Is there a way i can recover lost photo on a SD card from my camera?

Question

i lost pics on my digital camera and i was looking for a program that can recover them.

i know media recover does that but i don't have 30 bucks

it there any i can download that are free?

Answer 1

You do have a problem, because it will cost about $30 to buy a good program.  Until you can afford to do that, buy a new card and use it (2GB cards are under $15 now) and then put the old card some place safe, so you do not accidentally use it and overwrite your lost files.  

If you have already taken some shots on the old card, your chances of recovery went from around 80% to zero so you won't need to buy a recovery program ... just format the card and start over ... and don't delete any images from the memory card using the delete button on your camera anymore.  Do the deleting after viewing your images on you computers large screen.  

After safely copying all your images over to your computer, format your card every time, using the format feature on your camera ... this will assure your images do not get corrupted again.

Answer 2

Here is a good, free utility you can use to recover your files. But first read this. It gives helpful hints:

http://lifehacker.com/393084/how-to-reco...

The software:

http://www.softsea.com/review/Recuva.htm...

And also:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_...

(This is also a good one! Free too!)

For reviews of file recovery software, here is an 'OK' site for that. Not the best, but I didn't have much time to research this, LOL!

http://lifehacker.com/393084/how-to-reco...

And a complete list of both free, and for-pay software recovery tools:

http://www.softsea.com/software/Data-Rec...

Be aware of the difference between 'free trial, and freeware. With most free trial software, it will locate the images for you but it will generally NOT recover them. It will simply display all the deleted files it is able to recover but stops there. Why? So you can but the software, of course! Freeware means exactly that - Free! But just use good judgment when choosing the software you use. Some are simply better than others at recovering files.