Bad jpg images _ HELP!

[thecaveman]

Hi Guys,

Have a problem with a bunch of jpgs that i have on an external HDD. I cannot view the images. In preview mode all i get is a message saying that no preview available, in IE6 i get a small red cross in the top left, and in Photoshop i get a message about a bad/invalid jpg marker??

All i did was to move the images from my pc HD to a portable one. Never had this problem before and now i don't know what to do. All the other images on the portable HDD seem to be ok, its just that one particular folder.


Is there anyone out there that can help?

Thanks in advance....

[bob_g]

Are the file sizes roughly the same as the ones that work? I'd suspect they got borked in transit, and often you then end up with truncated or even zero-byte files.
If non-zero, open one with Notepad (do NOT save afterwards ;-)). Somewhere in the first line of gibberish you usually see the text string "JExif" with a valid JPEG. If that is missing, the file is /probably/ nadgered beyond repair.

Bob.

[liaeb]

sounds like they've been corrupted during copying.. is the device cache setup for quick removal? did you use the safely remove hardware option?

still there's loads of jpeg recovery software out there, have a look about!

[thecaveman]

Bob, no that line of text that you were saying is not there....

Liaeb, I didn't use the safely remove option, the external hard drive was turned off after the pc was switched off.

Not sure what to do as i have tried a recovery software from work and all it does is to recover the pictures that i can already see, it does not recover the corrupt ones...

Would a system restore do any good at this point??

[liaeb]

system restore would be pointless!!
if you cut the jpg's from your desktop to your external caddy then if theory they still exist, DO NOT write anything to the desktop drive at all and use some form of undelete software to scan the drive.. if you have no software installed to achieve this task then i would avoid installing one on the same drive as where you cut the jpg's from as this will increase the risk of the clusters containing this data getting overwritten, use something like a live cd (hiren's or miniPE) to scan the drive.. this is you best bet's
if you didn't cut them then what you moaning for?! re-copy the same files over to the external drive again

[thecaveman]

liaeb thanks for the help. I have sorted the problem now. I got some recovery software from my work and used that to do a full recovery of eveything on the partitioned drive where the pictures were stored in the first place.

From what i saw late last night, most if not all the images have been saved.:emot62:

Thanks again for you help. I think now i will be saving my files to a DVD disk first before moving them. Lesson learned!

[Over Carl]

And tick the option in nero (or whatever you use) to verify the files once written to cd/dvd

May take a few minutes, but if the data is irreplaceable, might as well make sure.