CardRaider: IT DISAPPEARED!
You just captured the best photo of your lifetime. This is the photo that will win you the Pulitzer. When you are done with your shoot, you begin to delete all the unwanted pictures off your camera before you are back to your Mac. Upon arriving home, you find that the picture to end all pictures is gone. Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? Well, the solution to that problem is CardRaider from Ecamm Network. It is a simple app which ‘raids’ your card to find deleted files.
When you delete a file from a memory card, it isn’t actually removed from the card until it is overwritten; all that happens is the card forgets where those bits of data are stored. CardRaider works by putting those bits back together to reform your lost pictures!
The App itself is extremely simple. There is the option to do a one-click scan and save, in which it scans your card, and saves everything to a selected folder. If you don’t want all the photos saved onto your Mac, you can let it scan, then pick which photos you want to be saved.
CardRaider can also export to directly iPhoto. This works with iPhoto ‘08; however it creates a new ‘event’ for every photo. You can also choose to simply preview the photo. This is especially useful if a photo is only partly recoverable, to see how badly damaged the file is.
In my experience, it has recovered all my photos fully, with no data loss; however, my advice is to run CardRaider as soon as you notice a photo is missing, to minimise the risk of losing it.
CardRaider also does another job. It can permanently delete a file from the card, so that even apps like CardRaider can’t find it! This may be useful if there’s an embarrassing photo on your card *ahem ahem*, since as we now know, even when it’s deleted, it’s still there.
CardRaider supports JPEG and many Raw formats like CRW, NEF etc. For a full list. check out this chart on Ecamm’s website. I recommend giving the demo a run before you buy, so that you can be sure it supports the format you work with the most.
The demo limits you to downloading ‘Preview’ files, which are very low resolution. The app only costs $19.95, which is well worth it if you can save that perfect shot! It is available from Ecamm Network here.
OR you could do this for FREE with the free alternative app, exif untrasher (for mac)
I lost my card. Got anything for that?
@ Dave… Hadn’t seen that one, but i have had a quick look - personally i feel that CardRaider is worth the extras, as ExifUntrasher makes a huge (the size of your card) DMG before it even starts, however, it’s free and if you don’t have the $20 to spare, it’s a good option!