Miracles do happen!

I am not sure if this is the right spot to post but hopefully it is. About two weeks ago on Mother's Day, I took some photos out at a Nature Center. After a long day out on my photo walk and spending time with my mother, I went home exhausted. I did not pick up my camera until a few days later and then on and off for the last few days. Well this past Sunday, I went out to Galveston for a photo walk. I currently own 4 Sd cards. The two that I had were already full so I decided to delete my photos from Mother's Day. At the moment, I thought to myself that I had already uploaded them because all my other photos had been uploaded that I took after Mother's day. Well last night, I finally had the time to sit down and work on them. Turns out, they were no where on my Macbook or on my SD cards. Of course I freaked out because I really wanted them. It is possible I did upload them and accidentally deleted them while I was organizing my photo albums a few days ago.

After finally accepting the fact that I deleted the photos from the SD card and that I never uploaded them, I sucked it up and tried to find a way to recover them. I searched and searched online (youtube). I came across a few programs and one finally showed me that the photos that I deleted. They where hidden deep in some folders but deleted none the less. Different programs wanted me to pay 90.00-180.00 for the software. That was way too much for me... Well I tried finding other ways. Eventually I maximized the window and noticed that I could save the photo into my iphotos folder. From there, I copied the photo into the my pictures folder and uploaded it into lightroom. I was able to edit it. The only downfall is that it was saved in JPEG rather than Raw as I had shot it.

The point of my llllooonnnggg story, is that I have my photos and I am ecstatic! I just want ya'll to know just in case you are ever in my position. The program is called Disk Drill. I was able to use the free download to view them and save them. I doubt they are aware of this (if they were I am sure they would change it) and I hope they never find out. I do not want to pay for such software if I do not have to! So if this ever happens to you and you own a Mac or have iphotos, try it out! I would rather have it in JPEG than not have it at all. At the same time, I would rather save as much of my money as I can in the process of recovering my photos. I would rather spend that money towards a new lens.

So there you have it, a MIRACLE!

Funny, but every Sandisk SD card I get comes with a free download of a file recovery program, so you are definitely not alone. Glad you got them back.

There's a slew of recovery software out there, works on everything from common accidental deletes to recovery from formatting. Apple or PC.

OK everyone who has had to do this PLEASE post a link to the software and also state if it is free or paid. Let us know how easy and how good it worked.

This would be a great resource for everyone here.

Tracsoft - Don Kuykendall said:

OK everyone who has had to do this PLEASE post a link to the software and also state if it is free or paid. Let us know how easy and how good it worked.

This would be a great resource for everyone here.

Click to expand...

Google will bring up pages of "recover images from memory card" software, free and paid. I've been fortunate to have never had the need to use it but the few I looked when the subject was a topic elsewhere were straightforward and simple to use.

I remember when I bought my San disk cards that it came with it but I never registered for it. ALL the programs I tried (and trust me it was a lot) all let me download the free trial but in order to save it to my computer, I had to upgrade to their paid version. I really do need to get the Sandisk recovery program. I did look on their site and was unable to find the information I needed. I think by that time I was fed up and frustrated.... The programs overall were easy to use. All of them brought up the photos but as mentioned, none let me recover them free of charge. I can't blame them though. I do hope this never happens to anyone.

Here's a free one. As a test I deleted 54 images from a Lexar Platinum II 32GB SDHC 200x card. It recovered all 54 images. EXIF data and quality matched that of the originals.

It does offer a "full" version with lots of bells & whistles for $$ but for simple file recovery (and that's all it is), it does the job. Any file recovery software will do the job, the "image recovery" label being marketing blather.

As a side note, when using "free" software be cautious about accepting the load of other crap offered during the download process. If one blindly accepts everything offered one's PC may become unrecognizable.