How to Recover Images from CF Cards

First specified and produced by SanDisk in 1994, CompactFlash card is a mass storage medium used in portable electronic devices. CF cards are divided into two: Type I (3.3 mm thick), and Type II (5 mm thick). They find popular utility as storage media in digital cameras.

Using, for storage, flash memory in a standardized enclosure, CF cards are non-volatile and solid-state, and therefore are more robust than disk drives. They consume around 5% of the power required by small disk drives, and still have reasonable transfer rates of over 45 mb/s for the more expensive 'high speed' cards.

In spite of the fact that they are protected by built-in dynamic defect management and error correction technologies, CompactFlash cards can easily get mishandled, data in them maltreated, or some accidental keystrokes or clicks of the mouse to make some fateful error causing data loss. Luckily, data lost or deleted from these cards can be recovered by a data backup process. However, if it is not available or it cannot help, you need to use some special digital image recovery software.

Suppose, you have formatted your CF card which contains images, accidentally or mindfully. Latter you find that you cannot afford to lose those images, because they are of great importance to you. But you are helpless, for they are gone and lost, no matter how important and irreplaceable they are.

Luckily, there are two options available to ensure your image recovery. First, try to run a data backup process. Make sure you fix your recovery point to a date and time earlier than that of your formatting the card. This may solve the problem. Note that you should not write any data in the formatted card or take any picture using the same, because there are great chances of your invisible data getting overwritten. Overwritten data can never be recovered.

However, you often find yourself in situations when this simple facility cannot serve the purpose. Now, you will need to use certain specifically manufactured image recovery utility. Programs to ensure image recovery employ highly advanced methods and algorithms to cater to complex digital image recovery needs of the time.

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery v3.2 comprehensively recovers lost digital multimedia files of various formats from almost all storage media even after formatting. Compatible with Windows and Apple Mac operating systems, this digital image recovery application saves the recovered data in a user-specified location without modifying or overwriting the original files.