Recover Deleted Files From Your Digital Camera’s Memory Card Or Your Computer’s Hard Drive

by Lynnette

computers, memory cards

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Have you ever accidentally deleted some photos from your camera’s memory card — like a SmartMedia card, Flash drive, SD card, Sony memory stick, Multimedia card, Secure Digital card, Compact flash card?

I hadn’t until yesterday.

Jim was on the road. When he’s at the races, he sends me a fresh batch of photos to upload to his racing websites each day. But on this day, he accidentally deleted half of the pictures before he actually sent them to me.

And of course, they were the best ones — the photos that people were eagerly waiting to see online!

I did a little research and found a FREE program that saved the day…

How I Found The Best Program To Recover Deleted Files

Whenever I have a computer question, or want to see which programs the experts recommend for various tasks, I run to the website of Steve Bass from PC World.

I’ve been a follower of this computer guru for years.

Steve recommended trying a program called Inspector Smart Recovery.

It’s free, it’s easy to use, and it brings dozens of file types back to life, including all the standards (JPG, BMP, TIF, and GIF), plus AVI, MOV, and many types of RAW files. — Steve Bass, PC World

From the website:

  • Supported photo file types include:  .jpg, .tif, .bmp, .gif, Canon .crw , Fuji .raf , Olympus .orf (E-XX), Olympus .orf (C5050), Kodak .dcr, Minolta .mrw, Nikon .nef (D1H/D1X), Nikon .nef (E5000/E5700), and Sigma-Foveon .x3f.
  • Supported video files include:  .avi and QuickTime .mov.
  • You can recover audio files in these formats:  .wav and .dss

I immediately sent this information off to Jim, and he phoned me right away… it worked! Like magic.

Need To Recover Files From Your Computer’s Hard Drive?

In the event that you need to recover files from your computer’s hard drive (rather than a flash drive), then check out this program:

It’s also FREE and it’s also recommended by the folks at PC World:

Run it, and it scans your system for files that have been deleted, even those removed from the Recycle Bin, or deleted on a network drive or via a DOS window. It lists all the files, and tells you whether it can likely be restored. (In some instances, the delete file has already been overwritten; in that case, you can kiss it sayonara.) Then tell the program to restore your files, and they come back from the dead.

Need to recover a deleted file from your computer after you’ve emptied the Recycle Bin?

Here’s how: