Accidentally Formatted 5D CF Card
While I was doing a bit of filming the other night of The Coronas in Marley Park with the lovely Canon 5D mkII, I did something I thought I’d never do. Myself and Alex had shot all our cutaways and had just spent the last 3 songs in the pit, using a variety of lenses to get some really nice stuff….so we’re backstage, and I go to the menu to check how much space was left on the 16GB CF Card..and my brain farted. I moved the dial over one notch to ‘OK’ and in one push of a button I saw ‘Formatting Card’ and a nice, quick formatting progress bar.
This is something I’ve joked about in the past with fellow filmmakers and photographers alike, how could Canon make you go one click away from wiping your card, just to check how much space you have left to shoot video?
Ok, so I did it…And I almost panicked..One of the thoughts in my head was, get back out into the crowd and just start shooting. But instead, I turned to my mate Peter Neill, who was taking photos, and told him what I had done. He told me, “put the card in your pocket, and we’ll try to recover it later…DO NOT shoot any other footage on that card..” Wise-words it turns out..I was so in shock I just might have gone out and shot more footage, thinking that there was no way back from a format. A delete all, yes….but a format? Surely all is lost, right?
Got home and tried a host of recovery software, CardRecovery and Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery to name a few. Nothing worked. Each successfully “recovered” the video files, but the .mov files wouldn’t open in Finder, VLC or even MPEG Streamclip. So at this point I was really worried I’d never get the videos back.
Then I stumbled across this: PhotoRec
Open Source, multi-platform, FREE….
Worked like a charm! Got all my 1080p .h264 videos back.
I’m sure Stellar Phoenix and the rest do a great job recovering photos, but if you mostly shoot video on the 5D, make sure you use PhotoRec.
So if you ever stupidly do what I did….
- Take the CF card out immediately
- Use PhotoRec to recover your files
- Sigh with relief
Leave a Comment
Instagr.am
I’ll never forget your face when you told me, as long as I live
July 24, 2011 ·
It was probably similar to what it would be like if we were both on the stage, waiting to accept an Academy Award, and I turn to you and whisper…”I think I’ve literally just sh*t my pants..”
July 24, 2011 ·
THANK YOU so much for this blog! I had almost given up ALL hope after trying to previous image recovery programs… This worked a treat and I recovered all the videos off my 5D after formatting it! Wish I’d found this blog before going to bed last night… Would’ve made for a good night sleep. Thanks again!!
August 28, 2011 ·
your very welcome. Glad it helped you out mate
August 28, 2011 ·
it seemed to work, I was so happy to see the videofiles coming back, but only later I realized it had recovered ‘only’ something of 17 gig of almost a full 32 gig CF-card .. It seems it cannot handel the big files (bigger than 2 gig, probably splitting up) and some smaller files too .. : (
any other options someone?
September 16, 2011 ·
Just did the exact same thing today! Left my camera into Conn’s Camera’s in town and am waiting to hear back if they recovered it tomorrow. If what you say is true I am a very very very happy man. I couldnt believe I did it. The exact same thing as what you described. Why the F%$K don’t they have an “Are you sure” thing majig!
October 13, 2011 ·
Shit, just read the comment above mine.. So is it always the case with larger files?
October 13, 2011 ·
Hopefully you’ll get all your files back. Iv only tested this once (thank God) and it worked 100% recovering every single frame. In fairness though, my clips would have all been well under 2GB each, so if ppl are having trouble with larger files that’s a pity. If anyone out there has a better solution, would love to hear it.
October 14, 2011 ·