Photobucket Deep Recovery: the whole account, one ZIP
Deep Recovery is the upgrade for a whole Photobucket username: it crawls every archived album with no batch cap, packages the originals as one ZIP with a provenance manifest and a BBCode/HTML rewrite map, and resumes where it stopped. You buy it once — never a subscription. Single images and small batches stay free. Its honest ceiling: it still cannot conjure a capture the archive never took.
Deep Recovery isn’t open for purchase yet. Single images and small batches stay free forever — start on the recovery tool.
Free vs. Deep Recovery
| Feature | Free | Deep Recovery |
|---|---|---|
| Batch size per run | up to 25 images | no cap (still throttled, so big runs just take longer) |
| Username mode | a 25-image sample of one account | a full crawl across every archived album for that username |
| Provenance manifest | per-file capture date + archive link on screen | a manifest.csv (original URL, timestamp, archive URL, digest, bytes) |
| Rewrite map for forum repair | not generated | old-URL → archive-URL → suggested rehost filename, as a downloadable map |
| Resumable runs | one run at a time | queue state saved locally, so a long crawl picks up where it left off |
| Cost | free forever, no signup, no email | a single one-time unlock — never recurring |
How the purchase works
Checkout is run by a merchant of record, so they collect and remit any VAT or sales tax — we never see your card. You complete one purchase and receive a license key by email.
Paste that key once and it unlocks Deep Recovery in this browser by storing the unlock locally. There is no account to create and no key ever leaves your machine except to be checked against the merchant.
Be clear-eyed about what you are paying for: this is friction, not DRM. The Wayback CDX API is entirely public, so a patient person can do every step by hand — and we will not pretend otherwise. The About page links the do-it-yourself route and the official CDX documentation. Deep Recovery sells the hours and the packaging, not secret access.
Refund terms are handled by that same merchant of record under their policy; since checkout, receipts, and refunds all live with them, a refund request goes through the merchant, not us.
What can't be recovered
- Still gentle on the Archive
- Uncapped does not mean fast. Every fetch still routes through the same two-at-a-time, 500–900 ms throttle, so a thousand-image account simply takes a while — the pacing meter says so the whole time.
- It cannot create what was never captured
- A full-account crawl finds every archived image, but never-archived albums stay unrecoverable here and everywhere. Where only Photobucket's own paid restore can return a photo, that path is theirs, not ours.
FAQ
Questions people ask
- Is Deep Recovery a subscription I have to keep paying for?
- No. It is a single one-time unlock with no recurring charge and nothing to cancel. The free single-image and 25-image recovery never expires whether or not you ever buy the deep tier.
- What exactly lands in the ZIP when I crawl a full username?
- The recovered originals foldered by album, plus a
manifest.csvlisting each file's original URL, capture timestamp,web.archive.orgprovenance link, digest, and byte size — so every image traces back to its source capture. - Could I just do all of this myself for free instead?
- Yes, and we say so openly. The
CDXindex and the raw-bytes endpoint are public; the About page links the manual route. Deep Recovery automates the crawl, dedupe, ZIP, and rewrite map you would otherwise assemble by hand. - How do refunds work if a crawl finds nothing for me?
- Refunds run through the merchant of record under their stated policy. Because never-archived images are gone for everyone, we recommend running the free recovery first to confirm the archive holds your captures before you upgrade.
- Does the rewrite map fix my forum's broken images on its own?
- It hands you the swaps to make. Archive links are the quick fix; the durable one is rehosting the recovered files on the forum's own attachments. The entire-forum guide shows both routes and when to pick each.