Case from service practice: Accidentally formatted flash drive

The client came running with shaking hands: * “Master, we took test shots before buying the D810, and the seller accidentally formatted the card right in the camera! I recovered NEF files using Recuva, but the programs do not see EXIF. Mileage lost?"*.

Don't panic. Even formatted or partially damaged memory cards can extract MakerNote service tags.

How does resuscitation of MakerNote bytes work?

1. Why does the recovery program often confuse the headers:Utilities like Recuva or R-Studio restore the frame body, but sometimes lose the TIFF header byte offset (`0x4949` or `0x4D4D`).
2. Our deep parsing algorithm:Especially for such cases, our online service includes function of scanning a binary file by signatures. The algorithm does not trust the header, but looks for the signature `Nikon\x00\x02` throughout the body of the damaged frame.

What to do if the file does not open as an image?

Even if the corrupted `.NEF` file does not appear on the screen as an image, the MakerNote binary section (where the tag 0x00A7) remains unharmed in 90% of cases! Upload such a “broken” file to our service - we’ll get it out anyway real shooting of the shutter.

EXIF Recovery Probability Table

File status	Does the picture open?	Chance to extract ShutterCount
Recovered after SD formatting	Yes	100% (Data intact)
The file is half damaged (gray stripe)	Partially	95% (Frame header intact)
Null file (Size 0 KB)	No	0% (File is empty)