Is it possible to recover deleted files from Memory Card?
By b4balaji
@b4balaji (410)
India
November 30, 2009 11:26am CST
I had a virus in my memory card, so formatted it. Now I remember I have some nice pictures in it, which cannot be taken again. Those pics were taken when I went to a tour.
Is it possible to recover them? Please let me know.
2 responses
@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
30 Nov 09
The answer is, technically, yes (provided you haven't written anything to it since you formatted it) but practically, no.
There is software which can recover data which has been erased (and even, in some cases, overwritten) but it is usually quite expensive and time consuming to do so and probably not worth the pictures you have lost.
When data is written to a disk (or memory) it is written in 'blocks' and all the blocks that make up a file are recorded in an index which first of all tells programs what sectors to use for the data and secondly tells other programs not to write to the sectors that are in use. A disk (or memory card) is not like a book where every page is bound in sequence. Think of it more as a loose-leaf file where pages of a story could be anywhere in the file but the index tells you where to look next.
When you format a disk (or a memory stick) what usually happens is that just the index is wiped out and the data is still there. Because the index is gone, the next application to store something on the disk sees all of the space as free and can overwrite parts of a file that was previously stored in that space.
In some cases (if you are lucky) there is software that can read each block and join them together to recreate the original file. Much more often, some or all of the blocks will have already been overwritten and you will not be able to recover the file at all, especially if it is a compressed file (such as most photos are). Once you have lost one part of the file, the rest is virtually useless.
@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
30 Nov 09
The software to do this may be free (but more often costs money). Unfortunately, the process is far from automatic in most cases and requires a considerable amount of skill and knowledge (and quite a lot of luck) to piece together a file. It is certainly not a job for amateurs and the people who make a living out of recovering data do not overcharge ... it is time consuming (and costly) even if you know what you are doing!
@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
30 Nov 09
There is free software, it is true. How good it is is debatable. I doubt that it would recover anything at all if the FAT sector has been wiped (which is what the minimum format does). If a full format has been done and every sector overwritten with zeroes, it will not be possible to recover anything at all without much more sophisticated equipment and even then I think that solid state memory doesn't have the latency that disks and rewritable CD/DVDs do.

@badman006 (224)
• India
30 Nov 09
Yes using some software you can actually recover the lost data from memory card.It searches every track and sector of your card and files like images are mostly recovered.


