How to recover digital photos

The advent of digital cameras, smartphones, tablets and other gadgets has made it incredibly easy to capture our precious unrepeatable moments through photographs. And, in contrast to their physical analogs, the modern-day photo albums do not have to be crammed or bulky, since they can be conveniently organized on various devices like USB sticks, flash memory cards, hard disk drives and SSDs. Yet, going digital in this case has one significant drawback – the potential for data loss is lurking in the very nature of this kind of storage. Whether due to accidental deletion, formatting, or unforeseen system glitches, the impact of losing single-copy pictures can indeed be disastrous. In view of this, it's essential to have a plan in place for immediate photo recovery. In this article, we'll look into how you can restore those lost images with the help of the Raise Data Recovery software.

How to recover digital photos

Raise Data Recovery has been designed to aid in retrieving lost or deleted files from various storage devices. It's an easy-to-use solution for those seeking a straightforward way to recover photos after they have been mistakenly removed, destroyed by quick formatting or corrupted as a result of software or hardware malfunctions. The program supports a wide range of file systems and types of media, providing the compatibility with most holders of digital photo content. Moreover, it understands the specifics and recognizes numerous photo formats, including the RAW ones of Sony, Nikon, Canon, Apple, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Olympus, and many others brands. The foregoing strengths make this software a front-runner among other photo recovery options.

But before we move on to photo recovery by means of this tool, please take a look at some rules you should observe during the process in order to avoid making the most common mistakes.

How to recover deleted or lost digital photos

Whether you're a professional photographer or lost your personal shots snapped with your smartphone, Raise Data Recovery will help you restore those invaluable pictures, regardless of the format they were captured in. Just stick to the following simple steps:

  1. Download Raise Data Recovery onto the computer that will be used for photo recovery. You may install it like any regular software, but choose a destination storage other than the one being recovered. Please rely on this installation guide if you need precise instructions.

  2. Plug in the storage device containing the pictures you want to get back. You may choose any type of direct connection applicable for this type of storage, for example, a USB port for a thumb drive, a USB cable for an external HDD or SSD, a memory card reader for a flash card and so on. In addition, familiarize yourself with some safety rules to follow while restoring data from an external drive.

    In case your drive is internal, simply go ahead to the next step.

  3. Launch Raise Data Recovery and find your storage or a partition on it under the Physical disks or Logical volumes tab.

    logical volumes and physical disks tabs in raise data recovery

    If you want to check the content to make the right decision, you may employ Open existing file system (skip scan, if possible) option and click Continue.

    option to view existing file system in raise data recovery

    In the event that the entire device is missing in the program, this tutorial may help you to handle the issue.

  4. Click on this storage twice or select it and then press the Continue button in the bottom right corner to start analyzing it.

    continue button in interface of raise data recovery software

  5. Hold on until Raise Data Recovery completes the scanning procedure. You may monitor its progress with the help of a progress bar.

    drive scanning in progress in interface of raise data recovery

  6. Once the scan in finished, you will be presented with all the files, both the ones currently present on the storage and the ones that have been undeleted by Raise Data Recovery. You may switch between the Deleted files and Current files tabs for convenience.

    deleted and current files tabs in raise data recovery interface

  7. Search for the photos you wish to restore. The easiest way to spot them is to use the embedded preview function – just double-click the file in question or select it and hit the View button on the right. The thumbnail will also instantly appear in the right pane once you select a file, provided that its format is supported for preview. If you need more information on how to find, select, preview and save files in Raise Data Recovery, please refer to the corresponding article.

    file preview features in interface of raise data recovery

  8. Once you've found the necessary pictures, tick each of them off and hit the Recover selected button.

    button to save recovered files and folders in raise data recovery

  9. Choose a location to save your recovered photos, click Start recovery and wait until they are copied.

    choosing target storage to copy recovered files to

Yet, you should mind that it's forbidden to save the recovered files to the very same storage they've been lost from. This will put them under risk and may even lead to irremediable data loss.

Please also consider that the free trial version of the application will permit you to save an unlimited number of files of under 256 KB each. If your photos have lager sizes, you may need to order a license for Raise Data Recovery in accordance with the instructions from the related article.

What’s more? Explore the variety of our software solutions!

Raise Data Recovery is a beginners-friendly application designed to save you costs and efforts in rescuing lost files. If you have higher requirements to your data recovery tools, check out more advanced products of SysDev Laboratories:

Recovery Explorer Universal software that effectively copes with many data loss issues and offers a broad toolkit that can be easily employed by both novices and experienced computer users.
UFS Explorer The first-rate assistant of data recovery engineers and other technical experts in cases of various complexities: from simple routine tasks to complicated data loss challenges.
myCCTV Recovery A straightforward yet exceedingly efficient utility specialized in data recovery from CCTV systems and equipped for reconstruction of footages lost from surveillance devices of popular vendors.