I was going through my digital camera and somehow deleted one of the folders in my SD memory card. My first reaction was “Oh (Insert expletive here)!, what did I just do?”, I thought it was lost forever, until I got to thinking maybe I might be able to get it back, so recover from my mistake.
Searching through the Internet, I soon realized that this kind of thing happens a lot more than I had expected. Now I did not feel as bad as before as I can undo what I had done, like the undo command in Microsoft Office program. After searching through the Internet I found some websites out there that provided software to recover deleted SD memory cards and even hard drive, but they come with a price ranging anywhere from $40 to over $100. The question I was asking myself was “What was the value of the pictures worth to me?”
At this moment I was willing to pay the $40, but my resourcefulness side said that there must be a free version at Sourceforge.net and decided that I should try the free version first. “Bingo!”, I found what I was looking for, but realized that the program was not working properly as there were some bugs in that program.
So now it’s back to square one, let do some more search, but before that, I decided to download the trial version of the paid program. It was easy and took only a couple of minutes to install on my computer and relatively easy to use, the application is called, CardRecovery for those that are interested in doing it the easy way and for the cost of $39.95US.
The reason that I downloaded this program was to verify that my deleted pictures were there in the SD memory card. CardRecovey ran without a problem and found all of my pictures.
Okay, I thought to myself, I needed to see if I missed anything on the Internet, I should say missed any free software on the Internet and again “Bingo!” I found a free software called TestDisk from CGSecurity.
Although it ran using the command prompt mode (DOS), it was a bit harder and confusing, but nevertheless still usable. Not as good as CardRecovery, but the price is right… free. Here’s the link TestDisk
I was able to get back most of my pictures for free, but it should be noted that you are only able to recover deleted images that have not been overwritten with something else.
This means that if you accidentally delete a folder or image you should use this program or another right away without taking more pictures or using your SD memory card first otherwise you might risk the chance of not being able to recover the images you were looking for.
Additional link to more data recovery software tools.
Best Data Recovery Software Roundup by Joseph Gildred
