mike, I always learn something from your comments...you are well-versed in so many topics! May I ask what software you recommend for backups? Thanks...

Gilbert Roland, sure it can recover it if the 1 byte is wrong in the image data of the photo.

Gilbert Roland, "1byte" overwrite is just a single byte corruption of a JPG file and most JPG files can survive "1byte" worth of damage in several places within the JPG file format... if the corruption is in the Exif data you won't normally see any difference in the recovered image, if the data is in the JPG JFIF header it could break the JPG header recognition by the recovery program or the JPG rendering due to invlaid data breaking the decoder but it is also possible to have a JPG with corruption in one of the cells which may result in visible decoding error on a small square in the image. But a single byte corruption is often a non-issue with JPG files, now a single complete overwrite of a JPG file or ANY other file type or raw data on a drive is with current technology unrecoverable by any software or known lab technique. Most JPG files contain usable data even when truncated by a significant amount!

Bob, something else is other data!

TK, Photos that are damaged after repair are no longer of interest to me. Even if it is only a small square that does not belong in the picture.
Or media files that Windows says, "Can not play the file because it is damaged or the necessary codecs are missing". Or Media Player Classic, "can not render".

M. H., Photos that are damaged after repair are no longer of interest to me. Even if it is only a small square that does not belong in the picture.
Or media files that Windows says, "Can not play the file because it is damaged or the necessary codecs are missing". Or Media Player Classic, "can not render".

That depends on where the damaged part is located! If the damaged part is on your face, it is not worth it to repair it with MSPaint.

Gilbert Roland, it depends on the size of the damage. If it's really only a single byte, you might not even notice it (because each pixel is made up of a 24bit RGB value). Even if the damage is several bytes in size and thus would be visually noticeable as wrong pixels, it's normally not too hard to fix this in a more evolved image editor (e.g. GIMP). It all depends on the importance of the image for you. But yeah, better have a backup in the first place.

Gilbert Roland, As I said... 1 byte change within a JPG file does NOT automatically make a JPG file unusable if the location is not in a place that breaks the JPEG encoding of which there are MANY places in a JPG file that can be changed and produce not validation or visual changes in the use of the file. You are now trying to move the goal posts. Your orriginal claim which was entirely wrong and logically proven so: "As with any recovery program, Photo Recovery can not recover when a photo is overwritten by 1 byte due to something else." remember? Next you'll say that if the meta-data such as Exif or other meta-data standrds data is not identical to the original you aren't interested in those either... well you never said "I am not interested in any image file whose content has been changed by 1 byte!" If you had we would have just shrugged and thought silly person... but you are entitled to your own choices no matter how wasteful and unprovable... unless you SHA-256 every image file you ever have processed and compare every recovered image file to confirm the hashes still match... even then it is mathematicaly possible to have a single byte change or more that might cause a SHA-256 hash collision... The only way to ensure the recovered file is an EXACT copy of the original file bit for bit is to have a copy of the original file... in which case why bother trying to recover or test the image data on the media where the file was lost from... It all seems rather futile and pointless just accept whether you meant exactly what you wrote in your original comment or not it was not true, sorry. There are also recovery methods that search for file type specific headers and then simply read out a specific number of expected logical clusters in excess of the original files size and then let the program that uses that file type to read the valid data out of that recovered file and the recovered file is completely different in terms of size and content but is completly valid data and can be used just fine... Is that not of interest to you either? oh well!

Gilbert Roland, LOL MSPaint... don't be silly... use something that has a clone facility even a free editor and even if the corruption is in the facial area it may be possible to perform an invisible repair if skin defects cn be removed on a daily basis by marketing companies even a determined amature can remove a faulty pixel or two!