Have You Ever Found Yourself Needing SD Card Recovery?

In this article, I’m going to talk about a devastating situation most of us might have been through. And  if you have, you will immediately relate to what I felt in this situation. But luckily, I’m going to show you how to fix the problem.

So, enough with the thrill and drama! I am talking about a failed SD card. Sound familiar? It happens to all of us and it can be the most catastrophic if you have recently opened your photographs and they are on the SD card that has crashed. Your deadline is looming and you are in a dilemma of what to do.

This happens in many cases. You are back from a rejuvenating vacation and want to transfer the pictures from your camera’s SD card to your laptop and suddenly a message pops up “Format this disk to continue.” Or maybe you shoot the best session of your life, only to get an error message when you go to import them into Lightroom.

This shocking message is agonizing. You don’t want to lose the most cherished memories you have created on your vacation. You can’t risk losing the photos from a client session. Now what? What are the options for SD card recovery?

Recovery Prices

You can try to find a professional to help you out, but after hearing the price that they charge for recovering the data from your SD card, you might hesitate. The cost of professional data recovery can be quite high, but in some cases you have no other option but to get it done. But you are lucky to be reading this article because here is a systematic guide on how SD card recovery can be done while sitting at your home.

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Try This Software

The software called Zero Assumption Recovery or ZAR can come to your rescue in such a situation. It’s easy to find it on www.z-a-recovery.com. This software can be used free of cost if you want to recover photographs which are on a digital camera. But for other functions, there is a minimal fee that you will have to pay. You can perform an SD card recover to get your photographs back using these steps:

1. Download and install the software. The first and most important thing is to download and install the ZAR software on your laptop. While running the program, sometimes you may get a notification that antivirus is not letting this software run. In that case, you need to disable or change the settings of your antivirus software.

2. Insert the SD card and run it. Put your SD card in the card slot and run the software.

3. Click the image recovery option. You will soon be prompted with a pop-up of the image recovery option which will be free. You need to click it.

4. Select your SD card from the list and then click Next. The program will auto run and will try to find the various disks on your device which might need recovery. This will take a little time. You need to select your SD card the list. It’s usually easy to find an SD card from amongst them as you already know the maximum memory of your SD card which does not match with the computer disk memories. So, locate it and click Next.

5. Choose the correct drive to retrieve files and click Next. With a blink of an eye, the software starts to analyze the SD card and you will soon see a long list of recovered files on your screen. You can choose the most recent items and if you do not have a back-up of the previous ones, you can select them all. After you have decided, click the root check box, and recover the desired pictures to your PC.

6. Select the destination folder for your files. After you click Next, you will be asked to select a folder. If you select a Root folder, your selected files will be recovered in a folder named Root and you can decide the location of the folder. Do not select the SD card again. It’s crashed, remember? Kidding! Of course, you won’t select the SD card. You can place them anywhere on your laptop and within minutes all your recovered files will be copied to your decided destination.

7. Open Windows folder and browse the folder for your important photographs. After you are done, now it’s time to see what magic this software has done. And mind it, the results are not as natural as an undamaged SD card would have given. When you open the folder with recovered files, some of the files will be shown as thumbnails, some others may be unreadable and a few will have a half image. Yes, it’s terrible. But these are the possibilities. 

Try Other Devices

I would advise you that don’t just throw your memory card away when an error appears on your laptop that show that you card has become corrupted. Instead, you can try the guide above first. You can also try your SD card on another card reader like a friend’s computer.

Do Not Format It

If the same message reappears, do not do the mistake of formatting the. Once you format your SD card, it becomes a very difficult task to do SD card recovery later and get anything out of it, if you are able to retrieve anything at all. Instead, try a file recovery software.

We have presented here a systematic guide for you to follow and recover your important files. Though you might lose some data by using this method and some might be recovered in the form of half pictures or thumbnails, most of the data should be retrieved. All of us know that we usually have the habit of clicking 2 or 3 shots of the same situation with our digital cameras. Gone are the times when the photography was strictly film based and each shot mattered. Thanks to the digital camera and the ample space on your SD card, there are more chances that all your important files will be recovered.

Try these easy steps and you will not have to spend a small fortune in the market where the recovery professional will ask for a good amount of money for something that’s simple and completely doable at home.