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.
