How to Recover Photos from SD Card

Did you accidentally delete some files on your SD card or lose your data due to a faulty memory card? If you stop using this memory card immediately and act quickly, the files can still be recovered with data recovery software. There are free options for each operating system, as well as paid programs that are easy to use.

Table of Contents

By PhotoRec (all operating systems)

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Stop accessing the SD card. If the file has just been deleted, the data is probably still there, just waiting for the new data to be overwritten. Not accessing the SD card will limit your ability to overwrite data.

Ideally, remove the SD card from the device until you are ready to recover files.

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Download PhotoRec. PhotoRec is free and open source file recovery software for both Windows, OS X and Linux.

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Unzip the program. PhotoRec does not need to be installed. You just need to extract the photorec_ os program from the ZIP file. Where os will be your operating system name. For example, the Windows version would be photorec_win

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Connect the memory card. You can connect an SD card to a computer using a memory card reader, or insert a memory card into the camera and connect the camera to the computer via a USB cable.

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Launch PhotoRec. PhotoRec runs on the command line interface. You will use the arrow keys to navigate the program.

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Select the drive. Select the SD card from the list of available drives and press ↵ Enter .

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Select partition. SD memory cards usually have only one partition. Use the arrow keys to select.

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Select the File Opt menu. This menu option is located along the bottom edge of the window.

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Deselect unnecessary files. You can speed up the search process significantly by limiting the file type to look for. If you are recovering photos, uncheck all but JPG, JPEG, RAW, CR2, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, SR2, and DNG.

By ZAR (Windows)

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Stop accessing the SD card. If the file has just been deleted, the data is probably still there, just waiting for the new data to be overwritten. Not accessing the SD card will limit your ability to overwrite data.

Ideally, remove the SD card from the device until you are ready to recover files.

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Download and install ZAR (Zero Assumption Recovery). The full version of ZAR requires a fee, while the demo (trial) only allows us to recover image files. Note: you should only download the ZAR from the developer’s website.

On ZAR’s website, click the “image recovery” link near the bottom of the page. This will allow you to install a demo for photo recovery.

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Connect the memory card. You can connect an SD card to a computer using a memory card reader, or insert an SD card into the camera and connect the camera to the computer via a USB cable.

The computer may prompt you to format the memory card or notify you that the card cannot be read. Do not format according to this prompt as you may overwrite the location where the picture is being saved on the card.

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Open the Image Recovery tool in the ZAR. Launch ZAR and click on Image Recovery (Free) . With another program, look for the same action button. Some programs may skip this step entirely.

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Select a memory card. In the “Disks and partitions” section, select your SD card. Click Next to initiate the recovery process.

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Select the files you want to recover. You will see a list of photos that the software found on the SD card. You can select photos to recover or select all to recover all lost photos. You may not be able to preview the image, the file name will also be lost.

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Choose where to save the photos after being restored. If the SD card is damaged then you should not save it here. Instead, choose or create a folder on your computer to save the photos to. Photos will be safe if the SD card crashes again.

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Copy files. Click Start copying the selected files to restore the images. The selected file will be saved to the location you specify.

Some photos may not be fully restored. Even if the thumbnail looks fine, the image may be partially lost or completely damaged.

Using Data Rescue 3 (Mac)

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Stop accessing the SD card. If the file has just been deleted, it’s possible that the data is still there, just waiting for the new data to be overwritten. Not accessing the SD card will limit your ability to overwrite data.

Ideally, remove the SD card from the device until you are ready to recover files.

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Download and install Data Rescue 3. Although there is a fee to use, Data Rescue 3 is one of the powerful data recovery programs available for OS X. You can purchase Data Recovery 3 on the website or through via the Mac App Store.

If you don’t want to spend money, use PhotoRec.

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Connect the SD memory card. Plug the SD card into the Mac computer. If your Mac doesn’t have a memory card slot, you can use an external card reader via a USB cable, or insert an SD card into the camera and connect it to a computer.

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Launch Data Rescue 3. You can find the program in the “Applications” folder. Then, select “Start New Scan” from the main menu.

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Select SD card. A list of drives will appear in the Data Rescue window. Please select your memory card from this list.

Maybe the program will prompt you to select the memory card partition. Most memory cards have only one partition, but if there are multiple partitions, you should choose the entire SD card.

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Select a scan method. On the first scan, you should select “Deleted Files Scan”. This process will scan the free space on the memory card for deleted files. If this doesn’t work, you can try again and choose “Quick Scan” and then “Deep Scan”. Click Start after selecting the scan type.

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Wait for the scan to complete. This process can take a while, especially if you choose Deep Scan. If you want to pause, you can click the Suspend button.

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Select the files you want to recover. After the scan is complete, you will see a list of files that can be recovered. Check the box next to each file or folder you want to recover.

If you do a Quick or Deep Scan, the search results will be in the “Found Files” section.
If you select Deleted Files or Deep Scan, the search results will be in the “Reconstructed Files” section. The filename will usually be lost.
You can preview the files by selecting from the list and clicking “Preview”. However, not all files can be previewed.

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File recovery. When finished, click Recover and choose a location to save the file on your computer. Once you’ve found a suitable location, click Open .

Warning

Not all lost photos can be recovered. You will not be able to recover lost photos in cases such as: the memory card is badly damaged or reformatted, deleted pictures are overwritten by new pictures.

Steps

By PhotoRec (all operating systems)

By ZAR (Windows)

Using Data Rescue 3 (Mac)

Warning

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