However, the original image files usually aren’t deleted, at least initially. If you have inadvertently deleted images from your memory card or prematurely formatted the card, do not, under any circumstances, continue to use that card! When you delete a file or reformat a memory card in your camera, the index information for those images is removed. Many memory card manufacturers provide free or paid data recovery tools, but less reputable applications often obscure them in online search results. Often websites provide a list of “top data recovery applications.” Those results are typically based on commissions the website author receives for promoting these products, not actual product reviews. Everyone knows you are willing to spend money to recover lost files, so countless paid options exist. Not only did that SD card contain a bunch of product photos we’d just taken for various HTG tutorials but it also had a bunch of great holiday photos we hadn’t yet properly dumped and backed up: quite the double whammy of bad luck.Searching for memory card file recovery tools online will lead you to a slew of results from dubious sources, and many are of questionable quality. The problem with doing something you should know better than to do is that eventually it catches up with you.

Despite the fact that we know better than to physically eject the SD card from our camera before powering the camera off we do so all the time. That screenshot, by the way, isn’t a mock up of what could happen, it’s a very unsettling look at exactly what did happen to us shortly before writing this article. You’re likely here via search engine query and panicked because you plugged in your SD card and either the files were outright missing or instead of the familiar file structure like /DCIM/ with the subsequent folders for your camera model and then the image files, you see something like this: In the case of recovering files off your corrupted SD card, there’s little sales pitch needed. Many of our tutorials center on things that are useful or even fun but that might need a little explaining for the unfamiliar.

Memory card photo recovery