Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR) : A Free Tool To Recover Digital Images

Have you lost the only copies of precious photos and need to get them back? Recovering digital photos from CDs, hard drives memory cards, digital cameras, iPods and other players is one of the most common data recovery tasks. Digital storage media are quite fragile compared to photographic prints and digital camera users often make just a single copy of their precious pictures before deleting the original. This results in tragedy when the copy is lost or damaged and cannot be read.

If some of your irreplaceable photos seem to be lost, don't be distressed! Unless the medium on which they are stored has been physically damaged, there is a good chance that you can get them back.

There are many different photo recovery tools and general data recovery tools available and many of them use different techniques to get your photos back. If one product can't recover your pictures, another might be successful. You can eliminate some frustration by trying to pick the best tool for the job first.

If the images you want to recover are on a Flash memory card or in your camera or iPod then they can still be recovered using the same type of recovery software.

Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR) is as simple to use, but recovers the files that Recuva will not find, and does not charge a fee for image recovery (although they do have software to recover other file types for a fee).

ZAR’s install file is 2.53 MB, and takes just a few seconds to download on a broadband connection. To recover digital images from storage (typically a memory card) you need to connect the storage to the PC, download, install, and start ZAR, then follow step-by-step instructions below.

Step 1 - Download, install, and start ZAR. 

 When you run it, ZAR displays the window like the one below:

Click "Next >>"

Step 2 - Select processing mode

 Select "Recover images from a digital camera memory card"

Click "Next >>"

Step 3 - Select a physical device to recover

 Select the device corresponding to your device.

Note:

• See the "Type" column for the "Removable", because most likely your device is connected to the PC via USB port.
• You can use "Model" and "Capacity" fields to identify your device.
• If you are using a camera and it is not listed as the device available for recovery, you need to use a card reader device

Click "Next >>" to start the recovery run.

Step 4 - Recovery run

 This part is fully automatic. If you are using the camera to read the card and all the dots on the map are red, or if the scan is unacceptably slow (more than several minutes with no progress), discontinue the run, remove the card from the camera, then restart using a card reader device. Card readers tend to perform better.

Step 5 - Select the files to recover

Mark files to recover by clicking their corresponding checkboxes. To mark all files at once, just mark the "ROOT" entry.

Click "Next >>"

Step 6 - Copy files

 Enter the name of the folder for the recovered files.

Click "Start copying the selected files" to start file retrieval.

Note: Current version (ZAR 8.5) supports digital photo recovery for the following file formats: GIF, JPEG, TIFF, CRW (Canon RAW data), MOV, AVI movie, WAV, CR2 (Canon CR2 RAW format), ORF (Olympus RAW format) and most of the digital camera models.

Download Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR) HERE