Recovering Photo Metadata: EXIF, Timestamps, and Location After a File Is Restored

Recovering the pixels is half the work. Getting the EXIF block, capture date, and GPS back is a separate problem — critical for legal, insurance, and archival contexts. This guide covers where metadata survives after recovery, how to re-embed it without corrupting the image, and tools that preserve metadata during the recovery process.

Key Topics Covered

• What EXIF metadata survives file carving vs file system recovery
• Re-embedding EXIF data from sidecar files after recovery
• Timestamp reconstruction from filesystem MFT records
• GPS coordinate recovery from photo library databases
• Legal requirements for metadata preservation in evidence
• Tools that preserve vs strip metadata during recovery export