Administrator mode). 

After that, its a matter of choosing menu items with the cursor buttons and selecting the file-types you want to recover from a (long) pick-list. Selection, by convention, is made with the space-bar. You’ll need to know the path to the SD card on your computer (I used the Mac Disk Utility program to check this: an SD card is usually listed in the ‘device’ tree at “/dev/disk...”). You’ll also need a directory not on the SD card where TestDisk/PhotoRec can store the recovered files.

TestDisk/PhotoRec ran more quickly than most of the other recovery software. Sill better, it recovers the files *while it scans* so you can verify the recovery as it churns away. Just for fun, I let it run for about 45 minutes during which time it recovered about 600 erased .ORF RAW files from my SD Card.