Today I am writing about a topic that should be important for most you: data recovery. During my lifetime, I have encountered at least 5 situations when I thought that all the data that was stored on my hard-disk or memory card was lost forever. I must admit that with the help of some friends, most the time I managed to recover that lost data. But the process was far from easy, since they have used all kind of command lines, apps and operating systems in order to recover my goods. Time passed and various file recovery tools emerged on the market, tools that are easier to use and really powerful. In this article, I am going to review one of these photo recovery tools.
How delete / erase works
Let’s face it, each of you accidentally deleted or lost files from your HDD (including recycle bin), memory stick, or memory card (camera, phone, etc.) at least once. You probably know from your own experience that recovering that deleted or corrupted data from the storage device is an enduring task. But before getting into further details, you should know how the delete/erase process works. When you delete a file, the information contained in the file is not actually removed. The operating system marks the space used by the file as available and it is ready to be overwritten when you create new files. But if you are not changing anything after you delete the file(s), the information will remain there and it can be recovered. Read more about this here.
Data recovery is a very large field and there are various companies that provide solutions capable of recovering data from hard disk drives, compact disks, or other storage media through various advanced processes. There are cases when the damage is physical and you need to go to professionals directly, but in most cases you can recover the data by yourself. First, it is important to realize that your data is missing. Then, you should no longer write to that storage medium in order to avoid overwriting the areas where the data can be retrieved from.
A Stellar solution for data recovery
There are many options to choose from on the market, but I am going to focus on a solution that I think will do the job in most cases. This established company is all about data recovery, photo recovery, iPhone recovery and video repair. Today, I am going to focus on their Photo Recovery Software , a solution that saves our life every time something unexpected happens with our photos.
Stellar Photo Recovery allows you to recover all types of media files that are lost due to deletion, accidental formatting or corruption. The process is pretty straightforward and you don’t need additional technical skills in order to use it. It should work great on most file formats, including “Canon (CR2 /CRW), EPSON (ERF), Fujifilm (RAF), Kodak (K25 /KDC /DCR), Konica Minolta (MRW), Mamiya (MOS), Mamiya (MEF), Nikon (NEF, NRW), Olympus (ORF), Panasonic (Raw), Pentax (PEF), Sony (SR2, ARW, SRF), Sigma (X3F), DNG, DJVU, PGM, Adobe EPS (Mac), Adobe EPS (Windows), TGA, JPEG, TIFF (Motorola and Intel), BMP, GIF, PNG, PSD, INDD, PSP, PCT, and JP2. “

How it works
The interface is pretty straightforward so you don’t have to worry about losing yourself in various settings and buttons. All you have to do is choose the location that you want to be scanned for deleted content and press the “Scan” button. Once the process is completed, you can see all the results and choose which file or files to recover. If you are not satisfied with the the results, don’t worry. There is a deep scan option that dives even deeper into the storage device searching for your lost files.
At this time, you are probably wondering what happens if you are trying to recover just a photo and there are multiple results. Also, you are not sure about the name of the photo. Well, you should not worry about that either. There is a preview option that allows you to preview each photo and find the one(s) that you need. Once you have selected all the files you want to recover from the list, all you have to do is press the “Recover” button and select the destination folder. That’s it. Pretty easy.
Conclusion & Thinks you should know
There are times when a photo can’t be recovered. This can happen for various reasons, but mostly because other files have been copied or create on the disk/card in the meantime. This is why you should use Stellar Recovery Software immediately after deleting a file.
In my tests, I had a positive experience with this software. It managed to recover all the deleted images that I was searching for from an old SD card that I was using on my Cannon 80D DSLR. I love its simplicity and effectiveness and if you find yourself in a difficult situation with deleted photos, it should save the day.
Head over to their official website for further details and download link.