SD cards are found in practically all kinds of devices nowadays. Whether it be the bigger SD card or the smaller micro SD card, this media storage card is probably the most popular storage format. Its popularity may be attributed to its price, reliability, dependability and size. But SD cards are not indestructible if we talk about the security or integrity of data stored inside it. SD cards are still vulnerable to viruses, physical damage or corruption. Of course, accidental deletion is a very real danger that is more the result of human error than the fault of the card itself.
The loss of data stored inside an SD card for whatever reason is still a big problem especially if the data contained inside are valuable. But all is not lost, so to speak. If you have accidentally deleted files from your SD card there are still some things you can do to recover it.
First, put the SD card with the deleted files in your card reader and plug the reader into your computer (that’s if your computer doesn’t have a built in card reader).
Now go online and look for data recovery software. There are many options you can use here. If you have the money and you want reliability in performance, you can buy commercial data recovery software. But if you want to save money you can use freeware recovery software. There are a number of free software that also perform well, though it may not have a very polished GUI.
When you have downloaded and installed the recovery software of your choice your next step is to make a new directory in the hard drive or partition of your choice. This new folder will be where you will put the recovered files the recovery software will extract from the SD card. Make sure that you label this folder properly so you’ll always remember what the folder is going to be used for.
You can now start the actual recovery process. Launch the recovery software you’ve chosen and locate the path of the SD card. You can opt to have the software locate all of the files inside the SD card or do a more targeted recovery by identifying the file types you want to recover. Start the recovery of the files by clicking on the software’s ‘start’ button. This is going to take quite a while especially if the SD Card has a high capacity. The actual recovery of deleted files also adds more time to the whole process. When the program has finished scanning the SD card for files and recovered them the software will stop. You can now go to the folder you’ve identified for the recovered files and look for the files you want to use.
Remember that whenever recovery software is used, more often than not the file names will have changed and have been truncated. You can rename these files again to what you think is the correct labels or file names.
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