DEV Community: SysDev Laboratories LLC

How to recover lost or deleted digital photos

SysDev Laboratories LLC — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 09:14:31 +0000

Have you ever lost your precious photos because of a hard drive failure? Or have you ever deleted them by mistake without making a copy beforehand? I bet you have. Losing photos is never a pleasant experience, and losing those of a unique event like wedding is a real nightmare for many of us. That being said, there is still a chance to get your digital memories back, in particular, when you take appropriate measures as soon as possible. So, let’s discover what you can do to recover photos that were lost or deleted from a USB flash drive, a memory card, an SSD or an HDD.

First of all, once you discover that some photos are missing, please:

immediately stop using the device they disappeared or were deleted from to prevent them from being overwritten with other information. Remember that it is impossible to restore overwritten files;
do not try repairing your data storage device yourself (unless you are an electronics repair specialist), if it is physically damaged, but hurry to the nearest data recovery center;
avoid fixing logical errors detected by the OS (reject the corresponding prompts) as this may aggravate your data loss case.

Additionally, please mind that data recovery software like Raise Data Recovery, Recovery Explorer or any other program you may find in the Internet can restore missing photos only in case of logical data loss, i.e. occurred because of accidental or intentional deletion, quick format, file system corruption, malware/virus infection or software/hardware malfunction.

Below you can find step-by-step instructions on how to get back your deleted or lost photos with the help of Raise Data Recovery and Recovery Explorer Standard programs.

The first step is the same for both programs and consists in downloading and installing any of them on the computer you’re planning to use for data recovery purposes. You can download Raise Data Recovery or Recovery Explorer Standard from the official websites of these programs and install any just like you usually install applications on your PC.

Then, if you're dealing with an external data storage medium (USB flash memory, memory card, portable SSD/HDD), attach it to the computer and run the program. And if you’ve lost or accidentally deleted photos from an internal drive of the PC, skip this step and just launch the data recovery program right after its installation.

How to undelete photos with Raise Data Recovery

Check the Physical disks or Logical volumes pane of the main window for your storage device or a corresponding partition on it.

Double-click this storage/partition or select it and then hit Continue in the bottom right corner to start its scanning for missing photos.

On the next step, you’ll see two scanning options: Use deep scan (recommendable after quick-formatting your data storage) and This file system only (adequate for the majority of data loss scenarios). Select the necessary one.

Wait till the scanning is over. You can control its progress with the help of the respective bar.

To make finding a particular lost file easier and quicker, Raise Data Recovery automatically groups all files into different folders by their types. So that you can immediately access all photos, both the currently available and the undeleted/restored ones, recollected in the Photos and pictures folder.

Additionally, you can preview files the way they are grouped on your storage, and for this, just open the All files folder.

In case you can’t find your missing photos in none of the mentioned above folders, please also look through the contents of the Extra found, $LostFiles and $Recycle.Bin folders.

The program is also equipped with an integrated file previewer and a search function.

Tick off all photos you need to save and hit the Recover selected button.

Choose a target storage for your recovered photos, press Start recovery, and they will be copied to the specified location. Please NEVER save the recovered data to the storage they've been restored from. This will put them under risk and can even cause irreversible data loss.

How to undelete photos with Recovery Explorer Standard

Find the data storage you’ve lost or deleted photos from among the Logical disks/Connected storages.

To start its scanning for missing files, select it and press Start scan or, as an alternative, select it and click on the Scan this storage instrument in the toolbar at the top of the list of storages.

Now make several settings. In case you’re not sure about any of them, just keep the parameters set by default. Press the Next button to proceed.

After that hit Start scan to start searching for lost photos.

Once the scanning is finished, Recovery Explorer Standard will show you a popup prompting you to save the scan result database. You can save it and upload it to the program to avoid re-scanning that very storage in future or skip this step. But please do not save the result to the storage you’ve just scanned.

Now find the recovered files you’d like to save. Click on the D*efine selection* tool in the top toolbar and tick them off. You can also hold the Ctrl key and click on the necessary files one by one.

Then click the Save (recover) selection tool and choose a storage you’d like to copy the restored files to. It must not be the storage you are restoring your photos from in order to avoid their permanent loss. Press Select, and your photos will be copied to the chosen storage.

How to recover data from an external SSD or HDD

SysDev Laboratories LLC — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 09:22:20 +0000

External hard drives have become very popular in the last few years. No wonder as they are portable, really convenient and quite affordable. However, despite being considered absolutely reliable by the majority of the users, they are in fact far from being infallible. The good news is that once lost or deleted (on purpose or by mistake) from an external HDD or SSD, the files are not usually lost forever. In most data loss scenarios, they could be restored (at least partially) with a data recovery program like Recovery Explorer.

With this software you can recover files and folders that have been accidentally deleted or lost as a result of quick format, virus attack or any other logical failure on an external HDD, SSD or SSHD. Recovery Explorer offers two modes to choose from: the Standard (or full-featured) and the Wizard-based (simplified) one. Choose any or first try both and then make your choice.

How to recover data from an external HDD or SSD under the Standard mode

First, download Recovery Explorer to your PC and install it just like you usually install programs.

NOTE: There are several editions of this software so that you can choose one that best suits your needs. In this tutorial we are using Recovery Explorer Standard. Please, also pay attention to the software version as there are 3 of them for different operating systems: Windows, Linux and macOS.

Then connect your hard drive to the computer using its native USB cable (please make sure it works before using it) or just plug it into a USB port, if it has an integrated male-type USB connector (some SSDs have it).

Find your drive in the list of detected storages and select it. If it’s not there, click the Refresh option in the topbar.

Press Start scan. Or you can also start its scanning by clicking on the magnifying glass icon right above the list of storages.

After that, you’ll get to the first step of the scanning procedure configuration. You can leave the settings established by default or change them according to your needs. Hit the Next button.

In the next step, there is a list of file systems to look for. You can select all or uncheck those you don’t need (read more about file systems). Press Next.

In the last step, you need to specify whether the program should perform the so-called raw recovery or recovery by known content (recommendable after a quick format of the drive).

Then press the Start scan button and wait till the scanning of the drive is over.The progress bar shows the time left till its completion.

When the scanning is finished, you’ll get a popup prompting to save the scan result database. Save it or skip this pass. In case you opt for the first variant, please don’t choose the external hard drive you’ve just scanned as target storage for this database as this may result in irreversible data loss.

Look through the recovered files and folders (their names are marked with a different color). Mark those you'd like to copy to another data storage. You can do it by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on the files in the list. As an alternative, hit the Define selection button in the toolbar and tick those you need to save.

After that, click the floppy disk icon in that very toolbar, choose Save (recover) selection and specify a storage you’d like to copy your recovered data to. It can be any internal or external data storage medium except for the one you’ve restored data from. Mind that saving recovered files to that very storage they’ve been retrieved from will cause irreversible data loss.

The free trial version of Recovery Explorer Standard lets you save an unlimited number of small files up to 256 KB each, while with the trial version of Recovery Explorer RAID or Recovery Explorer Professional you can save any number of files up to 768 KB each. If the files you’d like to save are bigger, you should get a license.

How to recover data from an external HDD or SSD under the Wizard mode

Press the corresponding button at the bottom of the program window to activate the Wizard mode.

Select your HDD, SSD or SSHD in the Physical disks panel or, if you need to scan only a particular volume on it, select the necessary one among the Logical volumes. If it’s not there, use the Refresh drives option to make the software update the list of detected data storage devices.

Click Continue and then choose between two scanning variants: a deep one (more time-consuming, recommended after a quick format or in case the storage file system is corrupted) and a quick one (adequate for the majority of data loss cases and allowing you to save your time and system memory).

Wait till the scanning of the drive is finished.

When it’s finished, you’ll find all files grouped into folders by their types: documents, images, video files and so on for a more convenient navigation.

But if you prefer seeing them exactly as they are organized on your hard drive, open the All files folder.

Now tick the file(s) you need to save and press Recover selected.

Then choose a target data storage device different from the one you’ve just scanned and hit Start recovery. Your files will be copied to the specified location.

How to recover files from an external data storage device

SysDev Laboratories LLC — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 08:16:15 +0000

Losing an important file (or several files) from an external data storage medium like an external HDD or SSD, a memory card or a USB flash drive is one of the most widespread problems a regular PC user may encounter. So, if you’ve ever faced such an issue and had no clue how to solve it or just want to be prepared in case you face it one day, keep reading.

First of all, when you discover that some files are missing from your data storage device, don’t panic. In the majority of cases, for example, if they were deleted (on purpose or by mistake) or disappeared after a hardware or software failure, it is still possible to recover them with a data recovery program (Raise Data Recovery in our case). The thing is that in spite of being inaccessible to you, the deleted or lost data might still be physically present on the device, at least, before it is replaced with new information. Therefore, most lost or deleted files remain recoverable BEFORE they are overwritten. And that is why it’s highly recommended that you stop using the device you’ve lost or deleted files from as soon as possible to prevent them from being replaced with new data.

Before you proceed to data recovery with software

That being said, under certain circumstances it is impossible to restore missing information with data recovery software, no matter how advanced or effective it is. To be more specific, please don’t try recovering files yourself with a dedicated data recovery program, when:

your memory card / external hard drive/ USB flash drive is physically damaged;
the operating system of the PC you attached your device to can’t detect it;
your data storage is displayed with zero or incorrect capacity.

In the above-mentioned cases, please take your data storage medium to an electronics repair laboratory as your DIY efforts to repair it may make your case even more complicated and result in irreversible data loss.

If none of the cases listed above is yours, feel free to download the free trial version of Raise Data Recovery and follow the instructions below to get your lost or deleted files back.

How to recover deleted or lost files

Download Raise Data Recovery to the computer you’re planning to use for data recovery purposes and install it just like you install any other software.

Now attach the USB flash drive, memory card or external hard drive you’ve lost files from to that PC.

Run the program. Find your storage in the Physical disks panel and select it. If it’s not there, please try pressing the Refresh drives button at the bottom of the window.

Hit the Continue button in the bottom right corner to launch the scanning of the selected data storage device. Alternatively, you can just double-click it.

On the next screen, you’ll see two scanning options: a deep one that takes more time and a quick one that consists in a quick analysis of the existing file system. Opt for the deep scanning, if you need to restore files after a quick format or in case the file system of the device is very damaged. In other cases, the quick one will be more than enough and will save your time and system memory. Select the option you need.

Wait till the scanning is finished. The recovery results will be listed in the built-in Explorer tool.

For more convenient navigation, Raise Data Recovery groups all files by types into corresponding folders: documents, audio files, images, video files and so on. So, if you’re looking for a lost or deleted photo, for example, look for it in the Photos and pictures folder.

As an alternative, you can open the All files folder to see all your files exactly as they are organized in the actual file system (as a tree of folders).

The recovered files and folders can be easily distinguished from those currently available on the storage by a different color of their names.

Find the recovered files and folders you need to copy, tick them off and hit the Recover selected button at the bottom of the window.

Choose an internal or external data storage to save your recovered files.

Please NEVER save the recovered information to that very storage medium they have been restored from as this can provoke irreversible data loss.

With the trial version of Raise Data Recovery you can copy small files of up to 256 KB each. To save files bigger than 256 KB, you need a license.

Press the Start recovery button and wait till the program saves your data to the specified storage.