Have you ever felt the pain or stress caused by realizing that your captured memories are gone? Worry not; you are not alone. Every month, millions of Windows, Mac, Android devices, and iOS users from across the globe lose their photos, videos, and other media files from their computers, external storage media or devices, cameras, tablets, and smartphones.
Photos permanently capture some of our most precious moments and irreplaceable memories. So, for some of us, losing these photos might feel like losing a piece of ourselves.
Suppose you are searching for ways to restore deleted or lost photos. Then you have ended up in the right place. This article will provide all the guaranteed tools to help you recover deleted photos from any Windows system or storage device. In addition, we will also explore all the possible reasons why people lose their precious photos.
With the right guidance, proper instructions, and technical expertise, any user can recover even the images or photos that are gone forever.
So, without wasting any more time, let’s start digging for the unearthed treasures.
One can manual solutions like the Undo option to undelete photos, recover them from the Recycle Bin, restore them from backups, use restore points or older versions of the files. But those solutions also come with a few limitations. Such as not deleting the image files permanently, having backups, enabling tools like File History or Previous Versions, etc.
But if you already tried the manual solutions but they were fruitless. You can always rely on experts.
This is where reliable photo recovery tools like SFWare Data Recovery Software come into your rescue. The tool is designed to work in scenarios where other delete photo recovery solutions fail. Including permanently deleting image files, accidental or intentional formatting of the drive where you have saved your most cherished pictures, system crashes, device failure, virus or malware attacks, resizing or deleting partitions, or hundreds of other scenarios. SFWare has been rigorously tried and tested under 100+ real time scenarios to recover practically all image file formats from any internal or external storage device.
AFPHOTO, AFX, AGIF, AGP, AI, APM, APNG, ART, ARW, AVIF, BAY, BIF, BMP, BPG, CDR, CDX, CLIP, CMX, CPC, CR2, CR3, CSL, CT, CUR, DCM, DCR, DCX, DDS, DIB, DICOM, DJVU, DNG, ECW, EMF, EMZ, EXIF, FLIF, FODG, GBR, GIF, HDR, HEIC, HEIF, ICNS, ICO, INK, J2C, J2K, JFIF, JP2, JPC, JPEG, JPF, JPM, JPX, JXL, JXR, MNG, MP, MPO, NEF, ODG, OTG, PAT CorelDRAW, PAT Pattern, PCT, PCX, PEF, PICT, PNG, PPP, PSB, PSD, PSP, PSPIMAGE, PVT, RAF, RAW, SKP, SVGZ, TGA, THM, TIFF, WEBP, WMF, WMZ, XPM, XPR, etc.
Step 1: Download the tool and set it up on your system. Launch the tool, and from the main screen, select the location from where you want to restore photos.
If you want to recover photos from any external storage device, you need to connect the drive to your system, and from the home screen, select the connected drive and click on the Start Scan option to start the drive scanning and file recovery process.
Step 2: As the tool scans the drive, the recovered files will be displayed on your screen.
Step 3: Use the Filter option or the Search Bar to find, filter, or sort the image files you want to recover.
Step 4: SFWare Data Recovery Tool comes with a free Preview option to have a quick look at the recovered photos.
Step 5: Select the photos you want to recover from the list and click the Save button. The tool will prompt you to select where to save the recovered photos.
In addition to using specialized or paid data recovery tools. One can also use DIY solutions such as the ones mentioned below. Do keep in mind. These solutions might or might not work well for you.
The first solution if you have deleted your image files that were saved locally is to use the undo delete option to recover photos for free.
Just navigate to the location where you saved your video files earlier. Hit Ctrl + Z or right-click, and click on the Undo Delete option from the options menu. All the deleted files from that location or the folder will be restored.
Recycle Bin is the location where all your deleted files, folders, and other data gets saved after you delete them from your Windows system.
So, if you are sure that you did not delete your picture permanently, or you have emptied your Bin folder. You can always recover deleted pics or pictures from the Bin folder.
Steps To Recover Deleted Pictures from the Bin folder
The selected files from the Recycle Bin will get restored back to their original location.
At times, you might have intentionally or unintentionally hide some of your Image files. This can happen due to various reasons like system errors, virus or malware attacks, accidental key combinations, etc.
You can try unhiding the hidden photos, images, or other data files.
Navigate to the folder where you had saved your image files earlier. From the options menu, click on the View tab, followed by clicking on the Show option and by clicking on Hidden items option.
List of all the hidden files, folders, and data will be displayed on your screen.
You are now required to select the photos that you want to unhide. Right-click and click on the Properties option. Click on the Hidden Attribute box and uncheck it. Click on the Apply button and click on the Ok option to apply the changes and unhide the selected hidden files.
If you have a habit of taking regular backups and saving them on multiple locations. Then you can use those files, folders, and data. In case, you have lost your data or deleted your files permanently.
Backups can be saved on any external storage device such as External Hard drives, USB flash drives, memory cards, or other cloud services such as Google Drive, DropBox, or Microsoft OneDrive, etc.
If you have saved your backup on external storage devices, you can connect your device to your system and copy and paste or move the backup files to your preferred location. But if you have saved your files on Cloud. You need to sign in to your account using your login credentials, find and select the files that you want to restore and download them on your system.
One of the best ways to recover photos for free is by using open source data recovery or image recovery software. These tools are open sourced and free to use. Thereby making the task of recovering data accessible and inexpensive for all users.
PhotoRec, TestDisk, Kickass undelete, FreeRecover, etc. are some of the best free open-source data recovery tools that can help any user recover lost photos or deleted files from any location or storage media.
Windows 10 and Windows 11 users can now try Microsoft's very own data recovery tool called the “Windows File Recovery Software”. A command line interface that can recover deleted or lost files from NTFS and other file systems.
1: Download the Windows File Recovery software from the Microsoft store.
2: Upon completion of the installation process. Run the application on your Windows system. When prompted, give all the necessary permissions to allow the tool to modify your device.
3: The following command will be displayed on your screen.
“winfr source-drive: destination-folder [/mode] [/switches]”
Where;
Source Drive: Location or drive from where you want to recover files.
Destination Drive: Location where you want to save the recovered images.
Mode: Data recovery option, Regular Mode and Extensive Mode (regular mode to recover data from basic data loss scenarios, extensive mode to recover data from complex data loss scenarios).
Switches: The type of file(s) you are looking to recover.
4: So enter the following command. Let’s say you want to recover deleted or lost photos of jpg file format from C drive and save it on a D drive.
Winfr C: D: /regular /n \Users\
5: Type the Y key to begin the deleted photo recovery process. Wait till the process is completed. Once done, the files were recovered. Hit the Ctrl + C keys to end the task.
Go to the destination location and verify if the image files were restored.
Unhiding photos can be an easy solution, there are certain situations like severe or complex data loss scenarios, permanent data loss, emptying Recycle Bin, formatting drives, deleting partitions, unexpected system crashes, etc. It’s better to skip manual solutions of photo recovery.
This is where photo recovery tools like SFWare Data Recovery Software proves to helpful in solving your problem and recovering your photos.
SFWare Data Recovery Software is designed to delve deeper into your storage device thereby finding and retrieving deeply hidden photos and files, the tool is built to make the tedious and time consuming data recovery process extremely fast and quick, also ensuring the safety of your data.