Imagine you went on a family trip to your favorite destination & had the time of your life. Let’s imagine this: 

You went to the exotic Nice Carnival in French Riviera, had a great time posing with the vibrant Parade of Lights in the backdrop, relishing exquisite wine and making intriguing acquaintances. You felt exhilarated and satisfied, having captured the dreamlike experiences through your trusted digital camera; the photos and videos – now safely stored on the digital camera memory card – would let you relive this experience with your friends & family for an entire lifetime!

Wait, what happens if later on you accidentally deleted the pics or found that the photos were “simply” lost? This is possible (and is often the case) due to reasons such as—

• Deleted Photos or Videos By Mistake:

You may find that some of the images or videos are missing from the SD card when you attempt transferring the files from SD card to your laptop or USB storage. This could happen due to accidental deletion while transferring the files. You may’ve selected a file and deleted it unknowingly, which is possible if you have thousands or even a few hundred photos stored on the memory card. It’s also plausible that you’d deleted some photos to free up space or because you didn’t want them at that time and now wish to have them back.

• Photo or Video File Corruption:

You may be unable to open an image or play a video file while it is stored on the digital camera. The photos may remain inaccessible even after attempting to open them by reading the memory card on computer. Sometimes, you may be able to open the image but find that it’s broken, pixelated, greyed out, or has strange colored bands. These are common photo or video corruption issues. Image corruption may happen due to reasons like slow SD card taking more time to write images while they’re being captured, or continued shooting through a digital camera having a nearly full memory card.

• Accidental Formatting of SD Card: 

Sometimes, a memory card may fail to mount on your PC with Windows prompting to format the card. You format the SD card and now able to access it but find that all the images and videos previously stored on the memory card are now gone. The SD card turns out as blank! What just happened is you’ve lost the photos and videos due to formatting which erased the files from the SD card. So, never format the memory card in such cases. 

• Computer Fails to Detect the SD Card:

Sometimes a computer may fail to detect microSD card inserted in the card slot or removable card reader. This may happen due to various reasons such as follows:

1. Malfunctioning slot or card reader
2. Missing or outdated SD card driver
3. Write protection enabled on SD card 
4. Drive letter not assigned

How to Recover Photos from SD Card?

Here are some of the methods to get back your deleted or lost photos from digital camera memory card:

Method 1: Use Photo Recovery Tool to Restore Deleted or Formatted Photos from SD Card

If you realize that you have deleted some photos or accidentally formatted the SD card, stop its further usage immediately. Continued usage my result in overwriting of files, leading to permanent data loss. Try Stellar Photo Recovery Premium software to regain photos that were deleted from SD card. The software is available for free trial which can scan and preview the recoverable photos and videos. Activation is needed for saving the recoverable files. 

Here are the steps to run the software:

1. Connect SD card to computer.
2. Download trial version of Stellar Photo Recovery Premium software on your PC or Mac.

1. On Home screen of the software, select your SD card.
2. Click Scan.
3. Once the scan process is completed, you can Preview recoverable photos.
4. Click Recover
5. In the dialog box, click Browse to select location for saving the recovered photos.
6. Activate the software and Save the deleted photos at your desired location

Method 2: Unable to Detect the SD Card? Try the following:

As we read earlier in this post that sometimes an SD card may not show up on your system when you insert it in the card reader. Reasons could be hardware or software related such as faulty card reader, driver issues, unassigned drive letter. Try the following methods to recover lost photos or videos is such cases:

• Use an Alternative USB Card Reader or Slot

Sometimes the card reader is faulty, due to which the PC cannot read the SD card. So, try accessing the memory card through another slot or USB card reader.

• Update SD Card Driver 

Here’re the steps to update SD card driver in Windows 10: 

1. Click Start and enter Device Manager. 
2. Find your SD card and right click it. Select Update Driver. 
3. Select “Search automatically for updated drive software”. 
4. If new driver isn’t available, try searching for one on the manufacturer’s website. 

1. If unable to update driver, right click the device and select “Uninstall”. 
2. Restart the computer to reinstall the driver.

• Disable Write Protection on SD Card

SD cards have a toggle switch on the side to enable/disable write protection. Check your SD card and see if the write protection switch is toggled on. Slide the switch to turn off write protection. Try accessing the SD card now, it might show up and allow access to the photos and videos. 

• Assign Drive Letter to SD Card

If the SD card is still not visible after trying to access it on alternative systems and through different card readers, disabling write protection and updating card driver, time is to assign drive letter. Follow these steps:

• Press Ctrl + R

• Type CMD in Run window. Click OK or Press Enter

• Type diskpart and press Enter.

• Type list volume and press Enter to list all available volumes.

• Type select volume x where x is the numeral shown for your undetectable SD card
• Type assign letter=z & press Enter. Windows will assign letter ‘z’ to the SD card, provided it is available. You can choose other letters as well, such as ‘h’ or ‘g’. 

Exit Command Prompt and now try accessing the SD card. You should be able to see it along with other drives on your PC. 

Method 3: Use Software to Recover Photos from Inaccessible SD Card

Sometimes, you may not be able to access SD card due to file system corruption. In that case, Windows will prompt you to format it. Formatting will restore access but it will also erase the photos and videos from the memory card. So what to do?

There’s an easy and effective solution to fix corrupt SD memory cards for this situation. Use Stellar Photo Recovery Premium software, as described in Method 1 in this post.

Method 4: Use Specialized Tool to Restore Corrupt Photos or Videos 

You may lose images or videos due to corruption which commonly occurs in the form of blurry image, grey-out pics, pixelation, stuttering or out-of-sync videos and more.

Use Stellar Photo Recovery Premium software which also repairs corrupt photos and videos in addition to recovering deleted or formatted files. 

Follow these steps:

• Download and launch the software on your Mac or PC.
• Click Add file to add corrupt photos or videos.
• Click Repair to begin repair process.
• Once the photos are repaired, preview them and click Save. You can save the repaired photos at any location of your choice.

To Summarize

In this post, we shared information on common photo or video loss scenarios concerning digital camera SD card. We discussed, how reasons such as deletion, formatting, and corruption can jeopardize your precious pics and video clips in an instant before you realize it. Good thing is there are a few easy and effective methods to address this issue; we shared detail information on how to recover photos and videos from SD, including use of photo recovery & repair software, updating driver, alternative card reader/slot, assignment of drive letter, etc.

Most important point— don’t use an SD card as soon as you realize that deletion or accidental formatting has happened. This single caution will help you avoid overwriting and maximize chances of successful recovery. Wish you good luck!