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Essential Data Recovery

Recover deleted photos from an SD card

Deleted photos usually stay on the card until something writes over them. What deletion and formatting really do, how to recover on any computer, and when photos are gone.

Written by Essential Data RecoveryPublished 2026-09-12Safety-critical: owner-reviewedRevision 2
A small SD memory card resting on folded linen beside a ceramic cup, with a plant shadow across the wood

Stop using the card now. Every new photo, every format and every repair attempt writes over the space your deleted photos occupy. Take the card out of the camera or phone and leave it alone until you have read this page.[1]

Deleted photos can usually be recovered from an SD card, provided nothing has written to the card since. On a camera card, deletion removes the entries that name the photos, not the photo data itself; recovery software reads that data until it is overwritten. The two situations that really do lose photos are taking new photos after the deletion, and a card that was formatted with an erase or overwrite option.[1][2]

This guide covers SD, SDHC, SDXC and microSD cards from cameras, phones, tablets and drones. It does not cover a card that is cracked, bent or has been through water, a card that no reader can detect at all, or photos deleted from a phone's internal storage. Those are different situations with different routes.

Not sure which situation you are in? Guided help walks you through it.

What deletion actually does to a card

Camera cards almost always use FAT-family file systems. When a file is deleted on FAT, the filename is marked deleted and the data area is freed, and the file stays recoverable until a new file occupies that area. A quick format is the same idea at scale: the SD Association describes its quick format as deleting file and directory entries by re-initialising the file system, while its overwrite format is the one that erases the data area completely.[1][2]

Vendor wording about in-camera formats differs, and honesty matters here. Canon's support documentation says a camera format only changes file management information and does not guarantee erasure; Nikon's says formatting permanently deletes everything on the card. The safest reading of both: do not format a card again 'to be safe' before recovering, and never count on recovery instead of a backup.[3][4]

Recover the photos

A careful first attempt

  1. Put the card in a computer's card reader rather than leaving it in the camera; recovery software needs to read the whole card directly.
  2. Install recovery software on the computer's own drive, not on the card. Nothing should write to the card during recovery.
  3. Run one thorough scan. PhotoRec is a free, open-source option whose documentation says it works even when media has been severely damaged or reformatted, reading the card without writing to it.
  4. Save recovered photos to the computer, never back onto the card. PhotoRec's documentation forbids writing recovered files to the partition they came from.
  5. Open a sample of the recovered photos before relying on the result.
[5]

Odd filenames and videos that will not play

Recovered photos often come back with generated names, because the names lived in the file table the deletion removed; PhotoRec's documentation says so directly, and sorting the results by date in photo software is the practical fix. Videos are the other known limit: some cameras record video in fragments, recovery tools expect whole files, and a fragmented video can come back unplayable even though its picture data is on the card.[6][7]

If the card was in an Android phone

Which kind of card it was decides everything. A portable card, the normal choice, is not encrypted and not tied to the phone; treat it exactly like a camera card. A card adopted as internal storage is different: Android's documentation is clear that it is formatted and encrypted for that one device and cannot be mounted elsewhere, and if the phone is gone or locked, the card's contents are effectively out of reach. Android also tells you which kind you have: a card visible in settings but missing from the Files app may be formatted as internal storage.[8][9]

The format prompt and the repair temptation

If a computer says the card needs formatting before it can be used, decline: that prompt is a symptom, and formatting before recovery is the mistake this page exists to prevent. The same applies to repair commands. Windows' chkdsk rewrites file system bookkeeping on FAT and can lose data doing it; recover the photos first, and only consider repairs for a card you intend to reuse afterwards.[10]

Windows shows the card as RAW or keeps asking to format: what to do first.

Formatted and overwritten cards

A quick-formatted card usually still holds the old photos, and recovery software is built for exactly that case. The losses are the write-overs: new photos taken after the deletion, a second format that erased data rather than just the index, or an overwrite-style format from a dedicated tool. Cards reserved for security use add their own boundary: the SD Association notes a protected area its formatter never touches and no support for BitLocker-encrypted cards, so encrypted cards are outside what consumer tools can read.[1][11][2]

When a reader does not see the card

One not-detected case has a documented explanation: cards above 2 TB use a newer protocol that needs current drivers and hardware, so an old reader can genuinely be too old for the card. Try a modern reader or a different device, as DJI's support documentation advises for unreadable drone cards, before concluding the card is dead. If no device sees the card at all, stop: that is physical-fault territory, and poking at it costs more than a professional quote.[2]

Free tools and vendor tools

PhotoRec is free, open source and does the work, with a clunky interface as the price. SanDisk points card owners at its RescuePRO software and, in the same breath, says its own support cannot help with third-party tools. Commercial free versions exist too; how much each lets you save before paying is tracked in a separate dated comparison rather than guessed at here.[12][5]

What each tool lets you recover for free, compared from official terms.

When to stop

Stop if the card is physically damaged: cracked shells, bent contacts and water damage are lab work, and prying a card open usually finishes what the accident started. Stop too if the photos are irreplaceable and the card is your only copy; a professional quote costs less than one wrong attempt. We are an information site, not a recovery provider, and we have not tested the tools named on this page.

Choosing a data recovery service: quotes, privacy and honest guarantees.

Sources

Facts on this page are cited to the publishers’ own documentation.

  1. [1] CGSecurity — TestDisk documentation: undelete file from FAT. captured 2026-09-12.
  2. [2] SD Association — SD Memory Card Formatter FAQ. captured 2026-09-12.
  3. [3] Nikon — Format memory card (Nikon Z30 online manual). captured 2026-09-12.
  4. [4] Canon — Formatting or erasing a card with the camera (Canon KB ART106664). captured 2026-09-12.
  5. [5] CGSecurity — PhotoRec. captured 2026-09-12.
  6. [6] CGSecurity — TestDisk documentation: PhotoRec step by step. captured 2026-09-12.
  7. [7] CGSecurity — TestDisk documentation: video recovery and fragmentation. captured 2026-09-12.
  8. [8] Android Open Source Project — Traditional storage (Android Open Source Project). captured 2026-09-12.
  9. [9] Android Open Source Project — Adoptable storage (Android Open Source Project). captured 2026-09-12.
  10. [10] Microsoft — chkdsk (Windows command reference). captured 2026-09-12.
  11. [11] SD Association — SD Memory Card Formatter. captured 2026-09-12.
  12. [12] SanDisk — RescuePRO data recovery software download and support information. captured 2026-09-12.