Lost Graduation photos: I am hoping that someone can help us retrieve the photos. I put the photos in the card reader and copied them to a file on my desktop. After it was copied, my...

lwhitlow

I am hoping that someone can help us retrieve the photos. I put the photos in the card reader and copied them to a file on my desktop. After it was copied, my husband deleted the photos from his card. I went to work on the photos and they were not in the file I had copied them to. I had copied another card into the same folder and they are there, but the ones from that camera card are not there. Are they totally lost or possibly retrievable? We are sick. Thank you for any possible help.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

#1> Lesson learned for future - never, ever delete or erase anything until you verify the copy is available where you think you put it and is not corrupt (readable).

#2> If your husband has not used the SD card to take other photos (or formatted the card) your graduation photos may still be available to recover from the card. Here is a link how to do so:
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-recover-deleted-photos-from-a-memory-card/

#3> There is a possibility that you copied the photos to a different file folder - if you made it new maybe you spelled it a letter or number different and it is sitting among your other icons somewhere? You may be able to look at your history to see where they went. Or, if you know any of the numbering sequence you could do a search on your hard drive to see if shows up somewhere else.

Hoping for good luck for you.

PaulR01 Loc: West Texas

You can still retrieve them from the SD card. There are plenty of free SD Card Recovery programs out their that work. You will be shocked at what it recovers off the card when you think it was deleted or re-formatted.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

I suggest running a file search on all drives on your computer, just to make sure the missing images are definitely not there. Searching by date created and file extension should be sufficient. Over the years it has happened to more than once that I accidentally copied files to a location other than where I thought they are going. And once a file is copied to or created on the computer, it is unlikely that it simply vanishes out of existence.

Chadp Loc: Virginia Beach

I would run a search on my entire hard drive for all photos sorted by date just in case they were put in a different folder by accident.

lwhitlow

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I will work on it after we get back home today. Our flight leaves in a few hours.

khorinek

lwhitlow wrote:

I am hoping that someone can help us retrieve the photos. I put the photos in the card reader and copied them to a file on my desktop. After it was copied, my husband deleted the photos from his card. I went to work on the photos and they were not in the file I had copied them to. I had copied another card into the same folder and they are there, but the ones from that camera card are not there. Are they totally lost or possibly retrievable? We are sick. Thank you for any possible help.

I use a program called Card Recovery. It cost around $30 but is cheap compared to losing photos. https://www.cardrecovery.com/?rid=google&kid=cr0102&gclid=CjwKCAjwlPTmBRBoEiwAHqpvhe1iZr71LtPM2ja3OA9eajDcny74bEBDIYo6n367Lb3YkXOc7YTcABoCjGEQAvD_BwE

lwhitlow

khorinek wrote:

I use a program called Card Recovery. It cost around $30 but is cheap compared to losing photos. https://www.cardrecovery.com/?rid=google&kid=cr0102&gclid=CjwKCAjwlPTmBRBoEiwAHqpvhe1iZr71LtPM2ja3OA9eajDcny74bEBDIYo6n367Lb3YkXOc7YTcABoCjGEQAvD_BwE

Thank you- will it recover after the card has been reformatted?

khorinek

It should. Depends on how many times the card had been formatted since you lost the photos. I've formatted once and still recovered files.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Assuming you have a Windows PC, open File Explorer (not Internet Explorer), go to C: and in the search bar type in a file name that would have been on your SD card. They would be sequential from the last photos that you successfully loaded. The resulting search will show you where the file is located in your PC's directory. If no hit, then they’re not on your PC.

William Royer Loc: Kansas

You might be very pleasantly surprised at what photos are still ‘on the card’ and recoverable regardless of subsequent formatting. When I had to run a recovery program some time ago, it not only recovered the images that I had recently overwritten, but images came back that were taken a year or two earlier and formatted/overwritten a number of times.
Also, you might try taking the card to a very good camera store for help in recovery. My experience has been that the top stores have several recovery programs available to them for customer assistance. For a small fee they once recovered a number of files and put them on a CD for me.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

lwhitlow wrote:

I am hoping that someone can help us retrieve the photos. I put the photos in the card reader and copied them to a file on my desktop. After it was copied, my husband deleted the photos from his card. I went to work on the photos and they were not in the file I had copied them to. I had copied another card into the same folder and they are there, but the ones from that camera card are not there. Are they totally lost or possibly retrievable? We are sick. Thank you for any possible help.

DO NOT use the camera card your husband deleted photos from, until you run image recovery software on it!

It may take several hours of processing, but such software can usually recover "deleted" images. Why? Because when you DELETE an image or FORMAT a card in the camera, all it does is delete the disk directory listing for that image. Recovery software recreates that directory listing so the operating system can reveal the file again.

There are many software applications for image recovery.

https://www.toptenreviews.com/software/multimedia/best-photo-recovery-software/

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Here is a good image handling practice:

> Remove memory card from camera.

> Place memory card in a compatible card reader.

> COPY the images to a new folder on your computer or your external drive of choice. Give the folder a useful name.

> IMPORT the images into Lightroom, Mylio, or whatever digital asset manager you use, if you use one.

> BACK UP the image folder you created, so that exact folder and all its images are in TWO DIFFERENT OTHER LOCATIONS. One should be on physical media (rotating platter drive, archival M-Disc, etc.) that you control. The other can be a different drive in a different location, or a cloud service.

> VERIFY that all your images are intact (not corrupt, all there, all readable...).

> Format the memory card in the exact camera where it will be used next.

Michael1079 Loc: Indiana

lwhitlow wrote:

I am hoping that someone can help us retrieve the photos. I put the photos in the card reader and copied them to a file on my desktop. After it was copied, my husband deleted the photos from his card. I went to work on the photos and they were not in the file I had copied them to. I had copied another card into the same folder and they are there, but the ones from that camera card are not there. Are they totally lost or possibly retrievable? We are sick. Thank you for any possible help.

This is a neat (free) program that should recover your photos, so long as the card has not been used. Good luck!
https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

Scruples Loc: Brooklyn, New York

A good habit to follow. I never ever reuse my cards. Sure I have 18 cards and counting. All of them are numbered and dated for good measure. I copy each card in a separate file to an external hard drive. Redundancy is good here.
As for recovering photos it is possible that all of them are still available. It will take time but have faith.