How to Recover Deleted Photos From SD Card?

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  • Published on
    June 9th, 2017
  • Updated on
    September 9, 2023
  • Read Time
    9 minutes

Have you struggled to “Recover Deleted Photos From SD Card” even after trying every possible method out there? You might have lost all hope to recover all your cherished memories. If you are a photographer the condition would be worse out there.

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In today’s technically advanced world every person has a digital single-lens reflex camera to capture memories. With resolutions of the camera going up to 20 Mega Pixels or even more, every one of us can be his personal best photographer.

Before knowing the causes and  How to Recover Deleted Photos From SD Card lets understand what exactly a memory card is?

So, let’s not get into the loop and begin the Blog with the overview of memory card and its types

Definition of  Memory card

A memory card is simply a storage device that is used to store photos, videos and other forms of media on a non-volatile semiconductor memory. They are most commonly used in the camera, mobile phones, MP3 players and other forms of digital media. This article mainly focuses on Memory cards with respect to cameras.

TYPES OF MEMORY CARDS

types of memory card

There are many types of Memory Cards being used by Digital Cameras. It totally depends on the liking of the user and configuration of the camera for selecting the type of memory card. The ease of recovery of deleted photos also plays a big role in memory card selection. The various types are illustrated as follows

1) SD Card

An SD card or Secure Digital Card was designed and developed by three global giants in the memory card industry  Sandisk Corp, Panasonic Corp and Toshiba Corp. Weighing approximately 2 grams an SD card is of the size of a postal stamp. This is the most common Memory Card compatible with all major digital cameras and provides a storage space of not more than 2GB. They support a default format of FAT 16

2) SDHC Card-

Similar to SD cards Secure Digital High Capacity Camera weighed around 2 grams. But they were developed to do away with the limitation of SD cards which stored not more than 2 GB of data. These are high capacity cards with up to 32 GB of storage space. But one should be careful about the not using the SDHC cards in slots designed specifically for SD cards as it may not be recognized. They support a default format of FAT 32.

3)   SDXC Card

A Secure Digital Extra Capacity memory card can have a maximum capacity of around 2TB. All the memory card supporting devices developed after 2010 are compatible with SDXC card. Supporting a default exFAT format SDXC cards are easily recognized by Linux, Windows 7, Mac OSX (Snow Leopard) and all later versions.

4) UHS-I Card

Released by SanDisk is an ultra high-speed data transfer rate memory card having two bus architecture options for up to 50MB/s (UHS-50) and 104MB/s (UHS-104). Designed exclusively as an enhancement for SDHC and SDXC type memory cards, they have become quite popular in a short span of time.

Photos can be deleted accidentally or sometimes your SD gets corrupted and ultimately you can not access your photos.

So in this blog, I have also discussed the ways to recover deleted photos from corrupt SD card. So no matter whether your SD card is corrupted or intact, you will get all the possible method to recover deleted photos from SD Card

Look at some of the cases when we need to recover Photos.

Now as we have given an insight into various types of Memory Cards available let’s look at the causes of the deletion of photos or corruption in a memory card before finding  Ways To Recover Deleted Photos From SD Card.

1) Accidental Deletion of photos from memory card

2) Removal of memory card from memory card reader without closing its files and folders on the computer.

3) Continuously changing the camera of a particular memory card.

4) Trying to click photos even when the card is almost full.

5) Accidental pressing of buttons on the camera.

6) Exponential and sudden increase in power level

One should keep in mind to stop using a memory card as soon as a corruption is detected. Do not try to format the card or do any form of modifications.

Method to Avoid Deletion of Photos from Memory Card

  • Never remove an SD Card while Camera is on
  • Try to remove your SD card when your phone is switched off.
  • Never remove SD Card while saving and viewing a photograph.
  • Do not take or view photos when your battery  is low
  • Don’t go for cheap SD cards, always go for brand.

Recommended Blog:  Photo Recovery Software – Restore Lost Photos, Audios & Videos

Methods To Recover Deleted Photos from SD card  

Connect SD Card with a different device.

Sometimes the problem occurs with the device.  Some of the devices may not read or detect SD card, Its better if you try to connect your SD card to another device. There is a chance that you may see your memory card working in another device.

Modify Drive Letter.

This is one of the most used methods to Recover Deleted Photos From SD Card.

In some cases, the reader might be assigned a drive letter, but still, you get the message “Please insert the disk into drive E:” indicating that it isn’t reading the card. To resolve this problem assign a new drive letter to this connected Card through your operating system settings.

Follow the steps to change Drive Letter

  1. Connect your  SD card to your System.
  2. Now Right Click on My Computer. Then Click on Manage in the drop down menu.
  3. Now Go to Disk Management and click on it in the left side and wait for a few moments to allow the windows to start the Virtual Disk service.
  4. Now Click on your Storage Media and click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
  5. Once you Click the drive letter it will turn blue and then click Change.
  6. Choose the drive letter from the drop-down list.
  7. Finally,  Click Ok.

Run Chkdsk Command

run chkdsk program
  • First, Insert the Memory card into a card reader and then connect it to your system.
  • Now go on the “Start” option from your Windows taskbar and choose the “Computer” option.
  • Now Search for Memory card under “Devices with Removable Storage” and do note the drive letter.
  • Go to the “Start” option again and then type “cmd” in the “search” box.
  • Now Right-click “cmd” and then  Go for the the”Run as administrator” option.  A command window displays.
  • Now type “chk disk”  and the drive letter of your SD card, then the colon and /f.
  • After you Hit “enter”, the Chkdsk will check for all the possible errors and fix the corrupt SD card.
  • Last but not least, check the drive letter of your Memory card to verify if the files are recovered or not.

Sandisk Inbuilt Option

Sometimes there is a situation when your files can be read, but the files are not accessed. Then, in this case, you can use this SanDisk Inbuilt option to recover deleted photos from your SD Card.

Just right-click on the drive letter and select “Properties.” if it shows all free space, then either all the files have been deleted, or erased. In this case, you can use a Sandisk inbuilt solution that might restore and recover all the deleted files flawlessly.

Reinstall the driver

 You can reinstall the driver. To do so follow these steps:

  1. Right-click on My Computer.  Click on the option Manager.
  2. Go to the Device Manager option on the left pane on a computer.
  3. Double-Click on the  Disk Drives option from the list. Then Right Click on the name of your SD Card.
  4. Then Go to Uninstall and click on Ok.
  5. Now Disconnect your  SD Card and restart your PC.
  6. Reconnect your Memory Card card again. PC will automatically detect it.

Recover deleted photos from SD Card  by Photo Recovery Tool

If you are not able to rectify your memory card using the above method you could presume that the problem is severe. Then Don’t lose hope You require a proper tool in hand to recover deleted photos from SD card. Many companies are providing support for photo recovery from corrupt memory cards but I would recommend you SysInfoTools Photo Recovery Tool, providing fast and accurate recovery of all your corrupt photos. The best thing about this tool is that its a success

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To make things easier mentioned, an illustration of step by step process for Photo Recovery is mentioned below.

1- Launch the Photo Recovery Utility on your system and select the volume for recovery.

2- The utility will notify the selected volume information to verify it and continue after clicking next.

3- Depending on the severity in recovery of the deleted photos select standard, advanced and deep modes

4- The scanning process gets completed within a couple of minutes.

5- To check the recovery of accidental deletion of photos from memory card clicks the root folder as well as other folders to check recovered files.

6- Click a file in the tree structure representation and see the preview of the recovered image.

7- One can also search files by simply typing their names in the search box.

8-Select the recovered photo file in the tree structure and assign its saving destination.

9- The pop-up appears wherein you select the location where you want to save the recovered photos.

10- Soon another popup appears confirming the completion of the process, recovery of photos from memory card.

Recommended Software: Removable Media Data Recovery Tool, Deleted Files Recovery Tool

The above steps find a perfect solution to your question Ways to Recover Deleted Photos From SD card.

Now I guess,  you may boast among your friends that you know how to recover Deleted Photos from SD Card.
Trust me most of us have no idea about these secret stuffs.

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