Real recoveries, real customers. We publish a new case every few weeks — what broke, what we did, and whether the data came back. Names are shortened for privacy.
It was 11 p.m. on a Saturday. A wedding videographer Peter in Madrid messaged us: rushing to prep cards for the after-party, she had formatted the wrong CFA card — the one holding the entire ceremony, 128 GB of footage from a SONY camera, not yet backed up anywhere. The problem In-camera format, full card, zero backup, and a client expecting a highlight film in three weeks. On the good…
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A father of two from Toronto wrote to us the day after returning from a two-week trip to Portugal. On the flight home, while freeing up space on the camera, he had selected what he thought was one clip — and confirmed "Delete All" on the card instead. The problem One tap. 80 videos and about 400 photos gone — beach days, a birthday celebration on the last night, the…
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A travel photographer in Melbourne plugged her Micro SD(TF) card into a MacBook Pro after a three-week shoot in New Zealand — 128 GB of landscapes, timelapses and a once-in-a-trip drone session she'd already copied to some of it. Instead of the usual Finder window, macOS greeted her with the dreaded dialog: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." Three buttons: Initialize…, Ignore, Eject. The problem This…
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A commercial pilot in Singapore was flying a resort promotional shoot when a gust of wind sent his drone into a palm tree. The drone survived with a cracked propeller. The footage did not — at first. The problem The last flight's file — a 12-minute 4K/60p MP4 from a DJI aircraft — showed a healthy file size (about 6.5 GB) but refused to play beyond the first two seconds.…
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This one arrived with a note that began: "Two other services already told me this is impossible." A broadcast crew in USA had been recording a 90-minute live panel with a Sony camera in HEVC. Halfway through, a venue power cut took down the camera mid-write. The problem On the CFA card, the recording existed as a single 78 GB .RSV file — Sony's temporary "recording-in-progress" format. RSV files have…
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A documentary shooter from Berlin contacted us on a Sunday evening, clearly stressed. During a fast card swap between interviews, she had pulled the SD card from her Canon R5 a second too early. The camera had not finished finalizing the last clips. The problem On the card, the last recording appeared not as normal MP4 file, but as .DAT file in size 0 KB — Canon's temporary container that…
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Videos shot on a Canon C70 camera turn into DAT file instead of MP4. You may find that one footage became DAT file on the memory card, although this DAT file shows a valid file size, maybe 8 GB or 20GB, it cannot be played, transcoded, or imported into editing software. In more severe cases, the DAT file may show 0 bytes and occupy no storage space. If you encounter this issue,…
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Video became RSV instead of MP4 This is a case, MP4 video can not be found, instead of it, it shows a .RSV file on memory card after recording video with SONY camera. Although the RSV has actual size, but it cannot be played, trans-coded, or imported into video editing software. Please don’t worry too much if you are facing this problem, we have a solution on repair the RSV file. What is…
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Video was not finalized on Camera I need help with repairing a RSV file 78 GB, I was shooting a DJ set and my A cam created an RSV file instead of MP4. I used a software to repair it but it plays horrible missing so many frames in between. The set is 1 hour and 30 min long. Can you repair it? One SONY user sent us message for…
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