V1.02
Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
Page 501
Image Recovery
Nikon’s manual says that deleted images cannot be
recovered. They can, but not easily, and
only
if you take
immediate action.
If you accidentally erase an image (or more) on a card, set
that card aside until you can access it with your computer.
Put the card into a card reader on your computer and use an
image recover utility program such as PhotoRescue
(
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/
) to recover the
deleted file before doing anything else with the card.
Many higher end CompactFlash cards, such as the SanDisk
Extreme IV, come with programs (RescuePro Deluxe in the
case of SanDisk) that can also retrieve images.
Image recovery like this (usually) works because the act of
deletion doesn’t actually remove the data for an image, it
simply marks the space used by the file as available. Thus, if
you write additional images to a card after deleting a file, you
often can’t recover the deleted file, as the D300 may have
used the space for the new images.
Dealing with Folders
I’ve dealt with it earlier, but it’s worth repeating here as we go
through the PLAYBACK menu options: the D300 uses folders
to organize images stored on the CompactFlash card. Because
the D300 follows the DCF digital camera standard (Design
Rule for Camera File Systems) agreed to by most
manufacturers, there are limitations on folder names and
locations.
If you do nothing (i.e. don’t use any of the options on the
Active folder
selection on the SHOOTING menu), the D300
creates a root folder named
DCIM
, which in turn contains a
sub-folder named
100ND300
. The first 999 images stored on
the card are stored in that folder, then a new folder named
101ND300
is created and the next 999 images stored there.
This process of creating new folders every 999 images
