Here is how you try to fix broken pictures and videos.
Here is how you try to fix broken pictures and videos.
Some pictures and videos might act like files even if they aren't perfect because some parts are missing or broken. Computers can't guess what's there on their own without special AI help. If you show a computer half a dog, it won't know the rest unless it learns from past examples. It knows how poodles look in general, but not if your specific dog has a blue collar or that the face was like this. You might have a photo of yourself next to Mr. T where some parts turned black or looked scrambled. The computer can see Mr. T, but it doesn't know who you are and can't fix your part of the picture. I learned something important from all these mistakes: now every file we use is going to be saved safely in more than one place so no matter what breaks, someone can get a copy back.
@USAFRet Actually, I already did a regular and a deep scan with Recuva. https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva/download None of those scans found any files according to its rules. And since other recovery programs work like that, they can be skipped for now. But as mentioned before, I'll try again with your Open Source link soon.
Hi again! I know you guys started this a while ago, but since I promised to share the results from your Autopsy program, here is what happened. I used the tool to find all the pictures and videos on my external hard drive. When I looked at the little preview images (thumbnails), most of them actually show up correctly and work fine in different programs. But there are some files that got damaged or corrupted. In Autopsy, those broken ones look like a white blank space instead of an image. If I try to save those files later or open them with another program, it won't work. Also, if I right-click on the bad file and choose "Inspect" from the menu in Autopsy's External Viewer, nothing happens either. So, I think those files are unreadable and probably gone forever. That is a good thing because I only ran into these problems occasionally while checking thumbnails. The bad part is that there aren't many of them total, but they do add up to about 10% or maybe up to 15% of all my images and videos on the hard drive. Anyway, thanks so much to everyone who helped and took their time sharing solutions for this problem. Have a great day!
To help me in the future: what's your backup plan for home things? What if you don't have one? Every day I see posts online asking how to get photos back or why a drive isn't working. It happens with dead drives, lost phones, viruses, or bad formatting. Check forums.
You are wrong about something important here. I did NOT lose those files because I was careless or because my backup died. The truth is that I lost them because of two main reasons: first, I am a kind person and always try to help others with their tech problems right away; second, someone took advantage of my kindness by asking me for help when they really needed it and did not say thanks. To be clear, this person had trouble making graphics work on her computer while she was working late instead of finishing the assignment on time. She pushed bad behavior onto me because I tried to save her from stress in a very short amount of time. I was running an old system when that happened, so I had to format and reinstall the new one before installing all those graphic programs. It happened at night, like really late at night. I usually check my backups carefully and make sure everything is copied before I do anything important for myself. But that same day, I made a silly mistake because of her pressure: I forgot about my digital camera folder, which was hidden deep inside the folders structure. After running the formatting tool for maybe five minutes, I suddenly remembered this and stopped right there. That saved 85% to 90% of all my image and video files that are still here today when I scan them with Autopsy. If you learned one thing from this story, it is that I will never EVER let someone pressure me into helping them out within hours so they can use the good part of my nature for free. I do regret everything now, but at least I know exactly what not to do anymore.