The sun returned, I was pretty sure it would.

I reformatted the card (takes about a half second) and re-shot.
It didn't take very long to re-shoot since I remembered what I liked from the previous session.

Never tried any other recovery software so this thread doesn't really offer a solution to the problem in the title.

Sure it does: give up and try again.

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I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...