Something About Data Recovery

As previously posted, my digital camera's memory card crashed on me. In Singapore and Tokyo everything was fine, but as soon as I got home I could not read anything on the card. When the card was in my camera I couldn't even turn it on. When I started the camera and then put the card in it would freeze up. Last weekend I found something on the internet called "Badcopy" This program specializes in finding lost data on a memory card. I did a scan of my camera (with the memory card in it) but it would only scan the internal memory on my camera. It actually found the very first pictures I ever took with my camera. My problem was finding a direct connection to my memory card. Hooking my camera up to my computer gave me a direct connection to my camera, but not my memory card. I was in Seoul on Saturday and bought a generic memory card reader. It was about $20. It reads 16 different types and sizes of memory cards (the official SanDisk reader only reads one type of card and is about $30). When I put the card in the reader it said I needed to format the card. I had always been told that formatting a card would permanently erase all data. I ran the scan without formatting and found nothing. I was out of options so I decided to take a chance on the formatting. I formatted the card and then ran the scan. 2 hours later I recovered every single picture I took in Singapore. I had originally thought that everyone of them was viewable but it turned out that 15 of them were damaged. Who cares? I had originally thought that I had lost all 200 of them. Most of the ones I wanted were okay. I tend to take too many pictures so the fact a few were lost is not a big deal. What I don't understand is why everyone cautions about formatting your memory card. I'm a walking testimony that, if you have the right recovery software, it is okay and it can actually help in saving your pictures. Now my memory card is fine. Yeee haaa! I'll try to have my pictures from Singapore up this week.