It's a horrible feeling. All your photos are gone. But before you throw the camera at the wall and fire off a nasty email to the manufacturer, here are some things you can try to get deleted photos back.

How to Recover Photos from a Memory Card?

To cut to the chase, here’s a quick plan of action to try if your photos or videos have gone missing from your memory card or you’ve accidentally deleted them. You can find a much more detailed version below.

1. Stop using the memory card. This is important because overwriting the data will make it harder to recover deleted files from it. Take it out of your camera or phone.

2. Scan the memory card with the free trial versions of either Stellar Photo Recovery or Disk Drill. Both have Windows and Mac versions. The scan will show you whether any files can be found and recovered.

3. Recover the files. If the apps can find the files, you can then decide whether to buy a full license to run the actual recovery process or to try one of the other options covered below.

Isolate the Problem

Before knowing how to tackle the problem, you’ll first need to isolate it. If you can’t read your memory card, it’s natural to assume it’s a problem with the card. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it can be something else.

So what you want to do is confirm that it’s the card misbehaving and not something else. I’d recommend trying to put the card back in the camera and see if you can view the photos using the camera’s own playback.

If you can, go ahead and sigh with relief—you’ll almost certainly be able to recover your photos, and the problem is apparently somewhere else. But don’t take any more photos or record any more videos—you don’t want to make the problem worse.

If your camera can read the card normally, there are several things that could be going wrong. The issue might be with your card reader, the cable connecting your card reader to the computer, or even the computer’s USB or other connection port.

With USB, a common culprit is an unpowered USB hub (or even a powered one, for that matter). If you’re using a hub, try plugging the reader into a USB slot that’s connected directly to the motherboard (i.e., one on the computer itself rather than one on a peripheral device).

It’s also worth trying to plug it into a different USB slot. It’s also possible that it’s a software issue. Most modern operating systems can read most memory cards without extra software. But it’s not impossible to have a setup that causes problems.

If you have another computer handy, try that. Nearly all cameras can be used as card readers by connecting the camera directly to the computer. Usually, you’ll need to have your camera powered on. With some, you’ll need to put the camera in connection mode.

Your camera’s instruction manual will be able to help if you’re in doubt. So with the memory card in the camera, connect it to your computer to see if you can access the photos.

If you can, go ahead and download the photos right away to your computer. Get the photos to a safe place first, then worry about finding out what went wrong.

If your camera can’t read the photos either, then the problem probably does lie with the card. So it’s time to move on to more serious data recovery efforts.

SD Card Recovery Software

When your photos are on your memory card, it’s a pretty weak link in the chain. In most cases, it means there’s only one copy (unless you have one of the newer, high-end cameras that can copy to two cards simultaneously).

And while memory cards are pretty reliable, there is nevertheless still a small percentage failure rate. Once you download the photos off the memory card to your computer, one hopes you have a robust backup system in place involving multiple copies.

Until then, you’re relying on the memory card. There are a number of data recovery software options available. While they aim to do basically the same thing, they don’t all do it in the same way.

Most of them look and feel as though they were designed by a committee of engineers rather than anyone concerned about pesky little things like user interfaces.

Some are free; some are quite expensive. Some work in some instances and not others. Some are limited to certain file formats, while others get the whole shebang. So you might be in for a little trial and error.

The reputable ones shouldn’t do any further damage to the data on your card. For any that involve a paid license, I strongly recommend running a trial version first to get an indication of whether anything’s going to be recoverable.

You don’t want to shell out money unless you have some confidence it’s going to get results. How successful these will be in recovering your files depends on what’s gone wrong.

If it’s a simple case of accidentally formatting a card, there’s an excellent chance of recovering the files. Things get trickier the more you’ve overwritten on the file.

If you already have data recovery software installed, it’s worth trying that. But make sure it’s compatible with memory cards. Some software is designed for specific types of data recovery such a memory cards or hard drives.

There are several options when it comes to data recovery software. Here are some options worth looking at. All of them work with SD, CompactFlash, and microSD cards, along with other types of flash memory devices.

The scans are going to take a while, so don’t expect instant results. All of the software works by taking a virtual fine-tooth comb to the data on the card.

It’s also worth mentioning that even the apps that are branded by a specific memory card manufacturer aren’t limited to working with only cards made by that manufacturer.

Any of this software will work on any memory card from any manufacturer.

What If Your SD Card Won’t Mount?

Sometimes your memory card might not show up in your filesystem. There are all sorts of reasons that might happen.

Obvious first troubleshooting tips include taking the card out and reinserting it or rebooting the computer.

Make sure your card reader is compatible with the kind of memory card you’re using.

For instance, a card reader that is only compatible with SDHC won’t read SDXC cards and a CompactFlash reader won’t read a CFAST 2.0 card.

But they’re nearly always backward compatible within the same form factor, so an SDXC reader will read SDHC cards. Here are some more ideas to try.

On Mac:

1. Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.app) and see if it’s showing up there.

2. If you’re using a USB card reader, try a different USB slot on your computer and connect directly to the computer rather than through a USB hub.

3. Open a Terminal window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app), remove the memory card, enter killall Finder in the Terminal window and hit Return, reinsert the memory card, and check Finder again.

4. Try the SD Card Formatter app put out by the SD Association. See if it shows up in a drop-down menu at the top of the app’s screen.

On Windows:

1. Try the SD Card Formatter app put out by the SD Association.

2. See if it shows up in a drop-down menu at the top of the app’s screen. You can also try this (YouTube).