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Memory Card Overwrite.... Anything I can do?

CookieTheArch

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Hey Guys! Just got back from a fun trip and tried to pull some of my drone photos; best I've ever taken. But it seems they got overwritten.... any insight that anyone can offer?

Here's what I did... Took the shots on Monday evening. Just gorgeous; canyon, petroglyphs, crew shots... So great. They were taken using DJI Go 4. When we got to camp, I took the card out and put it into my phone to show everyone. Put the card back in the drone. Put the card back into the drone, then yesterday grabbed a few modelling sequences using Pix4D Capture. Then a movie an some photos using DJI GO 4 toward the end of the day. All I got were the late-day movie and photos and some of the modeling shots.

There is an unbroken chain of photo/movie numbers (starts at DJI_0001 and continues through DJI_0197), so it appears that each app restarted the count and over-wrote photos. This leaves me 2 questions. First, has anyone encountered this type of problem before? Second, is there anything I can do to get my original shots back, or are they just gone forever?

It's been a while since I posted; I was planning on showing off a few of the canyon shots, but that might might not be feasibly anymore. Thanks guys!
 
You original shots have been overwritten. There are some places that may be able to forensically retrieve IF the data is still there.....

You can set the ac to "continous" mode, as in the image and video numbers will automatically increase, even when you pull the card out, and insert another. This is found in the DJI Assistant I believe. It's been so long since I did it.

I don't understand why it is not set a default....
 
Yeah, me neither. Well, bad news is still news. That sucks. I'm seriously about to cry. Those were the best pictures I have ever taken. They weren't terribly important thankfully, but still really cool. Not worth sending out for forensic retrieval; that sounds expensive lol

I'm downloading the DJI Assistant 2 right now, for other reasons but it's good to know. I'll play around in there and change the setting.

Dammit...
 
Try photorec, you might have luck.

You original shots have been overwritten.
That's completely wrong in the context.
File numbering "Reset / continuous" only applies to/resets when an empty card is used (either was empty before you inserted, or you manually formatted in the aircraft).

I do not know of any normal camera erasing or overwriting anything without your consent, so OP must have made a manipulation error at some point. There is nothing you could do with multiple apps to get files overwritten on the aircraft card.

My guess would be he hit the "format" button on his phone instead of the "unmount"/"disable" one before removing the card from his phone the first evening. They're next to each other on many android phones, and it's easy to tap the wrong one if you're not paying much attention.
 
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I can guarantee that I did not format the memory card. I didn't do the full "Unmount from Phone" deal, but the phone was off when I extracted the Drone Memory card.

More than that, I was just looking through the photos themselves again more closely. I lost an entire Pix4D project. In Pix4D I set it to fly a circular mission for a point model, landed, then flew a double-grid mission over the same area for a different model. Later in the day, I flew a small test mission at high altitude (different story) using DJI GO 4. Literally what I have are the photos from the last mission (restarted at DJI_0001) which end at DJI_0007. DJI_0008 starts 8 shots into my second (grid) model mission.

There is something weird going on where my photos are getting overwritten; I will not rule out user error, but if that is the reason I have no idea what I could be doing.

Please help
 
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You change to continuous in djigo4. Unde camera settings. I agree it should be the default.

You might try a windows program called “ get data back”.

I have used it to pull images off a card that was reformatted. But not over written.

Paul C
 
I tried photorec, per @Kilrah's suggestion; unfortunately it wasn't successful. I got plenty of deleted photos, but not the overwritten ones. (Excuse me while I go cry for little bit). Oh well. Asi es la vida.

I'll work on changing those settings right now. Well, after I make more coffee

Do you know any reason why it would have defaulted back to that? Was there an update recently? I have used the drone in this same fashion before and never had this issue. One reason I'm so upset by it
 
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Try photorec, you might have luck.

That's completely wrong in the context.
File numbering "Reset / continuous" only applies to/resets when an empty card is used (either was empty before you inserted, or you manually formatted in the aircraft).

I do not know of any normal camera erasing or overwriting anything without your consent, so OP must have made a manipulation error at some point. There is nothing you could do with multiple apps to get files overwritten on the aircraft card.


For a moment I was worried. I've filled up a memory card before and no for sure it doesn't overwrite anything while in the drone. Think it just gives you a message saying memory card is full and allows you to record the screen footage/photos onto your phones memory.
 
Has to be finger trouble I'm afraid. There's no protocol I know of that automatically overwrites files like that except when you're using a cache function and you aren't. Are you?
 
@Youser I'm definitely not filling up the memory card; I had less than 200 photos on a 128gb card. I don't think you can make photos that big haha

@Thwyllo It definitely could have been sloppy fingers, but I'm not sure how. I'm going to check the settings once I'm done with work today and figure it out from there
 
Well as I'm sure you know, there's only one thing (or rather two) that permanent deletes data like that. One is a FULL format, the other is when data is stored to cache - that can be overwritten if the instruction is to do so when cache is full, but of course it's only creating temporary files, not full ones like you had with your jpegs for example.

A QUICK format or a DELETE file instruction normally only removes the file header, leaving it to be found by most file recovery utilities, IF the space taken by the deleted file data hasn't been overwritten by other data, but the fact you found and retrieved earlier deleted files would imply that isn't happening in this case.

So even if you QUICK formatted or accidentally deleted files, the data would still be largely visible on such a large SD card. A FULL format would normally trash everything including earlier deleted files.

The only unknowns are (1) whether you inadvertently formatted the card in the drone from the DJIGo app, and (2) whether that default format is a Quick or a Full format.
 
Once again the setting will not change a thing. Regardless of it the aircraft never deletes or overwrites anything unless you tell it to.

I would replace the card for good measure, can't fully rule out it's jsut faulty as well.
 
In the go app set it to do continuous save's then this won't happen again sorry about that man.
 
Didn’t the photos save to the dji app? I have mine to save hd quality. Either way a low quality picture should have saved.
 
Hey Guys! Just got back from a fun trip and tried to pull some of my drone photos; best I've ever taken. But it seems they got overwritten.... any insight that anyone can offer?

Here's what I did... Took the shots on Monday evening. Just gorgeous; canyon, petroglyphs, crew shots... So great. They were taken using DJI Go 4. When we got to camp, I took the card out and put it into my phone to show everyone. Put the card back in the drone. Put the card back into the drone, then yesterday grabbed a few modelling sequences using Pix4D Capture. Then a movie an some photos using DJI GO 4 toward the end of the day. All I got were the late-day movie and photos and some of the modeling shots.

There is an unbroken chain of photo/movie numbers (starts at DJI_0001 and continues through DJI_0197), so it appears that each app restarted the count and over-wrote photos. This leaves me 2 questions. First, has anyone encountered this type of problem before? Second, is there anything I can do to get my original shots back, or are they just gone forever?

It's been a while since I posted; I was planning on showing off a few of the canyon shots, but that might might not be feasibly anymore. Thanks guys!
You may want to try something called Piriform Recuva, there's a free version on their website. If the files haven't been overwritten at the block level on your card they might be forensically recovered. That's your best bet.

I hope that helps, good luck.
 
@ccoltmanm No, they didn't. I don't have it set up to automatically sync.

@MavicJohn85 I tried Photorec, but it just got me the deleted ones. I'm just going to chalk this one up to a loss. I'm heading out again this week to get some new photos and video, so while I'm sad to have lost those ones I have opportunities to grab new and exciting stuff!

I found the camera setting to change to continuous photo counting. Going to test that before heading out. Worst case, I have one 128g and three 64g cards. I have plenty of photo rotation space, and can bring my laptop/cell phone to transfer photos to save them. I'll make something work Thumbswayup
 
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