Data retrieval for a formatted microSD card?

FrankGrimes

I’ve got a Nokia Lumia 1520 running Windows Phone 8.1 with a 64GB microSD card. Not exactly sure how, but whatever way I was holding it last week, it triggered a factory reset and the OS reinstalled and wiped literally everything. The OS automatically restored all my contacts and text messages from the cloud, but I was in France on a group cycling holiday at the time so most of the photos from the trip hadn’t uploaded to the cloud so I have now lost have many of the photos I took for the group.

I think there’s specialist software out there to allow data recovery of even drives that have been formatted, so long as data has not been overwritten onto them? Is there any such software that will do a good job on microSD cards? I’m reasonably technical so rather than the cost and time of bringing it to a data retrieval company, if there’s software that I could invest in that would do the job and I’d have it available for any future incidents for friends and family, I’d prefer to do that if the cost was reasonable. Thanks

fedorafennec

First, make sure to not write anything more to the card as it may overwrite old data.
Photorec (I can not add a link, search for "Photorec step by step") worked for me before to recover photos where someone had formated an SD in a camera. It runs a command line but the guide should cover most of it. If I remember right, filenames will have been cleared in the format but the actual files should be recoverable in parts where nothing has been written to since.

brianwalshcork

Recuva is free - worth a try, usually works well for me:

http://m.en.softonic.com/app/recuva

(That's a mobile link - just google for recuva download)

uch

+1 on this, works a treat

brianwalshcork wrote: »

Recuva is free - worth a try, usually works well for me:

http://m.en.softonic.com/app/recuva

(That's a mobile link - just google for recuva download)

FrankGrimes

Thanks folks. Downloaded Recuva last night and left it run through the night as it looked like it'd take about 4hours. Will see how it got on when I get home from work.

It had indicated after an hour that it had found >10,000 files (I'd selected to focus on Photos), guess they may all be file fragments and it consolidates at the end. Will be mighty impressed if it does the job so easily...

FrankGrimes

The Recuva software worked a charm - it recovered all my photos incredibly easily, absolutely chuffed with that! Didn't think it would be so easy and that free software would do it. Have it running a second Deep Scan pass now looking for all files as there may be other non-photo files on there that I'll be glad to recover.

Thanks for the tips!

Rucking_Fetard

photorec found stuff recuva wouldn't for me before.