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