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OT - Recovery of NEF files from CF card

2012-12-26 by Kip Babington

Somewhat off topic, although any of my files that get printed are done 
in B&W, so . . .

Anyway, last night (Christmas Night) I took 150+ shots with my Nikon 
D70S.  All RAW files, stored on a Sandisk Extreme 4GB CF card, which was 
formatted in the camera before beginning.  About 60 of the files show up 
with a weird format to the file name - DSC_9:32.NEF, DSC_9:33.NEF, etc.  
The rest of the files have the typical file name format, DSC_9334.NEF, etc.

It appears that some of the files just have a colon replacing the second 
digit in the file name, and those files are unreadable in any software 
I've tried and cannot be copied from the card to the hard disk.  I've 
tried the XP file manager, an third party file manager, Lightroom, 
Breeze Browser, Fastone Image Viewer, Nikon Capture 4, and Photoshop CS5 
- none of them can see the images in the strangely named files, and some 
don't even see the file.

There are any number of "file recovery" software packages offered 
online, many of which offer a free look at what they can do, and several 
show images for all of the files on the card, including the funny ones.  
But all of the packages require purchase before you can download any of 
the "recovered" files.  I gather there are thumbnail images connected to 
NEF files, and I don't want to pay $50 for software that only recovers 
thumbnails.  (The pictures I print all end up as 8x8 inch B&W prints, 
some rather seriously cropped from the original, so a thumbnail won't be 
useful.)

SO - does anyone have experience with software that has been reliable at 
recovering corrupted NEF files from CF cards?  If so, what did you use?  
(I HAVE downloaded and backed up the "good" files, but have not done 
anything but read from the CF card

Thanks for any help.  These are among the most valuable images of the 
year as far as the family history is concerned, and if there's a way to 
save some or all of the ones with the funny names I'd sure like to.  
Willing to pay to get it done, but just want to be sure that it WILL get 
done if I pay for it.

Cheers,
Kip

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