Gutted after deleting photos from SD card. Possible to retrieve?

David Matthew

Hi guys,

I'm not sure if this is the most appropriate forum to post this, but last night I deleted the contents of my SD card, mistakenly believing it to be backed up elsewhere. About 200 photos from a holiday.

I've heard that software exists that allows you to somehow retrieve files, even if they've been deleted? Would this be possible with an SD card (which shows up as removable storage within my camera when I connect via USB)? I didn't format the drive, just deleted the contents via Windows Explorer when it was connected to my PC.

Any help really appreciated.

coolpix23

Found this in 10 seconds using Google

http://www.ehow.com/how_7310102_freeware-restore-sd-cards.html

David Matthew

Thanks so much! :D:D

I'm too delighted to care about how stupid I was not to have googled it myself, so no offence taken! (for now...)

yoyo

Recuva or PhotoREC will do the job. When you format a memory card, data is just marked for overwriting, once no data has been written to it, most of the photos will be recovered fine, you may be in a spot of bother if the camera (unlikely) writes some data to the card after formatting, or if you took new photos and saved them onto that card.
The key to recovering from a wiped drive is to copy the files onto another drive, as obviously if you try to recover onto the actual drive you will overwrite data in the process!

Good luck

Nick

CaSCaDe711

+1 for Recuva :cool:

David Matthew

Thanks a million guys, I'm going to try that software today.

cargo

I've used Asoftech Photo Recovery in the past and it works. Think I had to pay a small fee for the SW. Worth it!!

Khannie

yoyo wrote: »

Recuva or PhotoREC will do the job.

+1 for photorec (just used it today on a friends borked USB stick....great piece of kit). Never used recuva, but might give it a bash in future.

yoyo

cargo wrote: »

I've used Asoftech Photo Recovery in the past and it works. Think I had to pay a small fee for the SW. Worth it!!

No need to pay for such a app, ones I linked to above are free and will deliver just as well

Nick

Landoflemon

Recuva worked for me in that I found photos on an SD card from the previous owner of the card after it having been reformatted by me at least 3 times in the previous year!

cargo

yoyo wrote: »

No need to pay for such a app, ones I linked to above are free and will deliver just as well

Nick

No problem Nick, I was in a hurry to get my hands on such an app one day and the "paid" versions were coming to the top in google. And after trying one or two "free" ones that searched the card and finding the lost photos but then looked for a fee to finish the process I gave up and paid the few dollars they wanted.

Khannie

Landoflemon wrote: »

Recuva worked for me in that I found photos on an SD card from the previous owner of the card after it having been reformatted by me at least 3 times in the previous year!

Yeah, you need to be wary if you're passing on any storage devices. A format doesn't really touch the enormous data section. DBAN or ccleaner are worth a look if you're passing on a hard disk or memory stick.

CaSCaDe711

I use Eraser for "scrubbing" my media clean, works a treat

CCleaner works very well too, and both are free.

STIG83

Any joy OP?

David Matthew

Just reporting back that Recuva worked a treat for me, thanks again guys!

STIG83

Would recuva work for getting lost photos back on an iPhone?

yoyo

STIG83 wrote: »

Would recuva work for getting lost photos back on an iPhone?

Can you download the photos from an Iphone without iTunes (I.e: using it as a usb key). If so you can, if not, theres another reason to hate Apple. Having said that a Windows formatted iPhone should have them hidden on the disk somewhere, so put the iPhone into disk mode, and run recuva on it, you never know!

Nick