Can You Really Recover Photos & Recover Pictures?
Just about everyone has a digital camera these days. These cameras can hold large numbers of high resolution photos on Memory Sticks, SmartCards, Compact Flash, and other storage devices.
While most of the time the process of getting the photos off the storage cards and onto a computer or printer goes smoothly, occasionally errors occur. Sometimes it's a simple mistake. Your card may be full and you may have thought you already downloaded the images so you delete them. Other times, file corruption is the culprit. In fact, simply editing a photo and saving it back onto the card via the computer's card reader can make the entire card unreadable when reinstalled into the camera.
If you need to recover photos for whatever reason, you probably can with the right tools. Before you do anything make sure you do not add anything to the compromised storage card. Any data that may be recoverable is vulnerable at this point and can be wiped out forever if you add data to the card.
First, let's take a look at how to recover digital photos that are no longer readable in the camera.
If you can't read the photos in the camera, insert the card into your computer's card reader and try to read it. Cameras have a simpler operating system than computers. This trick often works and lets you recover pictures directly to your hard drive where you can edit, store, and print them.
After you recover digital photos in this manner, insert the card into your camera and reformat it using the camera's formatting utility. In the future, do not use the computer to write to the card.
If this method won't let you recover photos, you'll need a data recovery utility to do the job for you. If you can see your device as a lettered drive in Windows Explorer (such as E:\Memory Stick) then you can most likely use a general purpose data recovery utility to access the drive and recover pictures from it. Many of these general utilities can recover all types of files including JPEGs and other picture formats.
Data recovery programs that specialize in recovering photos also exist. These programs are specifically geared to recover digital photos including extracting specific file types that many cameras use as well as video files.
If you don't want to do it yourself, many data recovery services will recover photos for you. This option is attractive because all you need to do is mail your camera's media card to the service and wait a few days. You'll pay more for this one-time service compared to purchasing a data recovery utility that you can use over and over but you'll likely get your photos back without any hassles. These services don't generally charge if they cannot recover digital photos using their techniques, so you won't get burned if the attempt was unsuccessful.
