Have you ever accidentally formatted your memory card with important images in it? Or perhaps your hard drive crashed, you had no backups and you already deleted images from your memory cards? You never think about it until it happens and when it does happen, it hits you hard. I once lost all images of Red Fox kits that were very dear to me and I even managed to format and overwrite images from a trip to Utah this year. Unfortunately, disasters happen to everyone and if you happen to be in a similar situation, it is better to be prepared and know what to do. In this quick article, I will show you how you can recover and retrieve lost images from memory cards and will give you some information on what can be recovered and under what circumstances.
1) Data disaster types
Whether you are using a Compact Flash or SD/SDHC card, there are several types of disasters that can happen with it:
- Formatted card (Chance of Recovery: High) – if you happened to format the memory card for whatever reason, either in-camera or on your PC. Chances of recovering all data are very high, as long as the card was not touched after the last format. This is due to the fact that the formatting process never actually deletes the images from the memory card – it simply labels the card as “free” and prepares it for writing.
- Deleted images (Chance of Recovery: High) – if you manually deleted images from the card either on the camera or on your PC/Mac, the chances of recovering all data are very high, as long as more images or data were not written on the disk. Just like in formatting, deleting files simply marks certain area of the disk as free for writing. The actual files are never erased from the disk.
- Non-physical damage/data failure (Chance of Recovery: Moderate to Low, depends on type of failure) – there could be different scenarios, but one of the more common ones is when a memory card fails during the process of writing images to the card (corrupted data). This is where your camera would give an error, indicating that the data could not be written to the card. The chances of data recovery are moderate to low, depending on how serious the damage is due to bad sectors, etc. Some unreadable cards can be recovered, again, depending on the damage.
- Physical damage (Chance of Recovery: Low to None) – if your memory card has suffered from physical damage and is unreadable, the chances of recovery are very low. You could try one of the data recovery tools shown below to see if it can recover anything. If all programs fail and the drive cannot be recognized, it might be better to take it to data recovery experts, who can try to retrieve the data in a lab environment.
The chances of recovering data after formatting or deleting files are high, compared to any sort of damage that could lead to partial or complete data loss. Let’s talk about what you can do to prevent the above from happening.
2) Tips to prevent data loss
Again, there is never a guarantee that the memory cards you have today will always perform flawlessly. I have a few tips to share on what you can do to prevent data loss.
- Invest in reliable memory cards – avoid buying cheap memory cards from unknown manufacturers. Do your research first and buy memory cards from such companies as Sandisk and Lexar that manufacture reliable cards. Get the professional series instead of regular ones. If price is an issue, get the older slower version.
- Backup your memory cards – if you are shooting an important event, invest in a portable card reader or a portable hard drive that can backup your memory cards quickly on the job. Portable USB card readers are cheap and you can hook them up to your laptop and backup the files to your laptop’s hard drive, or you can backup all photos with a single button if you have a portable hard drive.
- Backup all files to a separate drive while importing your photos to Lightroom – this one is easy, just check “Make a Second Copy To:” field in the Lightroom 3 Import dialog and make sure to point the folder to a different hard drive. What this will do, is create a duplicate copy of the file on a separate drive in case your primary drive fails.
- Label cards – buy cheap sticky color labels from a local store for cards that have been used. Make it a habit to put labels to every card that comes out of your camera, to avoid situations where you might accidentally reuse the same card.
- Dual memory slots – if your camera is equipped with two memory slots (such as Nikon D3s), put two identical cards and use them in backup mode, especially if your photo shoot is important.
- Format cards in camera after each use – obviously, only after you have made several backups of your data. Do not format your memory cards on your computer and do it in camera instead. I have seen cases where the files could not be written to the card by the camera, just because the card was formatted elsewhere.
- Memory card size issue – some photographers do not like purchasing large memory cards, because they do not want to lose too many images in case of a failure. I personally disagree with this view, because in my experience, having several cards has its own disadvantages such as extra storage problems, potential physical damage to both camera and cards due to frequency of card changes, etc. I used to shoot in no larger than 4 GB memory cards in the past and I have moved to 16 and 32 GB cards since then. I shoot in RAW format and swapping cards like crazy is not very practical.
3) Important things to remember
If you have a data disaster situation and need to retrieve the data, make sure that the card is no longer used. This means absolutely no further writing to it, whether on PC or in camera. I have had some readers ask me if they could retrieve images from a memory card that they have deleted images from and then filled the card with new images and the answer is no in all cases. You might be able to recover partial data from a memory card if you did not fully use it (for example you shot 2 GB worth of images on an 8 GB card), but not everything. New images write over deleted ones and the more new images you have, the less is the chance to retrieve old images from the card. So, once again, if you need to retrieve data from a card, make sure to stop any kind of writing activity to it.
4) How to recover deleted images with PhotoRescue Pro
I have used many different kinds of file recovery programs before and the one I like the most is PhotoRescue Pro from Essential Data Tools. Don’t confuse it with PhotoRescue 3 from DataRescue (which works equally well) – it is a completely different product. Both cost around $30 and make the process of image recovery a breeze.
The program is very simple and it is Wizard-based:
As you can see, it recognized all media on my machine, including the media card reader. All I do is select the media and click Next, after which I’m taken to a screen where I can choose what image formats to look for and restore:
The rest of the process is pretty straightforward – it automatically finds the missing files and lets you choose which ones to restore:
Either pick everything, or pick a particular file and click the “Recover…” button to recover the image.
If you have any questions or if you are using some other type of software for image data recovery and you like it, please let me know in the comments section below.
About Nasim Mansurov
This is a most useful post. I have used RescuePRO and have found it very good.
Thank you for your feedback Geoff!
Backup of precious photos is really important. To me, photos mean valuable memory that I don’t want to lose. So, forming a habit of backup is more important.If one day,I lose my photos, I will do a good and professional delete recovery by data recovery tool.My friend told me that it helps a lot when people forget to backup.
Gillian, I agree! I am thinking about writing an article on file backup and backup workflow…
There is a good alternative software – Recuva, and it’s free.
Avaz, thank you for the link, I will check it out!
I too have used Recuva successfully for a number of my computer company clients on a variety of hard drives, thumbdrives, flash cards, etc.
Good article!
Aaron, thank you for the info, will definitely try out Recuva!
Hi nasim,
Today is my second time experiencing photo lost. It happens when I want to transfer all my pictures from the SD card to my portable hard disc. The process seems stuck in the middle which forced me to exit the SD card from the computer. When I connect it back to the computer, all the photo gone missing and the worst thing is the computer command me to format it.
Do you have any solution on this matter? Need some advice…
thanks
Farid, I apologize for a late response – not sure how I missed your comment.
Do you format your SD card every time you put it into the camera? That could be the source of all your problems…
how about video deleted from memory card? Can it be recovered? Thank you.
Try Recuva, it can retrieve about any file format, so long as you haven’t written to the card.
Komila, yes, video can also be recovered.
Hi Nasim, I was wondering if you would be able to assist me. I am trying to retrieve data off of a 1.0GB sim card for my camera. The memory card had over 1000 pictures on it and the card was accidently formatted with these pictures on it. one photo was taken on the memory card after this happened. I have tried using the Recuva program because I was hoping to be able to avoid spending money on a program, but unfortuanetly it is not recovering anything for me. Any suggestions as to why it could not be working?
Shayna, have you written anything over the card, or just formatted it?
Hi Nasim, no the card has not been completely written over just one photo was take after.. is there anything that can be done?????
Shayna, sorry for a late response! Yes, absolutely! You can recover almost all images if you only took a single shot after formatting the card.
PhotoRescue Pro (above) will let you recover those photos. I would try the trial version of the software to see if it even shows you all the images first. If it works, then you can get the full version and recover everything.
Hope this helps.
thank you Nasim I will give it a try :)
You are most welcome!
I am in the same boat as Shayna, the post above this, and I am very distraught. I just realized I formatted a card and shot another event before transferring the images. I tried the software from “Fresh Crop MediaRECOVER” with no success.
There has GOT to be some kind of software out there that will go back a little farther than a free or $50 program… Any help would be appreciated.
Mallory, if you have already written fully over the formatted card, then I am sorry to say this, but all of your images are gone for good. If you only partially filled up the card, then you might be able to recover some of the images, but it is not guaranteed.
Unfortunately you are right. Just spoke with a CSR with a nice data recovery program. I’m screwed.
Anyone know someone in the electronic investigation section of the FBI???
ha- a gal can hope.
Mallory, that’s why I label my memory cards now…I have done this in the past and it hurts to lose important pictures :(
About a week ago I formatted my SD card and lost those photos(also some videos), searched on Google and tried Recuva, with no luck! Finally I paid 49$ for this program called Wondershare Photo Recovery for Mac and it got my items back.
At the same time I figured it out there is no Mac version for RECUVA (as I am using Mac OS 10.5), I made a big mistake.
Don’t know if PhotoRec is also available under Mac OS X?
O Johnson, thank you for your feedback! Glad you were able to recover your images.
Hi i recently got back from a trip to new zealand and decided to transfer my pictures from my transcend compact flash 16gb memory card to my computer and instead of using my new version of photoshop it used the old one which i dont have registered so i exited that after the pictures were read and now all of the pictures have been erased from it a bout 3200 and the pictures wont show up on photo rescue pro so i put the card back into my camera and it says the card needs to be formatted so i didnt do that and then put it into my printer and it says error on card so i dont know what to do now or try next help please?
Zack, that seems like an I/O error to me, which is never good news :( Try plugging the card back into your camera and then connect your camera to your PC and see if you can read anything. If your PC says the same thing that your card needs to be reformatted, then your last option is to try to use a good recovery program like PhotoRescue Pro. If PhotoRescue cannot recover your data, then you are pretty much toast :(((
I would like to introduce you a very good data Recovery software tenorshare data recovery. I lost
all my Photos From a Memory Card , I get back all my Photos with it.
You can get it from: http://www.any-data-recovery.com/
Thanks for sharing! It works fine!
hello the other day i was playing with my camera and i really do not kn what i did, i took one picture and did not like it so i deleted it. after that my cmera told me that i had no pictures on file i am to die because i just came from vacation and had over 1,900 pictures that i did not get a chance to download. please help i dont want to take any pictures until i could recover my lost ones. HELP PLEASE
I deleted all the pictures from my sony camera today by mistake.After that i had just snapped 5-6 photos. Is there any chance left of recovering my old photos.. if not all atleast a bit of them..? ( the new ones) especially..I am thinking to go to a Photo Shop..i guess they might help. but still then is there any chance?
Similar to above mention there is also Photo recovery software I would like to share which apple site Mac Photo Recovery instantly without acquiring any technical knowledge.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/photorecoveryfordigitalmedia.html
I got a samsung phone a few weeks back something happened the other evening and it crashed, deleted all my contacts, email accts and apps but my PHOTOs were still there ~ after spending 2 hours on phone with tech support something else happened and photos are gone. i tried to use a recovery program i had used on a camera in the past (cardrecovery) it says no filed detected wasn’t sure if they are lost forever or if it is something to do with it being in a phone. When it is plugged into a card reader it asks if i want to format ….what can i do? is there any hope for my pictures? i am heartbroken. I have only taken one picture since then and that was to make sure the card was working.
PLEASE HELP
Hi to all,I have succeed to recover data from SD card of my Kodak easy share with Tenorshare Data Recovery.It worked like a charm! http://www.any-data-recovery.com/product/index.htm
What’s more,it is cheaper that the one above!
OMG!!! PLEASE HELP!!
I WAS MESSING AROUND WITH MY SETTINGS ON MY CANNON CAMERA AND NOT KNOWING WHAT “FORMATT” WAS, I FIGURED I’D PUSH IT AND LOST 1200+ PICS!! IN DISBELIEF, I TOOK ANOTHER PIC, THEN FORMATTED IT AGAIN!!!!!!!
PLEASE…..PLEASE….PLEASE…PLEASE….HELP!!!
Hi All,
Im in desperate need of help. I deleted a compact disk card and started shooting again (around 10 shots) before realising I hadnt downloaded the deleted images yet. I URGENTLY need them back. Im using a mac and a d700 – can anyone point me in the right direction please??
Sophie, there is a version of PhotoRescue for Mac that you might want to try. Since you took the 10 shots over the old images, you will probably only be able to recover some of the photos. There is a possibility that all photos might have been lost as well.
very nice article, nice tips and software. Well, yes, the fact is sometimes urgent and luck won’t come together especially when users just pushed the wrong buttons and accidentally wiped out something photos off memory card of digital camera or cell phone or so. But with photo recovery software designed by clever engineers, things can be turned around (though not always 100% sure as the blogger has made it clear in the post).
Meanwhile, nowadays the concept of “data backup” should be spread out as it means a lot.
I accidently formatted my honey moon pictures (new camera) and not knowing what I was doing, I took three pcitures on the same memory card. I have tried taken it to a photo shop and tried multiple recovery programs, including this one, and have only been able to recover the last 3 pictures that were taken. I have not used the card again. Is there even a chance that I will recover the formatted pictures at all??
Nancy, you might not be able to…it all depends on what those 3 pictures overwrote. I think chances of recovery for you are very slim, especially since you have tried different recovery programs.
This squidoo lens http://www.squidoo.com/get-back-photos is also giving a clue about how to get back deleted photos off computer, digital camera, memory card etc with top picked free photo recovery software and tips.
Thanks for the info, question for you, once you have recovered data from a sandisk memory card should you toss it out(thinking it was the cards “fault”) or is it safe to use again? I use 8-16 gb sandisk extreme compact flash cards and recently had to recover data from an 8 gb one but am now afraid to use it in fear it may be the card. thanks!