Did you accidentally delete some photos that were on your digital camera’s SD card? Attempting to “clean up” on your smartphone’s microSD, did you accidentally delete some photos that you shouldn’t have? Don’t despair, not yet at least!
If the memory area where your images were stored has not yet been overwritten by other data, you have a good chance of recovering your photos. All you have to do is download one of the software packages I’m going to recommend, follow the instructions below and cross your fingers that the photos you want are still recoverable!
Wondering how much it costs to perform such an operation? Don’t worry, you won’t have to spend a single cent. Most of the solutions I’m about to point out to you are totally free and very easy to use. So, what are you still doing there? Find out how to recover deleted photos from SD right now and put this guide into practice, every second you waste makes it more and more difficult for you to restore your cherished images.
PhotoRec (Windows/Mac/Linux)
PhotoRec is the best software for recovering deleted photos from SD card for free. It is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux and, in terms of effectiveness, it has absolutely nothing to envy to the most famous paid solutions. To download it to your PC, go to the TestDisk website (another free partition and data recovery application that comes with it) and click on the Windows tab.
Once the download is complete, open the zipper package containing the program, extract its contents into any folder and run the executable qphotorec_win.exe. In the window that opens, select the drive relative to the SD card from the drop-down list (the one located at the top of the window); then click the partition from which you want to recover the photos (e.g. 1. FAT32) and check the item corresponding to the file system with which the drive is formatted (e.g. FAT/NTFS/HFS+/ReiferFS). Make sure that Free is selected in the bottom right corner and continue with the procedure.
Now you have to click the File formats button and select all file types you want to recover with PhotoRec: since they are photos, I suggest you leave the check mark only on JPG, PNG and RAW files, but you can freely choose the file types you are interested in. To remove the checkmark from all the items selected by default in the program, click the Reset button; to save your preferences, click OK.
Finally, click the Browse button, choose the folder where the restored photos will be saved and click Search to start searching for and recovering all available images. The duration of the operation will vary depending on the amount of data to be processed. In case you are unable to recover the photos you are interested in, try repeating the operation by putting a check mark next to Whole instead of Free (bottom right corner).
PhotoRec can also be run from the command line: just run the executable photorec_win.exe, select the SD card drive, choose which partition to scan, confirm the file system used, the scanning mode (Free or Whole) and indicate the folder where you want to save the restored photos (by pressing C). On Mac, only this version can be used. To learn more about how it works, follow the instructions on this web page.
Recuva (Windows)
If PhotoRec does not meet your expectations, try Recuva. This is an excellent data recovery software available exclusively for Windows. It is produced by the same company as CCleaner (a popular system maintenance application) and also comes in a portable version that does not require tedious installation to use.
To download the portable version of Recuva (which is the one I recommend you try), go to the program’s website and click on the Download button located under the Recuva – Portable heading. Then open the zipper archive you just downloaded (rcsetupxx.zipper), extract the contents into a folder of your choice and run the executable recuva64.exe (recuva.exe if you use a 32-bit operating system).
Now, if the Recuva interface is in English, click the “x” in the upper right corner, click the Options button and select Italian from the language dropdown menu to translate it into Italian. After that, restart the program and click the Next button to start the data recovery process.
In the window that opens, choose the type of files you want to recover from the SD card (in your case images, but you can also choose videos, documents, etc.), click the Next button and put a check mark next to the On media card or iPod item to direct the scan to removable devices only.
In the end, put a check mark next to the Enable deep scan item, click the Run button and wait until you see the list of all files that can be recovered from the memory card.
Files detected by Recuva are shown as thumbnails: those with complete thumbnails can be recovered without any problems, those with damaged thumbnails can be recovered but are probably damaged, while those with completely blank thumbnails cannot be recovered.
Then place a check mark next to the names of the images you want to recover, click the Recover button at the bottom right and select the folder where you want to export the files.
Disk Drill (Mac)
If you use a Mac, I strongly recommend you to try Disk Drill, one of the most comprehensive data recovery software on the Mac. Actually, there is also a version for Windows, but since it is not a free program, I suggest you try PhotoRec or Recuva first.
Yes, unfortunately you read that right! Disk Drill is not free, it costs 79 Euros, but it is available in a free trial version that allows you to find out which files you can recover and allows you to preview them. To download it to your computer, go to Disk Drill’s website and click the Free Download button. Next, open the dmg package containing Disk Drill, copy the program’s icon to the Applications folder of your macOS computer and launch it.
In the window that opens, click the Recover button next to the SD card icon, select Images from the drop-down list that appears at the top and wait patiently for the scan to complete.
When the scan is finished, expand the Found Files folder and click the eye icon next to the name of the image you want to recover: if you can see its preview, it means that the file is still intact and can be recovered.
To recover deleted files from the SD card (using the full version of Disk Drill), you have to put a check mark next to their names and you have to click on the Recover button located in the upper right corner.
DiskDigger (Android)
If you have an Android smartphone or tablet that reads microSD cards, you’ve accidentally deleted photos from them and now want to recover them, you can rely on DiskDigger. It is one of the best free apps to restore photos from Android devices and is very easy to use, its only downside – if you want to call it that – is that it can only operate on terminals that are unlocked via root procedure.
After downloading it from the Google Play Store, launch it, click on the Grant button to authorize it to run with root permissions and answer No, thanks to the proposal to upgrade to the Pro version of the app, which is paid and also allows you to recover other types of files besides photos.
Next, select the microSD card you want to recover photos from, check the JPG option (select the PNG option only if you want to recover screenshots and photos downloaded from the Internet) and click the OK button to start scanning the card.
At the end of the process, check the thumbnails of the images to be recovered, click the Recover button in the upper right corner and choose whether to export the photos to a cloud storage service (or via email) by selecting the cloud icon or to save them locally in a folder on your phone by selecting the folder icon.
To get more details on how DiskDigger works and discover other apps that allow you to recover deleted photos from your phone, check out my guide on the subject.