Accidentally formatted my P2 card

MatthewC

MatthewC

Well-known member
Help. Accidentally formatted a P2 card full of footage. Didn't record anything else and flipped the record protection switch. Has anyone actually successfully recovered one of these, or is the only option to send it to Panasonic? Also, can someone recommend me a good program for making an image of the P2 card for backup purposes and restoration attempts with my own software? Thanks, any help would be appreciated.
 
After working with P2 since 2006 I would say - start re-shooting.

I have never seen or heard of anyone recovering P2 footage after formatting.
 
I've heard plenty of folks recovering something- though with varying degrees of success...

Noah
 
I guess you might be able to snag a few .MXF video files - but depending on what you shot.....
If it was some kind of never happening again event then it might be worth a try.....
If it was a video production of talking heads & b-roll - I would be honest with the client
and start re-shooting ASAP.
 
Yeah I'd definitely consider data recovery a hail mary pass- but it can and does succeed all the time...

Noah
 
The data is not gone as long as you dont rewrite. All you do is delete the references to that space being used. I accidentally formatted a 500 gb hard drive full to the brim. I got 100% back. If i had tried to put anything else on it and then deleted the second set of data i would have been SOL. I'm guessing Panasonic just runs it through a recovery program. I'd try it myself first. If you dont right over the data there is a very high sucessess rate.
 
Barry_Green said:
Panasonc service can recover data off formatted cards.
Click to expand...
Hey Barry. I did some research into this across the net and no matter what it seemed like Panasonic was really the only people who could recover a formatted P2 card. You cant recover single files or nothing, it does something to the FAT table and it loses all its reference points. I sent mine to Panasonic Canada, and they managed to recover 12 files for me. Kinda dissapointed, I write protected it right away and didnt film anything new, but its better than nothing, and best of all they didnt charge me for it. Great customer service.
 
MatthewC said:
Hey Barry. I did some research into this across the net and no matter what it seemed like Panasonic was really the only people who could recover a formatted P2 card. You cant recover single files or nothing, it does something to the FAT table and it loses all its reference points. I sent mine to Panasonic Canada, and they managed to recover 12 files for me. Kinda dissapointed, I write protected it right away and didnt film anything new, but its better than nothing, and best of all they didnt charge me for it. Great customer service.
Click to expand...
didn't charge u for it, thats great news
 
I've only just recovered a full 32gb P2 card on an old laptop and now have to rename the file types back to what they were to recover them. It'll basically be a trail & error process of elimination, should I be renaming them to .MXF ?
 
Newcastle - what software did you use to recover the data?

I'm currently taking my own crash course in P2 data recovery. Transferred footage to my workstations HD from a 64g P2 in my HPX170 the other night after a long shoot and must have been half asleep because for some reason I only copied the video .mxf's (bonehead move, I know the protocol of copying the Contents and Lastclip - but in my workflow with Adobe Premiere, I am used to just popping into the Video folder and selecting the .mxfs there when importing - so after a long shoot, my brain must have thought I was importing into Premiere rather than copying to HD...catch my drift?)

So today, I formatted the P2 card and shot some more footage - then realized when I was offloading what I had done. Which leaves me where I am now - I have all the Video .mxf's but no audio copied to HD. I did not fill the card completely today...about halfway, 30 out of 58.9 usable. What are the odds I might recover any of the audio .mxfs? The footage is an interview and b-roll, so if I could just salvage any of the audio from the interview clips I could match it with the footage I have.

No chance of a re-shoot, this was a customer testimonial for which we traveled out of state and if we can't salvage any audio we will have to call it a loss.

Am I, as my gut is telling me, completely SOL or might there be a glimmer of hope with some recovery software or even sending the card in to Panasonic?

Just thought I'd share my agony - any suggestions are a bonus. Be careful with your P2 data! I love these things - they make it so easy to shuffle large amounts of video data quickly - but also make it easy to shuffle that data into oblivion if you aren't thinking about what you're doing at all times.
 
I want to say you only one thing that if you recover all your data then there should not be any need to rename or change extension etc to your files and data because data recovery mean that you will get back all your data to the very last stage while you lost it, so that you did not recover your data in correct format.
I will suggest you to use Recovery Fix for windows memory card recovery software for the recovery of your data to the original state. It will preview your lost data from your p2 card in scanning and then gave you the choice to save all data at once or some selective files to your location.
 
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