Corrupted Pictures

[lostdataguy]

Ok, here it goes..... I purchased a 200 GB external USB hard drive about 2 weeks ago and everything seemed fine. My main hard drive crashed but thank GOD I backed up all my pictures on my backup drive. Then the unthinkable happened. I installed a new hard drive but whn I installed XP Pro it would not recognize my USB external drive. My only choice was to reformat the drive. Then I found your software that found every single file that was on the disk pre-formatted. My problem is that most of my 100's of picture (jpegs) cannot be opened. I see them all in the thumbnail view but when I try to look at them in the review pain it sometimes shows only the top of the picture or it says "Drawing Failed". Please tell me I am doing something wrong in my settings and I didn't really lose these pictures. Thanks for any help you can offer

[GDH]

It sounds like your photos are slightly corrupt.

The first thing to do is to try and open them with Irfanview. This is a free product which can be downloaded from http://www.irfanview.com/. It is good at opening and saving corrupt pictures.

[lostdataguy]

Thanks for the quick reply. I tried irfanview and many other apps but they all show the picture with just the top showing and the rest greyed out. WHen I use your software I notice that my drives show up twice. Do I look for the files on the one that says physical next to it or the other one?

[GDH]

Please make sure you are using the latest version of RMF - click the Update button on the main program screen.

First try the "Fast Format Recover" and let me know what happens. Search the "phsyical drive".

[lostdataguy]

I am using RMF v3.98. When I ran the fast format search it finds all my pictures but when I click on and try to review it in the preview pain, it shows a blue messge box saying "Corrupted File Preview Not Available".

[GDH]

OK

Now try running Complete File Search of the pysical drive for the relevant graphics file types only. This search will not bring back the original names. Click on the files found to see if they preview.