HELP! Need to recover accidentally deleted footage from a Canon XA10!

[seajackson93]

Hi team,

I borrowed a camera from work to film a concert back in December and I thought I had already saved the footage across......so I then deleted said footage before returning the camera to work, only to discover a week later........they're gone! (obviously). I use 3 other cameras for this job, except the footage I need is from the main camera that I kept as a stationary Long Shot.....which was going to be my main source of footage for the edit I'm putting together.

Now, this camera has been used heaps of times for various projects over the last 6 years at least, so my question is: do you know of a recovery program that allows you to recover only a few files at a time? Because with the programs I have, they're trying to recover 6/7 years of footage AT ONCE which will take FOREVER to download. I only want to recover the 6 I stupidly deleted!!

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

[shadowsports]

This is simple.  Like a PC or Mac when you delete a file or clip from internal memory or storage, the system marks this space as avaiable.

If something else is recorded or saved and overwrites the areas used previously, the previous data is 99% of the time GONE.  If its been over written many times, definitely GONE. 

[seajackson93]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply! Fortunately no one has filmed anything on this camera since I deleted the files. I just wanted to know if there’s a really good footage recovery software that you know of, that allows me to only recover the most recently deleted files instead of all the previously deleted files? Because this camera has been used mannnnny times.

Thanks!

[kvbarkley]

You can't because the software does not know the date of the data it finds.

[BurnUnit]

I seem to recall that the last few times I've used freeware file recovery software for still images, it usually scanned the disk or drive looking for any files that might be recoverable. It then produced a list of files that it found, sometimes with a thumbnail image, and let you select the files you wanted to try recovering.

I would assume that the higher the file numbers, the more recently those files were created. Selecting your files that way might save you some time compared to just trying to save everything on the disk or drive in question. But depending on the size of the drive it may still take a while to search out everything that MIGHT be recocerable.

[seajackson93]

Thank you for your reply! I actually found the file names on iSkysoft data recovery software, however when I recovered or downloaded them, they came up as footage that was already on the camera. So it’s like it tricked me into thinking I downloaded the footage I needed. I triple checked the names of the missing footage against the file names the software “recovered” and they were right.......they just came up as the wrong footage. Which was a shame and a waste of money.

do you happen to know of any other trustworthy data recovery programs?

kind regards

[BurnUnit]

I've had some luck using the free version of Recuva for recovering still image files. It seems to also claim to detect video files but I've not had any first-hand experience in that area.

Consider only downloading the free version from the Piriform website instead of thru a third party site.

[communitylad]

Tragically i've just done the same thing.

Did anyone have any luck with this? I've had a guy look at it and he was amazed that he couldn't retrive any actual video content, he did a scan and found files but the data was unaccesible. 

Should I cut my losses or is there anything else I can do?

[BurnUnit]

First and foremost, DO NOT WRITE ANY MORE DATA TO THIS CARD.

Are files on a full sized SD card or a Micro SD used with an adapter? Did you "erase" the files accidentally or did you "format" the card? Formatting it will probably reduce the chances of recovery, but it's still worth a try.

Have you tried the free version of Recuva that I mentioned above? Are you trying to recover just couple of large video files or a bunch of smaller clips? If Recuva (or similar) doesn't work on one computer, try it on another computer or maybe a different operating system. If it finds any files it seems like it will let you recover most, if not all, of them. For still image files I recall that it even might let you recover damaged or truncated files in some instances.

[communitylad]

First and Foremost THANK YOU ever so much.

Neither I was recording onto the internal memory of the camera which is 64gb and it was an accidental deletion (absolute fool I know). I will try Recuva tonight on my computer and as you advice on another, if not i'm considering sending it to an agency. Worthwhile? or cut my loses, apologise to relevant parties and hang my head in shame. 

Cheers again