How To: Recover lost photos
You have lost the only copies of precious photos, and you need to recover them. Recovering digital photos from CDs, hard drives memory cards, digital cameras, iPods and other players is one of the most common data recovery tasks. Digital storage media are quite fragile compared to photographic prints, and digital camera users often make just a single copy of their precious pictures before deleting the original. This results in tragedy when the copy is lost or damaged and cannot be read.
If some of your irreplaceable photos seem to be lost: don't panic! Unless the medium on which they are stored has been physically damaged, there is a good chance that you can get them back. However, if the images were stored on a rewriteable medium such as a hard disk, CD-RW or memory card, some or all of the image files may have been overwritten. If this is the case, at least don't write to that disc or card any more until all the options for recovering the data have been exhausted.
- To recover photo images from memory cards, floppy or hard drives use Flash Recovery
- If you're sure the images have been deleted, you could also use Uneraser
Choose the correct tool
There are many different data recovery tools and photo image recovery tools available, and many of them use different techniques to get your photos back. If one product can't recover your pictures, another might be successful. You can eliminate some frustration by trying to pick the best tool for the job first.
Accidental deletion from hard disk
If you accidentally deleted the photo images from your hard disk:
- Check the Recycle Bin.
- If they are not in the Recycle Bin then for the best chance of recovery use Flash Recovery.
- Deleted files (including photo images) may also be recovered using Uneraser.
Recovering photos from a memory card
If the images you want to recover are on a Flash memory card or in your camera or iPod:
- Connect the memory card, camera or player so that it can be accessed like a removable hard drive.
- Use a specialist digital image recovery tool Flash Recovery.
- Apple Mac users should try PhotoRecovery for Mac OSX.
Recovering photos from CD
A common cause of lost photos is when the image files have been burned to CD, and the CD can no longer be read. There are a number of possible reasons why this can occur. One is when multi-session writing is used to burn batches of images to a disc. Either the CD was written in a form that is unreadable by a new computer or new software, or else the software somehow corrupts the file system making the CD unreadable during the process of adding a batch. It's best to burn a full disc of images at a time.
To recover lost photos from CD or DVD media:
- Use a specialist CD and DVD recovery tool like CD & DVD Recovery. Unlike the products mentioned above, this product understands the file system used on CD media, and can read past the usual problems that prevent Windows from seeing your files. If the software can find the lost images, it is more likely to be able to recover them intact.
To avoid this problem in the future:
- Always burn two copies of your valuable photos to two separate discs.
- Avoid burning multiple sessions to CD-ROMs: burn a whole CD at a time.
- Don't use rewritable CD-RW media to store valuable data: they are easily corrupted by a software crash.
Lost precious photos?
You wouldn't have if you had backed them up with Photos Forever.