One thing I’d do before following the usual scan flow from @mikeappsreviewer or the image-first route from @sterrenkijker: check the camera brand’s own recovery behavior. Some bodies only mark entries deleted, others rewrite folder metadata more agressively after bursts, dual-slot ops, or in-camera “delete all.” That affects what recovery app finds.
So my order would be:
- leave the CF card out of the camera
- lock it if your card has a physical switch or use a reader that won’t try anything weird
- note the camera model, file type, and whether deletion happened in-camera or on computer
- connect once, confirm capacity looks normal
- if capacity is wrong or it mounts super slow, image it first
- if it mounts cleanly and this was just a normal delete, I *might* scan first to save time
Slightly disagree with the “always image first” crowd. For paid work, yeah, imaging is safer. But on a healthy card with a simple delete, a single read-only style scan in Disk Drill is usually fine and faster. The key is not doing five differnt scans with five tools.
Also, after recovery, verify the files in an actual RAW editor, not just thumbnails. Thumbnails can fake you out.
If you need extra reading, this CF card photo recovery discussion with practical recovery tips is worth a look too.
Main thing: recover to another drive, then don’t trust that CF card for client work again until you’ve fully tested it.