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How to Recover Deleted Photos From Your Memory Card
Kamera Express
Recovering deleted photos from your memory card
While taking photos you accidentally delete a photo. Or worse… you format your entire memory card. With one press of a button it's gone. Now what? Is it really lost? Don't worry. You can recover deleted photos. How? You'll learn that in this article.
Don't take any new photos on your memory card
Deleted photos can often still be recovered. They remain hidden on your memory card. This means they continue to exist in the background. If you take new photos, they will eventually be overwritten. After that they are truly gone. Obviously that's not what you want.
The first and most important step after accidentally deleting photos is therefore: don't take any new photos on your memory card. Stop shooting. Turn off your camera. Remove your memory card from the slot and put it in your card case.
This prevents overwriting and increases the chance of recovery. It's also a good reason to always carry more than one memory card with you. Want to know which memory card best suits your camera? Then read our article about memory cards for your camera.
Did you know that...
There are three common situations in which you can accidentally delete your photos?
- By simply dragging your photo to the trash
- By formatting your memory card
- By removing your memory card from the camera while it is still on
Download recovery software
You want to recover your photos. But how do you do that? Quite simply. Download recovery software.
With (free) recovery software you can make deleted — hidden — photos visible again. This software sometimes comes included when you purchase a memory card, such as from Lexar and SanDisk. Don't have this software? No problem at all. There are plenty of programs you can download. Paid or completely free.
Recovery software for Windows
For Windows there are both paid and free programs available. A paid option is: Cardrecovery. With this you can both recover deleted photos and repair damaged memory cards. The software costs €40, but has a free trial version. Handy if you first want to check whether the program finds the hidden photos.
An excellent free alternative is: Recuva. It is a powerful program with a clear interface. This way you can easily recover all your deleted photos. Both from your camera and from your phone. It even restores deleted files from a hard drive.
Recovery software for Mac
For Mac there are unfortunately no free versions available. Don’t mind paying? Then we recommend SanDisk Pro Recovery or SanDisk Pro Deluxe. A recovery software for Mac and Windows. For this paid recovery software you also pay a few dozen euros and get a free trial version.
Of course there is also the option to borrow a Windows PC.
Recovering deleted photos
Recovering lost photos is simple and quick. You specify which file type you are looking for. Then where the program should search. Your memory card. The software always searches for easily findable files first. Have all your photos been lost? Then choose the option for an extensive search, also known as Deep search. Now your deleted — hidden — photos will appear. Finally you move them to a new location: a hard drive, USB stick or other memory card.
Tip:
- Always instruct the software to 'search all files'.
- Images typically refer to .JPG, .PNG, .GIF and .RAW files. With the latter there is a potential issue. Some cameras shoot RAW photos with a different extension: .NEF (Nikon), .DNG (Pentax) or .TIFF. These will not be found when searching for 'images'.
Nothing is more frustrating than losing photos before they are on a PC or you have made a backup. Fortunately you can recover deleted photos. We hope these tips help you succeed. Good luck.
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