Staring at an error message on your digital camera? Had a momentary lapse of eye-hand coordination when faced with a "Delete All" message? Or formatted the memory card of your digital camera? Don’t be panic! Accidentally deleting your digital photos from your memory card does not necessarily mean you have lost those precious moments just because you pressed the wrong button. But how to recover lost or deleted photos from memory card on Mac? Here’s what I did to recover pictures from memory card.
Firstly, before you recover deleted or lost photos from memory card, don't put additional pictures on your memory card when you find you have deleted some pictures by mistake. Otherwise it may cause overwriting and make them unrecoverable.
Secondly, through the aid of memory card data recovery software, most pictures that were deleted, accidentally formatted, or just plain lost can be recovered from your memory card. The program I used is called Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac. Read on to know more about recovering pictures from memory cards.
How to Recover Deleted or Lost Photos from Memory Card
I chose Cisdem Data Recovery because it is one of the best data recovery software for Mac users to recover lost, deleted, corrupted or formatted photos, video, audio, music files, email, etc., from most storage devices including internal/external hard drives, USB drives, SD card, digital cameras, iPods etc. It supports almost all memory card types including SD Card, MicroSD, SDHC, CF (Compact Flash) Card, XD Picture Card, Memory Stick and more. It is a good solution to recover lost pictures due to below situations:
- Photos deleted unintentionally or intentionally from memory cards.
- Photo loss due to "Format" or "Reformat" operation in the camera.
- Memory card corruption, damage, error or inaccessible state.
- Damage or memory card error due to turning camera off unexpectedly.
- Data loss due to using between different cameras or devices.
- Photo loss due to unknown reasons.
Guide on recovering photos from memory card on Mac
- Connect your memory card to Mac.
Start out by connecting your memory card to your Mac either with a card reader or without pulling out from your device. And then download and install Cisdem Data Recovery on Mac.
Free Download
- Select recovery mode.
Run this memory card data recovery on your Mac from Application folder or any folder you've installed it to. Then you’ll get an interface as follow. Here, on the main interface of this data recovery, choose a Recovery mode according to your needs.
- Choose memory card to scan.
After choosing scan mode, you need to select your memory card in the window appears. Then click “Scan”. The scanning process can take several minutes or several hours, depending on the file type, file size, and the amount of files that can potentially be recovered.
- Step 4. Preview and recover photos from memory card.
Wait as the program analyzes the memory card. You’ll see a list of the recovered files in tree view. Open the tree drop-down list, you will discover that the deleted folders will be listed here containing all the files.
Preview and select the files, then please click “Recover” to begin recovering photos from memory card. After all these steps done, you will get all your lost or deleted photos back from memory card.
Tips for Keeping Memory Cards Healthy
Memory cards are pretty resilient, but there are some precautions you can take that can save a lot of headaches. These precautions can keep your memory card healthy and protect memory card from data loss.
- Always format the card regularly instead of deleting all photos.
- Never remove the card while data is being transferred.
- Turn the camera off before removing the card.
- Have a backup card handy, just in case.
- Always apply “Eject” option on your computer.
- Always leave some extra shots on memory card.
- Don’t use the same memory card on different devices.
- Store memory cards in a safe place.
- Don’t Push Your Batteries To The Limit.
- Always use a Good Quality Memory Card.
Jose specializes in reviews, how-to guides, top lists, etc. on PDF, data recovery and multi-media. On his spare time, he likes to travel or challenge some extreme sports.
June 01, 2016
5.2K
Marria
Hi, Megan Charles, I lost some photos from my memory card and then i put some other pictures on it, so is it impossible to recover the lost photos?
Megan Charles
Dear Marria, you can try this data recovery first. Then you will know the answer.
grere12
How about jpeg files? Can the software workable to recover jpeg files?
Megan Charles
Dear grere12, Cisdem DataRecovery for Mac is surely to recover jpeg files. Have a try!