With cards memory getting bigger and bigger it makes sense to start thinking the unthinkable - what happens if a card gets corrupted? What if you accidentally delete your precious images or you format the card before transferring them to your computer? On a 4GB card that can be a pretty serious mistake. Even if you know that you're never going to do anything stupid with your data, it makes sense to have a plan in case the worst happens.
Image Recall have rebranded themselves as “Don't Panic” and have brought out new versions of their software. The Photo Edition is out now and will be followed by a Gaming edition, a Mobile Edition and an MP3 edition. They are all compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Vista. Mac users will have to wait a little longer.
The details from the company say that Don't Panic is the fastest software in its class and recovered 350 lost images in 1 min 53 seconds while a “competitor's” software took nearly 6 minutes. I may be old fashioned, but if I lost 350 images on a 2GB card then 6 minutes sounds entirely reasonable to recover them - actually I don't care if it takes all night as long as I can get all my files back! What is nice to see in the software is a friendly, easy to use interface and simple steps to get your data back. Any catastrophic loss is practically guaranteed to happen late at night when you're tired and a big friendly button to press looks like great design to me. The software is also apparently able to recover practically any type of file off almost any type of media which is good.
Whether you need to buy recovery software ahead of time is up to you but if I lost data then I'd download trials of all the software around and see what they could recover. Don't Panic would be a good one to start with because it stresses that the original card is never touched - you can burn a copy right to CD/DVD and then start to worry about recovery.
A free trial is available at the Image Recall website.
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