I recently had a hard drive crash. My backup was a 300 gig external drive. The only problem is I let a friend borrow it to move some files. He deleted the files and put about 6-10 gigs worth of files on the drive. Not sure why he deleted it but moving forward I got the drive back and wanted to try to recover the files.

I tried some freeware package called undelete plus. It found some 5100 picture files.. which is all I really wanted. I selected to restore them and it seemed to put all the files and folders on the location I specified. The only problem is I can't open the files, it says they are corrupted. The files are named correctly and there's information in them. They're just not opening up.

Maybe free software isn't the way to go. Does anyone have an experience in this?

Edit: I think I put this in the wrong place... sorry.

did you save the files to the same hard drive?

No I saved them to a separate harddrive to not over write anything.

You have seen your pictures in preview mode, but you can't open them. The software has only recovered the embedded thumbnail and the header.
Well, free software is not an option in your case.
For your case, for example, I have my own custom tools to collect data from the drive, even fragmented, then reconstruct the JPG completely with all the tags (date/time of the picture, camera model, metadata etc.). Usually this leads to a full recovery, except on the overwrtitten areas. It's not for free and the solution is not for sale. If you don't want to spend, you have to work it out by yourself.

No clue what you mean by this statement.

If you look through BlackST's posting history, you will understand that he prefers you to pay him for the knowledge. I am sure he's not alone.

I am pretty sure photo_rec would do the trick just as well, which is free. If it doesn't, well, then you are in the realm of data reconstruction, and paying us absurdly high hourly fees. That is what he was implying.

Thought this was some type of community site. Didn't realize it was an advertising for personal services site. Either way I used Search and Recover 5 and got a good chunk of the files back. I'm just going to hold on to the drive until I want the pictures enough to pay a good chunk for the work or some type of firmware replacement software comes out.

Hobnob, this is a community site. It is important to remember that the community is about sharing. While BlackST did not seem the most helpful person to you, he did allude to a very important point. The data is recoverable. The difference you will find with this site, is you are asking people to give you the methods that they spend many years developing. That being said I will take you a step further than the other posts. Winhex will provide the method to recover your photos. You can compare the good JPEG files with the bad ones in winhex and find your method of recovery. Each case is different, it would be like a doctor telling you to make an incision 14" below your nose to work on your heart. The answer is there in front of you and with a little research you can figure it out.

You didn't get it. He/she is completely unaware how stuff works and want either to be guided step by step or a name of a software to download then click "recover my photos" next, next, done. This is what they mean forums are made for. Winhex means a world to us, not to common people. They usually only know two options: warez and someone else doing it for free. I feel kinda sick.

With respect, but photo_rec is exactly that... Run and watch it work. I do hope he tries it.

You have a very overinflated opinion of yourself. I was looking for some feedback on software products since I'm unfamiliar with them. I wasn't looking for a final solution of hitting next/next and magically everything is good. I am intelligent enough to exhaust any option I'm capable of doing prior to seeking a professionals help.

My background is I'm a professional engineer so I am quite competent in knowing 'how things work' I was messing with Hex editors about 20 years ago so that's not a new front to me either. Bottomline is if I feel the data is that important I will pay someone to retrieve it. So far I've been informed that Payam Data Recovery (www.payam.com.au) can do it for $675 AU and that they actually just repaired the drive and sent it back to the customer.

I'll try PhotoRec just to see if it recovers more than Search and Recover 5. Then I will charge $ for that information... or I'll just post it here to inform the next person who is curious about photo recovery software.

If you were an engineer and you already knew how to use a hex editor and also knew how JPG or RAW files are organized, you should have checked it before. This is not the right place for reviews about commercial or freeware software, there are TONS of other forums about this argument. And maybe it is absolutely uncomfortable. Everytime we discover and say that the OP is too lazy to search or want a one click solution for free, it comes out that the OP is an engineer or works on a DR company or have 50 years of experience in IT or so. And this doesn't match.
I know a lot of so-called experts that "fix" every malfunction formatting the system disk and reinstalling the OS from scratch. Do you call them experts ? In Spain there is the term "chapuzo" or "chapuzero" to indicate a person that does a botchered job with no proper tools or have another solution "JOE-WILL-FIX-IT" style instead of the professional one. Even if you are an electronic engineer you won't know about some deep insights of HDDs or about how files are organized, and there's nothing bad in it. The fact you came here says it all, unless you are pissing us off or have time to waste.
And, finally, trust me: often is better to hide the truth saying no more than talking /typing and leave no doubts.
(this is in response about the overinflated opinion).

The sane goes 'Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt'.

I think your English is a little off and trying to play the mini game of deciphering is giving me a headache. Pointing out that I was a computer engineer (mix of computer science and electrical engineer) was to inform you that I wasn't as you put it; "He/she is completely unaware how stuff works".

Outside of BlackST less than tasteful banter everyone else here has been great. By coming to this board I learned that the harddrive I had was prone to firmware issues. I also learned that a place in Australia can fix it for below $500. Finally I learned that there may be some solutions in the future.