Recovering Deleted Photos

Recovering deleted photos from a digital camera memory card is straightforward, although large cards or disks can take a long time to scan.

WARNING: THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE PROVIDED FOR INFORMATION ONLY. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR ASSOCIATED DEVICES, HOWEVER CAUSED.

Background

Files (photos) are never completely erased. Instead, the space they occupy on the disk is marked as "available". This is important: don't take any new photos; they may overwrite the deleted photos which you're trying to recover.

Software

This process uses a free tool called PhotoRec. There are many others, although I've not have the same level of success as with PhotoRec.

• Download TestDisk (which includes PhotoRec) for Windows from the CG Security website

This download is a ZIP file. Save it to your desktop. The ZIP file is an archive which contains many other files.

• Right-click on the new TestDisk icon on your desktop and choose "extract all..". Accept all the default settings in the wizard
• A new window will open. Open the TestDisk folder, then the win folder

If you haven't done so already, plug in your camera memory card or USB flash drive. Close any windows which pop up.

• In the win folder, run the PhotoRec program by double-clicking on photorec_win.exe
• A black window will open with white text

Using PhotoRec to recover photos

• Use the up and down arrow keys to choose the disk you want to recover photos from. The size of the disk should help you decide. Press ENTER to select.
• Make sure INTEL is selected on the next screen and press ENTER again
• A list of disk areas (partitions) is displayed. Just press ENTER again to choose the default partition
• Press ENTER again to choose the default partition type (FAT/NTFS)
• Press ENTER again to scan only for deleted files
• The final prompt is to choose a location to save recovered photos. Type Y to save these in the win folder, or use the up and down arrow keys to save these in a different folder.

The recovery process will now start. This may take some time, depending on the size of the disk. Once this is complete, look in the win folder for any recovered photos. Press ENTER at any time to stop the recovery process.