really corrupt .nef's - need help

[allybb]

First, I'm a super noob with this program so I have no idea what i'm doing! Got it working fine though I just don't even know if there is anything I can do for my files.

I have recovered .nef files that went through a format. I only took 6 shots over them (from about 180). Another card I will be recovering has no shots taken over it (can't recover that one yet b/c i need a new card reader). All the metadata was destroyed and exiftool thinks they are M2T files though the extension is .nef. They are about 40MB files so there is stuff in there! A different recovery gave me back 350byte size files that do read as NEF, but are obviously uselessly small.

I read the article by Felipe Ceotto which uses ExifTool that suggested it's possible to copy another image's metadata onto a corrupt file in order for it to be readable, albeit a bit screwy, but his script will not work with my files since they are lacking basic metadata. Is there anything I can do to replace the metadata? Any free recovery software that might put 2 and 2 together? Already paid too much on trying to fix this...

Thank you if i get any kind of response. I know it may be hopeless, but damn 40MB looks so hopeful!

[Phil Harvey]

If ExifTool doesn't recognize the file as NEF (or TIFF), then it can't be used to write the file, so what you are hoping for won't work.

Would it be good enough to extract the embedded JPEG images?  This has the best chance of success.  I have provided an extract_preview script which does a brute-force scan of a file and extracts the largest JPEG image.  This requires that you have Perl installed. Here are more complete instructions on how to use this script.

- Phil

[allybb]

Thanks. I had already used a program to extract jpegs out, but some of the shots needed major tweaks so I wanted to try my hardest to get back the raw files. I already finished the job with the jpegs at this point and it came out well enough. I'm just happy to have gotten anything back really so I didn't have to refund my client.