PhotoRec is a software package designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks (HDD) and CDRom and importantly lost pictures from digital camera memory. By ignoring the recorded file system and examining the structure of the underlying data, PhotoRec will work even the media’s file system has been severely damaged or re-formatted.
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PhotoRec is a free, open source, multi-platform software application and is distributed under GNU Public License.
Naturally, once data or image files are found missing it also Important not to save any further data to the storage media as it may overwrite the missing data. To ensure no further damage PhotoRec has only read-only access to handle the damaged storage media data is to be recovered from. When files are recovered they much be saved to a different partition or drive.
Over 80 file formats can be recognized by PhotoRec including; ZIP, Office, PDF, HTML, JPEG and various other graphics file formats.
PhotoRec is a companion program to TestDisk which is another free, open source software application for recovering lost partitions on a wide variety of filesystems and can also make non-bootable disks bootable again. Both applications can be downloaded from cgsecurity.org.
Compatible Operating Systems for PhotoRec
PhotoRec will run on the following operating systems:
- DOS/Win9x
- Windows NT 4/2000/XP/2003
- Linux
- FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
- Sun Solaris
- Mac OS X
Photorec File Systems
Photorec can recover lost files from the following file systems as a minimum
- FAT,
- NTFS,
- EXT2/EXT3 filesystem
- HFS+
Media PhotoRec Recovers Files From
PhotoRec works with HardDisks, Cdrom, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SecureDigital, SmartMedia, Microdrive, MMC and USB Memory Drives.
PhotoRec has been successfully tested with the following digital cameras:
- Canon EOS300D, 10D
- HP PhotoSmart 620, 850, 935
- Nikon CoolPix 775, 950, 5700
- Olympus C350N, C860L, Mju 400 Digital, Stylus 300
- Sony DSC-P9
- Praktica DCZ-3.4
- Casio Exilim EX-Z 750
