Re: [Avid-L2] Not strictly Avid, but... CF card format recovery?

Really valuable information good to know. 113 is not terrible.

...sent via Droid. Please excuse any typos
On 2013-04-02 9:27 AM, "Tim Selander" <selander@tkf.att.ne.jp> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Thanks for all the suggestions. Turned out to be quite a chore.
> Said staff tried recovery on his own using Sandisk's free
> software. Mounted them on a Mac, which immediately wrote it's
> hidden 'dot' files to the cards -- Trash, Spotlight index, etc.
> What took me completely by surprise is that, unlike SD cards, CF
> cards have no write protect mechanism! So as soon as he put them
> on a Mac, they got written to, which apparently did some damage.
>
> Long story short, got most of it back.
>
> For posterity I'll run through the process I took; maybe it will
> help someone in the future.
>
> First tried recovery on Windows and Linux, hoping those OS's
> would not write unasked data to the cards.
>
> Linux
> 1) First did block copy of the cards (not OS level file copy...).
> That way I had backups to keep working with should the cards get
> further screwed up during recovery attempts.
> 2) Attempted to use the testdisk/photorec. Testdisk gets back bad
> partitions. It only found the newly formatted partition.
> Expected, I guess. Photorec is designed to find photos, it didn't
> find any of the .mxf files from the cards.
>
> Windows
> 1) Tried Recuva. www.piriform.com/recuva. Didn't find anything
> for me.
> 2) Tried Stellar Data Recover.
> http://www.stellarinfo.com/digital-media-recovery.htm No .mxf
> files found.
>
> Back to a Mac
> 1) Wondershare's Photo Recovery software advertised it's ability
> to find .mxf files, so I gave it a shot.
> www.wondershare.com/data-recovery/photo-recovery.html
>
> On 'Deep Scan' it found all my .mxf files. Recovered to a hard
> disk. However, most of the files had serious problems. Somewhere
> along the way, I've installed a codex that lets QT play mxf
> files. But multi gigabyte files played only a few seconds. Some
> files wouldn't open at all.
>
> Could not import into Avid.
>
> Discovered VLC 0.9.5 would play the mxf files with the correct
> lengths. But VLC cannot convert them to a good quality file.
> (Interestingly, I downloaded the latest VLC (v.2) hoping for more
> conversion options... and the new VLC cannot play the files!
> v.0.9.5 stays on my hardisk!)
>
> But that gave me hope to keep looking. Went through another bunch
> of software that claimed to be able to convert mxf files. Thought
> was to convert the mxf to something I could import into the Avid.
>
> Most software could not load the damaged files.
>
> 2) Finally found Pavtube MXF Convertor.
> www.pavtube.com/mxf-converter/ It was able to read all the
> files and convert them to Avid DNxHD 220 .mov files.
>
> Some of the converted files were still damaged, but the Pavtube
> software chugged through them all, at a pretty good clip.
>
> Final result, 127 clips found and converted, 113 successfully
> imported into Media Composer.
>
> Good enough.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Tim Selander
> Tokyo, Japan
>
> On 3/29/13 10:13 AM, Tim Selander wrote:
> > Bitten in the butt by the tape-less age we live in, once again.
> >
> > Our data wrangler formatted two CF cards that had not yet been
> > off-loaded. Shot with and formatted by Canon XF305. Have not been
> > touched/recorded to since the format.
> >
> > Other than a re-shoot, what are my best options for recovery of
> > the material on the cards??
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Tim Selander
> > Tokyo, Japan
>
>


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