How to Recover Deleted or Corrupted MOV Files on Mac, Windows and SD Card

MOV is a multimedia container created by Apple. You may have realized that the videos recorded with macOS QuickTime Player is saved in MOV format, also MOV is compatible on Windows. We may have saved many videos in MOV format. But what if these MOV files get lost or are deleted by accident? What if MOV files get corrupted or damaged and not playing? How do we recover a MOV file?

If you have backed up your MOV files, the recovery job can be quite easy, if you don’t have a backup, we will recommend using a professional data recovery tool. Here we will share several ways to recover deleted or corrupted MOV files on Mac, Windows, some of these solutions support SD Card MOV files recovery.

 Best Data Recovery for Mac and Windows

Recover/Repair MOV Files from Hard Drive, SD Card...

• Recover deleted or formatted MOV files
• Repair images and videos (MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, M4V, etc.)
• Restore MOV files from both internal hard drive and external storage devices
• Restore 200+ file types: docs, images, videos, audios, archives, etc.
• Preview MOV or other videos, photos and documents before recovery
• High recovery rate
• Filter files with keyword, file size, date for quick search
• Recover files to local drive or to cloud platforms

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We Recommend Recovering MOV Files with A Computer

If you want to recover MOV files from a SD Card, there are 2 ways: with or without computer, but we always recommend our users to recovering files from SD Card on a computer by using built-in or 3rd party tools. Why?

The data recovery process involves reviewing, scanning, identifying and copying data within the storage device, it checks the entire hard drive or memory card, which take spaces and time to go through. While a computer has a larger capacity and better performance to run a faster data recovery process. You can quickly scan files on your computer, but also can run a deep scanning to find lost files as many as possible, that’s why Mac/Windows data recovery programs have a higher recovery rate than Android/iPhone data recovery apps. Therefore, many PC data recovery software supports recovering files from external hard drive or memory card.

Best Solution to Repair Corrupted or Recover Deleted MOV Files

The easiest way to recover MOV files, no matter the MOV file is deleted, formatted or damaged, no matter it is saved on your Mac or Windows internal hard drive, or external storage device, like SD Card, USB, etc. is to use a dedicated data recovey program.

Cisdem Data Recovery is the Mac MOV recovery tool you should try to get your files back. Its first release was in 2013, with Cisdem’s persistent hard work for consecutive 9 years, it helps more and more users to recover their files successfully. This tool is designed to recover 200+ types of files from both internal and external hard drive, it applies to recover files lost under different situations: delete, format, disappear, system crash, power off, corruption, etc.

Why Cisdem Data Recovery?

• Easy to use
• Available for Mac and Windows users
• Recover files from internal & external hard drive, USB, SD Card, cameras, memory cards, etc.
• Recover 200+ types of files: document, video, audio, image, archive, etc.
• Support recovering 20+ video formats: MOV, MKV, SWF, FLV, MPG, etc.
• Restore files lost due to different causes
• Repair damaged images and videos
• Apply both quick and deep scan to find the most files
• High recovery rate
• Preview files before recovery
• Recover files to local drive or to Dropbox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, pCloud, Box

Tutorial #1 Recover Deleted/Corrupted MOV Files on Mac or Windows Internal Hard Drive

1. Download and install Cisdem Data Recovery to your Mac or Windows.
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2. Go to Disk Data Recovery and choose the location.
3. Click Search for lost files to start the scanning.
4. Go to Type>Videos>MOV.
5. Select the MOV files you want to recover, preview it. In the process of previewing, it will auto repair the damaged MOV videos. Click Recover to get them back to your local drive or cloud storage platforms.
6. If the recovered videos cannot be opened, or you have some corrupted videos to be repaired, go to Video Repair, add the videos and click Repair.

Tutorial #2 Recover Deleted/Damaged MOV Files from SD Card on Mac or Windows

1. Download and install Cisdem Data Recovery to your Mac or Windows.
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2. Connect your SD Card to Mac/Windows slot or using a card reader.
3. Run Cisdem, select your SD Card, click on Search for lost files to start the scanning on your SD Card.
4. Go to Type>Videos>MOV.
5. Find and select the MOV files you want to recover, preview and repair the videos when previewing, click Recover and choose your SD Card to save the recovered MOV files to.
6. If you need to repair some videos, use the Video Repair tool and add your MOV videos for repairing.

Alternative to Repair Corrupted or Damaged MOV Files

Here is another method to recover a damaged MOV file, Stellar Video Repair, it is available on both macOS and Windows. To recover damaged MOV files from SD Card, you just need to connect the SD Card to your Mac or Windows and choose the drive to recover files.

Main Features of Stellar Video Repair

• Repair MOV, MP4, AVI, MKV, approx. 20 video formats
• Repair multiple videos at the same time
• Repair mildly and severely damaged videos
• Preview repaired videos 

Steps to recover corrupted or damaged MOV files on Mac and Windows

1. Download and install Stellar Video Repair on your Mac or Windows.
2. Add the corrupted MOV videos to the “Add File” area.
3. Click on Repair and start the repair process.
4. The preview the repaired MOV files and select them to recover to your desired location.

How to Recover Deleted MOV Files Free from Backup?

In my opinion, one of the greatest feature macOS or Windows OS gives to users is the backup utility, that is Time Machine for macOS and File History on Windows. They help users to back up their files and offers a perfect solution to get lost or deleted files back. If you have enabled these backup tools on your cumputer, recovering MOV files is as easy as a cake and there is no way you cannot get them back.

Steps to Recover MOV Files on Mac Free with Time Machine

1. Go to Finder>Time Machine, run the program.
2. Once Time Machine is running, open the folder in which your MOV files are saved.
3. Use the timeline to find your MOV files fast.
4. Once the MOV files are located, click Restore to recover the lost or deleted MOV files from your Time Machine backup.

Steps to Recover MOV Files on Windows Free with File History

1. Go to the Start menu, type “restore files” and hit Enter.
2. Find the MOV files in the folder where you stored the files.
3. Click on Restore button to recover MOV files on Windows for free.

This solution also tells us how important it is to back up your file daily, weekly or monthly. Today, we live and work with data, such data saved in various file types, with a number of thousands on an average, data loss becomes inevitable, so we have to develop a habit to back up files, especially important files.

How to Recover Deleted MOV Files Free from Trash Bin?

Getting MOV files back from Trash Bin may seem infeasible, even incredible to some users, but it is not.

Whenever we delete a file on Mac or Windows, the file is just moved to the Trash Bin, the file still exists on your device, laying in your Trash Bin, you have 2 ways to process these removed files in your Trash bin, Put Back or Delete Immediately for permanent deletion. If you did nothing after you moved a file to Trash, the Put Back feature will help to recover a MOV file.

Steps to Recover Deleted MOV Files from Mac Trash Bin

1. Go to Trash Bin.
2. Find the deleted MOV files, right click on the file and choose “Put Back”.
3. Then the MOV file will show in Finder, indicating the original saving location.

Steps to Recover Deleted MOV Files from Windows Trash Bin

1. Double click on Recycle Bin on your desktop.
2. Find the MOV files that you want to recover.
3. Right click on the MOV file and select Restore to recover the deleted MOV files to your Windows drive.

Conclusion

I know how terrible it is when you feel you are going to lose some of your precious files forever, if this does happen, don’t just give up, try to get them back. To recover files, including your MOV videos, you can try any one of above listed solutions basing on your situation. But the one comes with higher recovery rate is always using a piece of professional data recovery software, like Cisdem, it simplifies the recovery workflow and are much likely to get all your lost files back.