Retrieving lost photos

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Guest

I'm still looking for the photo folder I lost a month ago while copying the
folder to a CD. After doing a systems search I found thumbnails of the
pictures in the following hidden file: Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\OIS\thumbnails. The only problem is the thumbnails are
totally attached as one sheet. Does anyone know how they can be restored to
indivual files?

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Thumbnails are not the original full resolution pictures. (obviously)

A simple copy of a folder to a CD should not result in the loss of the
folder, unless you have an automatic delete after copy option set somewhere.
(may be convenient, but a very, very bad idea!)

There are some things that might recover the folder, but they depend on the
folder actually still existing, and not having been overwritten.

What application did you use to write the folder to a CD, and did the folder
and contents actually get written?
There is also a possibility that the image of the folder still exists as it
was (to be) written to the CD.

It's also a very good idea to have the verify option set in the CD burning
program to help prevent total loss. Generally, it's safer to have the CD
Burn program set to write to an image file first, rather than directly to
the CD.
 
I shall try to answer your questions so that you can, hopefully, determine
whether there is any way to recover the folder. I was using Windows Explorer
to transfer a photo folder to a CD which I have done successfully numerous
times, and I do not have an automatic delete set for copying. Unfortunately,
this time I hit "move folder" rather than "copy folder" and the process
started. However, very shortly an error message (which I couldn't read)
briefly flashed on the screen and the folder disappeared. It was not written
to the CD and was not in the temporary file for burning to CD but it was gone
from My Pictures.

After doing a Systems search using *.jpg and including hidden files, the
sheet of thumbnails show up in the file described. Is a recovery program
likely to help in this situation where files disappear rathern than being
deleted?!!
 
They were likely written to a temporary file, name unknown. The file may be
in a temp directory, and also may be hidden. Since a month has come and
gone, the likelyhood of recovery is low, even with an undelete program. It's
worth a try since you may be able to recover some of the picture files.
Something is better than nothing. If you have any utilities that do disk
cleanup, and they were run between the time of loss and the present, you can
expect that the picture files will be unrecoverable.

Your situation is not unique. and I'd suggest that you consider using a
reliable CD burning program in the future.
 
Thanks for your response. But if the files were in a temporary directory,
even a hidden one, wouldn't they show up in the systems search I did in which
I included hidden files? What undelete program would you use?

Is there no way to convert the thumbnails I've seen (as described in Local
Settings) back to full resolution pictures?

I appreciate your time in addressing my problem.
 
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