Spotlight On . . . ImageRescue 3

Some of the multimedia storage card makers bundle lite versions of image recovery software utilities with their storage cards—the software is usually found on a mini-CD. If you've ever tossed one of these little discs into the garbage, bad on you. ImageRescue 3 is the full version of Lexar's utility. It's designed specifically to save the sanity of digital photographers by recovering lost or deleted image files on storage cards, repairing corrupted cards, formatting cards, securely erasing them, and even checking the Lexar web site for updates to the firmware in the storage card and automatically updating it if new firmware is available. Who knew? People do funny things with digital camera storage cards including attempts to format them, delete files, and move things around on them while they're jacked into a multimedia card reader attached to a PC. That's all well and good, but these cards often work much more reliably if you just leave them in the camera and use a cable to connect the camera to your computer. If you use only the camera to format your storage cards, it's unlikely you'll ever lose a file. But if you regularly move cards back and forth without reformatting them when they're put back into the camera, chances are you'll eventually need ImageRescue 3 or something like it. The interface is simple, offering an appropriately short list of options, which is a good thing because in an emergency the last thing you want to see is a user interface full of choices. We tried ImageRescue 3 on half a dozen corrupt and otherwise flaky cards ranging from some older 256MB SD cards to an 8GB CF card and everything in between—MMC, miniSD, MS, and so on. The photo file recovery rate averaged about 60% — not great, but worlds better than 0% recovery in the absence of any other utility to do this kind of butt-saving work. We got the best overall results using the Low Level Search option. At US$30 ImageRescue 3 is a bit pricey, and it's designed mainly just for Lexar cards, but we still say that no digital photographer should be without it. 4 out of 5 stars