When you erase picture or video files from your digital camera would there still be a way to retrieve them?

Question

how do you format the memory in order to erase everything for good?

Answer 1

If the images/videos are stored on removable media like SD card then most probably yes. To avoid wear of flash drives writes are uniformly distributed. That means if you have 1GB card then your deleted photo won't be overwritten until you take approximately 1GB of new pictures. This makes retrieving deleted pictures very probable. You can use tools like Acrnois Drive Cleanser or Symantec Wipe Info to wipe out data from your flash drive. Formatting your card won't get rid of the deleted data.

If it is internal memory of the camera then I think it depends on what kind of memory it uses and how it provides access to it. Usually cameras have very littile internal memory so you can just shoot a small video to overwrite its content.

Answer 2

Yes they can be recovered, if you are trying to recover them don't take anymore pictures as the erased information can be overwritten and cannot be recovered.

If you are trying to get rid of it for security you should format your memory card.

Answer 3

Possibly. If your memory card is made by Sandisk - they have recovery software you can use. Not sure about other manufacturers.