Great info for stupidity

Going into my 2nd wedding for the season and just completing my first the week before, I knew I was approaching the fine line of having enough cf cards, or not... I brought along my laptop just in case I did need create more cards, on the run. The proceedings were going well as the ceremony was approaching. I knew I was getting roughly 55 to 60 images per 512 mb cf card and I saw I had shot around 30. I figured now was a good time to switch to my one and only 1 gig card as the ceremony was beginning. I also decided not to flip my card I was just shooting to designate that the card was full. I was planning on finishing the card off after the 1 gig was full. The ceremony ended and I started on shooting the reception line when the 1 gb card was full.

So... I go back to the not full 512 card I has just used previous and by habit..., I went thru the menu to start to format it... It did click in my head that I shouldn't format it, but my fingers went thru the motions and poof, images are gone... The moment I took my finger off the last button, I knew what I had did. Feeling really sick at that point, I turned the card to flip it and rotated it a quarter turn to designate that card was THE card I should no longer touch. Through out the wedding, I kept getting that feeling and thought I really fucked up. I knew I had some important family formals on there, and though I recreated them as best as I could remember in other locations, I was never sure I recovered everything. Also, I got killer portraits of the bride on that card. In the battle of trying to recreate those shots, I overexposed them over a stop... Fucking HELL!

Anyway, to the chase. I come home and do a search of data recovery institutions as well as software. The institutions no doubt charged both arm and leg, but some of the software seemed reasonable. Also, many of the software allowed you to recover thumbnails, as a trail. If you were able to recover the thumbnails, you more than likely were able to recover the entire file. I tried 3 and only Photorescue brought back all but 3 files. The other companies rendered nothing. btw, I also recovered files I had shot way back last year. I think how this works is if you format the card and not overwrite on them, your In like Flint. Otherwise, at least with Photorescue, your images are in fact gone.

Proof that it works!!!