How to Recover Deleted Photos?

How to recover deleted photos in case of accidental deletion? Here are what to do and what not to do after discovery of the loss. Accidental erasure of the contents of a memory card by mistake by formatting can happen to everyone : do not ever panic, the pictures might not be lost, forever. The memory card is divided in the form of pieces according to the FAT32 file system. To find these pieces, the system uses an index (like a summary of a book).

So, when you format a card with your camera, the corresponding data in the photos are not destroyed immediately, only the index (the summary of the book) is changed. You can easily find these data using an application regardless of the type of card (SD, CompactFlash), the make and model of your digital camera.

How to Recover Deleted Photos : What Not To Do?

Remember, if your memory card is reused between the time of discovery of the loss and the real work to recover the deleted data, the memory space available is obviously replaced by the new data. Some photos may be permanently deleted and this is why, the first work is to shut down the camera, take the memory card out and keep in proper place. Obviously, you will avoid the physical damage of the card.

How to Recover Deleted Photos?

PhotoRec is free software and is available for Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, BSD and GNU Linux. Its interface is a bit odd, but it is fast and efficient for the purpose. You will get more details, official links from WikiPedia :

PhotoRec is probably the best solution to recover deleted photos by mistake, but if you have a little trouble with the odd interface, many programs exist. PC Inspector Smart Recovery (Windows only) is a good free alternative. If you buy a Sandisk Extreme card you can download the free software RescuePRO (Windows and Mac). The interface is intuitive, however the recovery of photos is quite slow.