Travel Technology - Any way to recover deleted photos from a memory card?

I opened up the folder on the memory card and thought I'd transferred the photos to my laptop. Certainly, the folder and the last photo in the group I'd dragged over were showing up on my desktop.

Then I deleted the photos off the memory card so I could go through them on the laptop. The folder is completely empty.

:(

I've looked at the folder in the memory card and the photos aren't there any longer. Is there any way to restore/recover them?

Thanks :)

There are many utilities out there to undelete files. I haven't had to do it in so many years so I can't comment on what's good.

Go to http://www.download.com/ and do a search for "undelete files," it looks like there's lots of stuff that might help. I wonder if you just copied a shortcut rather than actually moved the files from the memory card to your PC, it would explain not finding the files on the PC after you deleted them from the card.

The files are almost certainly still on the card, they've just been marked as deleted from the table that keeps track of what is where. Step 1 - don't put anything else on the card. Since they are marked as deleted, new files can be written to the same memory locations.

There of lots of recovery options out there. My Lexar card came with software to do recovery. If your card didn't come with anything, do a Google search - there are many, many options. Check with the card manufacturer first.

Sandisk rescuepro is worth buying.

there are a number of specific programs for getting the old "deleted" photos off a CF, SF or other Flash memory drive/stick. Some are free, others are for pay if you want to save the files, meaning, if they don't find anything, then you don't pay.

I tried one program's demo, but all it's showing me are the photos that are still on the memory stick, not the ones that were deleted.

Oh, well. It's just company holiday party photos...the blackmail fodder opportunities will no doubt present themselves again at some point :)

Thanks for the ideas!

Sandisk rescuepro is worth buying.

This has worked for me every time

I used a program a bit ago when I formatted my computer harddrive. Worked well. Ill try to remember the name...
but for now
http://downloads.zdnet.com/search.aspx?kw=recover+deleted+files

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

I have used Recover My Photos at recovermyphotos.com and it really worked. Pulled up everything and it was very inexpensive compared to others. Be sure you do NOTHING with that memory card until the recovery.
There are cheaper downloads for that program so search around.

I tried one program's demo, but all it's showing me are the photos that are still on the memory stick, not the ones that were deleted.


Hopefully you haven't used the mem card (too much) since you deleted the files?

Could try this one too, which works for failed media.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

And another http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_unerase.html

I've used both successfully

This topic is quite timely for me. Well, actually I've had this memory stick sitting around for over a year now with some deleted photos on it. As I had switched cameras there wasn't a great need to restore the photos. I tried some of the tools suggested in this thread. In my particular situation neither the Avira undelete nor the snapfiles restoration software worked to recover the photos.

However I did discover a utility called DataRescue PhotoRescue which restored all 84 photos perfectly. It's $29 and found here:

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

The trial allows you to see what you'd restore but you need the unlock serial to actually save the files so you can test it out before you pay them any money.