PEF Recovery Software (disappointments)

bdparker · 03-21-2012, 03:53 AM

OK so I made the mistake of editing some photos directly from my SD card, and was dumping images that were unacceptable and got a little carried away and deleted an image I needed.....

So I did my research around the forums and decided to try my luck... first I tried Recuva and sure it look like it worked (nice thumbnail image of the PEF file) but when I went to edit it, it was garbled trash of several stacked images..... I'll come back to questions on how other people do it with 100% sucess...

then i moved on to try REF Recovery which is actually Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery..... Will after much hype from their website and the proverbial "try it free" I did.... after several hours of deep scanning, their software came back telling me it had successfully recovered all my photos (even those at least 7 formats ago from the start of the year). I was impressed.. so I went looking through my directories for my photos (I changed the selection to only the three I wanted) and couldn't find them... Looking at the dialogue box which was still open, it tells me to press next to complete the recovery and it now tells me that i really want my photo "I HAVE TO PAY FOR THE SOFTWARE" $39.00 US thank you.

Well I too a leap of faith, think i was on a roll (since it claimed to be a 100% Pentax PEF recovery utility) and purchased it. And guess what.... the same garbled unusable photos appear. what a wast of money.

So I sent a complaint to the shopping cart provider asking for a full refund... and today I received my refund in full

Back to my question, what software as anybody and 'Fully Editable' success with recovering PEF files???

derekmadge · 11-06-2020, 08:40 AM

Originally posted by bdparker

OK so I made the mistake of editing some photos directly from my SD card, and was dumping images that were unacceptable and got a little carried away and deleted an image I needed.....

So I did my research around the forums and decided to try my luck... first I tried Recuva and sure it look like it worked (nice thumbnail image of the PEF file) but when I went to edit it, it was garbled trash of several stacked images..... I'll come back to questions on how other people do it with 100% sucess...

then i moved on to try REF Recovery which is actually Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery..... Will after much hype from their website and the proverbial "try it free" I did.... after several hours of deep scanning, their software came back telling me it had successfully recovered all my photos (even those at least 7 formats ago from the start of the year). I was impressed.. so I went looking through my directories for my photos (I changed the selection to only the three I wanted) and couldn't find them... Looking at the dialogue box which was still open, it tells me to press next to complete the recovery and it now tells me that i really want my photo "I HAVE TO PAY FOR THE SOFTWARE" $39.00 US thank you.

Well I too a leap of faith, think i was on a roll (since it claimed to be a 100% Pentax PEF recovery utility) and purchased it. And guess what.... the same garbled unusable photos appear. what a wast of money.

So I sent a complaint to the shopping cart provider asking for a full refund... and today I received my refund in full

Back to my question, what software as anybody and 'Fully Editable' success with recovering PEF files???

I know this is an old thread and I have not had this problem to solve. But just reading that original post had my stomach in a knot the entire time of The Saga!

Not a Number · 05-31-2021, 01:16 PM

Try photorec - free with no nag screens. Recognizes PEF.

PhotoRec - CGSecurity

File recovery programs try to piece together files from the file tables. Failing that they'll try to recover any recognizable data. In the case of Raw files this could just be the preview JPEG or the TIF compatible raw image data. If the file is fragmented on the card or fragments were overwritten there is only so much partial data that can be recovered.

Photorec does the best job of any of the file recovery tools I've tried for finding PEF but it can't work miracles if there are many fragmented or partially overwritten files. You may have to face up to the fact that the images are irretrievably gone.

03-21-2012, 03:53 AM	#1
bdparker Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Melbourne Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 307	PEF Recovery Software (disappointments) OK so I made the mistake of editing some photos directly from my SD card, and was dumping images that were unacceptable and got a little carried away and deleted an image I needed..... So I did my research around the forums and decided to try my luck... first I tried Recuva and sure it look like it worked (nice thumbnail image of the PEF file) but when I went to edit it, it was garbled trash of several stacked images..... I'll come back to questions on how other people do it with 100% sucess... then i moved on to try REF Recovery which is actually Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery..... Will after much hype from their website and the proverbial "try it free" I did.... after several hours of deep scanning, their software came back telling me it had successfully recovered all my photos (even those at least 7 formats ago from the start of the year). I was impressed.. so I went looking through my directories for my photos (I changed the selection to only the three I wanted) and couldn't find them... Looking at the dialogue box which was still open, it tells me to press next to complete the recovery and it now tells me that i really want my photo "I HAVE TO PAY FOR THE SOFTWARE" $39.00 US thank you. Well I too a leap of faith, think i was on a roll (since it claimed to be a 100% Pentax PEF recovery utility) and purchased it. And guess what.... the same garbled unusable photos appear. what a wast of money. So I sent a complaint to the shopping cart provider asking for a full refund... and today I received my refund in full Back to my question, what software as anybody and 'Fully Editable' success with recovering PEF files???

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11-06-2020, 08:40 AM	#2
derekmadge Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ontario Posts: 113	Originally posted by bdparker OK so I made the mistake of editing some photos directly from my SD card, and was dumping images that were unacceptable and got a little carried away and deleted an image I needed..... So I did my research around the forums and decided to try my luck... first I tried Recuva and sure it look like it worked (nice thumbnail image of the PEF file) but when I went to edit it, it was garbled trash of several stacked images..... I'll come back to questions on how other people do it with 100% sucess... then i moved on to try REF Recovery which is actually Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery..... Will after much hype from their website and the proverbial "try it free" I did.... after several hours of deep scanning, their software came back telling me it had successfully recovered all my photos (even those at least 7 formats ago from the start of the year). I was impressed.. so I went looking through my directories for my photos (I changed the selection to only the three I wanted) and couldn't find them... Looking at the dialogue box which was still open, it tells me to press next to complete the recovery and it now tells me that i really want my photo "I HAVE TO PAY FOR THE SOFTWARE" $39.00 US thank you. Well I too a leap of faith, think i was on a roll (since it claimed to be a 100% Pentax PEF recovery utility) and purchased it. And guess what.... the same garbled unusable photos appear. what a wast of money. So I sent a complaint to the shopping cart provider asking for a full refund... and today I received my refund in full Back to my question, what software as anybody and 'Fully Editable' success with recovering PEF files??? I know this is an old thread and I have not had this problem to solve. But just reading that original post had my stomach in a knot the entire time of The Saga!

05-31-2021, 01:16 PM	#3
Not a Number Moderator Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Venice, CA Posts: 10,526	Try photorec - free with no nag screens. Recognizes PEF. PhotoRec - CGSecurity File recovery programs try to piece together files from the file tables. Failing that they'll try to recover any recognizable data. In the case of Raw files this could just be the preview JPEG or the TIF compatible raw image data. If the file is fragmented on the card or fragments were overwritten there is only so much partial data that can be recovered. Photorec does the best job of any of the file recovery tools I've tried for finding PEF but it can't work miracles if there are many fragmented or partially overwritten files. You may have to face up to the fact that the images are irretrievably gone.