In today's digital age, photographs and videos are an essential part of our lives. With the advancement in technology, we can store our photos on various devices like SD cards, flash drives, external hard drives, and more. However, there are times when we lose our precious photos due to various reasons like accidental deletion, corruption of the storage device, virus attacks, and more. If you are facing a similar situation and have lost your photos saved on an SD card, then do not worry. In this article, we will discuss some possible ways to recover deleted photos from an SD card.

Check If Your SD card Is Corrupt

One of the common reasons why you may not be able to access the media files on your SD card could be because the card is corrupt. You can follow the steps below to check if your SD card is corrupt:

• Put the SD card into a card reader and insert it into a computer system.
• If the computer throws a "Please insert a disk into drive G:" error message, then the SD card is corrupt and needs to be repaired.
• Try repairing the SD card using the Windows CMD terminal or assign a new drive letter to it and see if the issue is fixed.

Clean the SD Card

SD cards are easily attacked by viruses, especially if you frequently remove them from the primary device to transfer files. Cleaning an SD card means scanning the card and removing the virus that has corrupted the data stored inside. You can clean your SD card using the following methods:

• Using an Antivirus App: Remove the SD card from the device and put it into a card reader. Then insert it into a computer that has an antivirus software installed and activated. Launch the antivirus software app, select the SD card, and scan it for viruses/malware. Delete all detected malicious/virus threats. Remove the SD card, reinsert it into your device, and check if you can access your photos.
• Using Command Prompt on Windows: With this method, you need admin access on the computer you're using to perform and scan. Connect the SD to a Windows computer. Right-click on Start and select Windows PowerShell (Admin). Run the following command: attrib -h -r -s /s /d G:. (Replace G with the SD card's drive letter). The above command will instruct Windows to attempt repairing the card, and by doing so, you may recover your lost photos from the SD card.

Look Into the Temp Storage

Some mobile devices have a hidden "temp" or "LOST.dir" folder where deleted files are saved temporarily before getting erased from the device. If you can't find such folders on your device, remove the SD card and put it into a computer system to check the temp folder.

• For Mac: Launch the Terminal application and run the following command - open $TMPDIR - to view what's lurking in the temp folder.
• For Windows: Click on the "Search" icon on the taskbar and search for %temp%. Open the corresponding folder and view its contents.

Restore From a Backup

If you had backed up your SD card before the data loss occurred, you can simply refer to the backup copy and retrieve your files from there. The most common type of SD card backup most people do is to create a folder on their PC to save the SD card files. If you do the same, simply connect the SD card to the PC and copy back your files from the backup folder. Notwithstanding, there are built-in utilities you can use on macOS and Windows systems to attempt to recover your photo files.