Recover Deleted Photos from Memory Card

With the advancement in technology, there are many photo storage devices including digital cameras being designed with dangerous delete button or features. Any mishandling could instantly delete all the pictures, thus making it necessary to perform deleted photo recovery. Such devices are often portable with many buttons and features consolidated in a single place. Though a user looks for a portable device with more memory capacity; however, it is sometimes very difficult to operate such devices. In fact, there are various other devices, each having their own set of function to store and delete photos.

Irrespective of the devices being used to store photos, such devices use a similar storage device called as a memory card. They are light, portable, spacious, and are extensively used in cameras and mobile phones for storing photos. However, the type, size, and space on a memory card might differ. Such memory cards are very useful in storing user data including photos. This caters the need of storage devices due to ever increasing consumption and creation of digital content especially images.

A memory card can be in a form of an SD card, which is majorly used in cameras or in a form of a MicroSD card, commonly used in mobile phones. In addition, there could be many different forms of a memory card like CF, Memory Stick, xD Picture Card, Smart Media, MMC card, etc. However, the technology used to save data remains same across all the memory cards. Such memory cards are often called as flash memory working as a solid state storage device. It consists of grid of columns and rows with a cell that has two transistors at each intersection thus making everything electronic instead of mechanical. This makes them lesser prone to any mechanical failure.

With the extensive use of portable digital devices and memory cards it has become very easy to maintain and manage images as compared to traditional devices. However, at the same time, it is very risky to operate such devices, as any mishandling could take away all your saved photos in a flash. There are various other reasons that that can cause loss of data from memory cards. Some of the most common reasons are mentioned below.

• Human induced mistakes
• Accidentally deleting or formatting the memory card
• Any physical damage done to the memory card
• Virus Infection
• Trying to eject the memory card while the files are being written to the memory
• "Disk need to be formatted" error forcing you to format the memory card
• Trying to save data in an already full memory card
• Corrupt memory card
• Making multiple clicks one after another, without giving a proper time for the files to be written on to the memory
• Abnormal ejection of the memory card
• Improper file transfer
• Sudden power failure

In spite of various data loss scenarios from the memory card, it is still possible to recover deleted photos from it by performing memory card recovery. While working on a PC with the memory card or the device connected, you might accidentally press the delete button. In such a case, you can get back the photos from the recycle bin. In case you have accidentally formatted your memory card or lost few photos due to memory card corruption, you can still recover such photos. When one or more pictures are deleted from the camera, the camera searches the memory card for the picture file, then marks the space as ‘usable’ by deleting the file. In majority of the cases, such space remains occupied, as the camera does not delete the picture file body and there remains a possibility to retrieve them even after deletion.

Note: While transferring pictures from the memory card to the PC either directly or indirectly; avoid any manual method like ‘cut and paste’. This is because, in case the system fails or shut down abruptly, you might lose your data. It is always recommended to use a tool to transfer the data from the device to the PC. For example, in case you are transferring photos or any other data from Samsung mobile phone, use the ‘Kies’ software. In case you are moving photos from your Nokia mobile phone to the PC, use the ‘Nokia PC Suite’ software.

This is because of the fact that while we delete a photo, its entry is deleted from the file system. However, the data remains in the memory. Such invisible or inaccessible photos can be recovered by using a professional photo recovery software. Using such software allows the user to perform recovery either by directly connecting the camera, or mobile phone to a computer or connecting SD cards from their cameras or mobile devices through a memory card reader.

Note: In case of corruption, it is recommended to remove the SD card from the camera or mobile phones immediately to avoid any chance of files getting overwritten by the device.

In order to recover deleted photos from a photo storing device like camera, you can connect the device to your system using a USB cable. In majority of the case, the camera would appear as a drive letter under ‘My Computer’. You can then use a software tool to access the photos on the memory card. However, in case your camera does not appear as a drive letter in ‘My Computer’, you can directly connect the memory card to your computer using an external USB card reader. This would allow you to access the memory card, which would appear as a drive letter in ‘My Computer’.

Note: Once you have recovered all your lost photos from the memory card, you can format the memory card to get rid of issues like virus infection in it. However, avoid using the same memory card to store recovered photos in it. The recovered photos must be saved to a safe location free from virus and any type of issues.