Extract preview - no preview!

[Newbie10]

Hi

I am trying to use extract preview for a number of NEF files, from a Nikon D800.  Not sure what happened but some files on 2 memory cards seem to have been corrupted, and are smaller than the normal size.  I've tried fix_corrupted_nef.exe but that didn't work, and Exiftool gives 'File format error'.  So I'm trying extract preview (on Windows) but it won't generate any previews, either for the corrupted or uncorrupted NEF files.

When I run extract preview on one of the corrupted NEF files, it says '1 files processed, 0 previews created'.  When I run it on one of the larger NEF files (which should work as these are not corrupted), it says 'Use of uninitialized value $mask in vec at warnings.pm line 343'.  This is followed by 3 lines saying 'Found JPEG ..... (ignored due to Install Win32::API for proper handling of Windows file times).  I don't get a preview file generated for these ones either.

Just checking I'm using extract preview correctly? Any other ideas about how to fix the corrupted files, or does the file size being smaller than normal mean they are irretrievable?  The normal file size is around 44MB but the corrupted ones vary from 35MB down to 5MB.

Thanks

[Hayo Baan]

The fix_corrupted_nef.exe only fixes a really specific corruption caused by Nikon Transfer, it is not a cure for generic file corruptions. So in your case it would not work. I'm not sure why you get the perl error when you try to extract a preview, but I suspect there may be an issue with your install.

Anyway, the bad news is that it is very unlikely that you will be able to retrieve anything from your corrupted files. If you are lucky there might be a jpg preview in the files that is salvageable, but likely nothing more (if even that). if they are severely corrupted, however, exiftool will likely not work as it needs to have at least some of the structure in tact. If you post (a link) to one of your images, some of us might try to have a closer look to see if we can recognise a jpg preview in there.

[Newbie10]

Thanks for the reply - yes, it's probably bad news!  Anyway, I've uploaded a file here if someone can have a look:

http://expirebox.com/download/f3eae3b610e41388f4a47ed4d7adf919.html

Thanks again

[Phil Harvey]

I can't find any useful information in this file.  It looks like random garbage as far as I can tell.

- Phil

[Hayo Baan]

I had a look and didn't find a anything that might indicate the start of a JPG preview. Perhaps Phil finds something, but it looks like your images are lost 

Update: Phil already looked at your file and as he hasn't found anything useful, there really is nothing that can be salvaged 

[Newbie10]

Ho hum.  Thanks so much for looking into this for me.  Now trying to replicate the problem to work out why it happened in the first place, as it affected only some images on 2 cards.