Finally got my old photos off that defunct cloud service after 6 months

Found a free tool called 'PhotoRec' that scans the raw drive, and it pulled out every single jpg from my account they said was gone forever. Has anyone else had to dig data out of a dead corporate system?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaretramirez1mo ago

PhotoRec is actually a read-only tool, it doesn't write to the drive you're scanning. That's its main safety feature. You point it at a copy of the drive or the drive itself, and it just pulls files out without changing the original data. It's been around for years in the recovery community.

martin.riley1mo ago

That "free tool" approach can be a real gamble though. You're lucky it worked, but running unknown software on a drive with your last copy of data is risky. It could overwrite the very files you're trying to save. Sometimes paying for a professional recovery service is the safer bet, even if it costs.

the_brian1mo ago

I've used PhotoRec a few times myself and it pulled through every time. Never had it mess up my original files since it just reads the drive instead of writing to it. If you're nervous, make a full disk image first and run the tool on that copy instead.