30 October 2010
Photographs are visual records of our lives, frozen in time. Photos can have sentimental value; they are reminders of time spent with family and friends. They are visual records of our children, from birth to adulthood. How many times have you gathered around the kitchen table, reminiscing about important family events while poring over photo album after photo album? The advent of digital photography has kindled an upsurge in personal photography, from casual, candid photos taken with a camera on your phone to keepsakes to be passed on to future generations, shot with high end digital cameras. Digital photography allows us to store hundreds, even thousands, of these memories on our personal computers. But this also brings with it the possibility of lost digital photos.
A corrupted digital photo may not be recoverable with conventional, off the shelf, software.
Suddenly, Disaster Strikes!
There are many scenarios that can lead to lost digital photos. A sudden hard drive failure can leave your photos and other documents inaccessible. Suddenly, all the photographs of your children playing with their grandparents have vanished. A corrupted file renders the digital video of your wedding unusable. Somehow your USB memory stick was washed with your clothes and now the photos are locked inside. You may have accidently deleted a favourite photograph and it’s nowhere to be found. Can you ever recover your lost digital photos?
Lost Digital Photos Can Be Recovered
Thankfully, the answer is yes, your photos can be recovered. There are several pieces of software that can be used to recover your lost digital photos. Many manufacturers of flash drives will have software available for download, either for free or for a fee. The majority of these programs, however, can only recover files that you have deleted. Pressing the delete key on your computer doesn’t actually erase the file from your drive; it merely removes the link to the file to make the space it takes up available again. A corrupted file may not be recoverable with conventional, off the shelf, software. And in the case of a hardware failure the game has changed; you cannot even run the recovery software. Now it’s time to call a professional who specialises in data recovery.
The Benefits of Professional Photo Recovery
Professional data recovery specialists like Kingdom Data Recovery have many tools that are not available to the casual computer user. The specialist will have data recovery software, but it will be more powerful, so even corrupted files can be recovered. Mechanical hardware failures can also be overcome by the data recovery professionals. The recovery of lost digital photos and other files on a failed hard drive will necessitate the dismantling of the drive to access the storage media inside. This should not be done on the kitchen table; is it a delicate procedure, done in a contaminant-free environment to ensure that no further damage is done.
