How to Recover Deleted Files

Recover Deleted Photos From an SD Card

We hear it all the time. “I was transferring my photos to my computer, and now they’re all gone!”. In computer forensics speak, “gone” is a relative term. Usually, the files are not actually gone, they’re just where you can’t see them but you can actually recover deleted photos. There are many ways to tackle this problem and there are some steps you can take to make sure this never happens to you.

Recover Deleted Photos From an SD Card – Steps you can take yourself

Remember that your phone or camera is a machine. It’s a very complicated and advanced machine. You can have battery issues. You might press the wrong button and delete everything or reset your phone/camera. Manufacturers usually make this a multi-step process but in the hands of a curious child these steps are easily uncovered. So what can you do?

Make backups of your data

Nowadays this is simple and even free in many cases. Dropbox allows you to sign up for free for storage on their servers. These backup services are also called “cloud services”. If you have backups of your data you simply to your cloud service and recover the files. Of course, you need to routinely backup your data to the cloud service or set your device to do it automatically. We like to back up everything at Eagle. Some data just can’t be recreated and not having a backup could be detrimental to a case.

Having a backup service is useless to you unless you actually use it. Make a habit of backing up your data or better still set your device to do it automatically for you.

Use data recovery software

There are many different types of data recovery software out there. This is a very efficient and effective way to retrieve deleted photos and data. Try the free tools first and if they don’t work then go to paid options.

One free tool we recommend is PhotoRec – short for “photo recovery”. This program not only recovers photos it also recovers hundreds of other file types. So, if you’ve deleted a spreadsheet, PhotoRec can recover it. If you’ve deleted an audio recording, PhotoRec can recover it. You can download PhotoRec here. It really is a wonderful program. We have an upcoming blog post on just how powerful this software is and how irresponsible people can be with their private data.

If you don’t want to do it yourself

We recover deleted data on a daily basis for individuals who have lost their precious photos, corporations whose employees have accidentally deleted data and for attorneys who know they other side has deleted information pertinent to a case.

Consultations with Eagle are free and friendly. If we can help you, we’ll be happy to share how and if we can help you help yourself we’ll do that too.