Photo Recovery

While taking my first photography course at Algonquin, my instructor told us of a time when some of his photos got stuck on a memory card. He had a really hard time, but eventually got them off using some photo recovery program he purchased from the internet. He informed us that if we didn't want this to happen to us that we should format our card rather than use the 'delete all' feature on some cameras. This is because memory cards to do permanently delete photos when you use this feature so your card retains some of the data even though you cannot see the images. My dSLR only has the format ability and I therefore wasn't too worried about this happening to me.
I just finished posting a lot of photos from the Cottage 2009 trip and it was during this trip that I encountered my first problem with memory cards withholding images from me. I used two memory cards while at the cottage, and it was the first one I used that caused all the problems. I am not sure why it happened as I format this card a fair bit, but when I went to download the images from my 2GB Kingston SD card, both the computer and the camera informed me that the card needed to be formatted prior to use. In other words, I needed to delete all my photos to be able to get them off the camera. I wasn't too worried about this at first as they were just pleasure photos. It wasn't until I started to post the images for the Cottage Assignment 2009, that I realized that half of my assignment photos were on that card. I asked some people at work, fellow photographers and the IT guy, and everyone said to download a program from the net. When I got home, I searched, found and installed. I ran the scan and saved my images. I used the Stellar Photo Recovery program and was very happy with it. I have a feeling though, that any of the programs would have worked just as well. So now I have my photos back and if it happens to any else, this is a very good program - or just give me a call and I can try to help you out.