Free Memory Card Recovery Software - My Favorite Tool

Here's how I learned about free memory card recovery software. We were strolling near to The Dales on New Year's Eve, my wife happily shooting photos of the kids when all of a sudden she say's "Uh oh, uh oh!" While trying to delete one poor photo, she had accidentally chosen "Delete All". Unluckily for her, "Delete All" signified every single photo from New Year including Christmas with the whole family, Oh My God the Thanksgiving pics, and, worst of all, all the pics from a September excursion to the British Virgin Islands to celebrate uncle Jim's 77th birthday. What a nightmare!

So I yelled at her, "Don't take any other pics, turn off the camera device, and give me the card." I had noticed a blog post recently relating to missing pics and I was pretty positive I would be able to recover the photographs if she did not format the memory card or save any more images to it. Most cameras usually do not overwrite the memory card when a straightforward delete command is used. Instead they simply note the space where the photographs had been saved as being free for use. Therefore if no other write or format command is used for that space, the photos should be reasonably simple to retrieve with a little help from a free memory card recovery software tool.

Back at home, I did a Google search and found a large number of free memory card recovery software programs were available. Many of these utilities will scan your memory card and will enable you to preview your lost pics but you will usually need to pay to actually recover them. I chose the Acute Tools software utilities package which included free memory card recovery software, simply because it looked like the best value for your cash as far as I can see. And, you receive more software utilities in the package to keep your laptop in perfect condition.

Nowadays I never show concern about deleting any files or folders on any of my storage divices, whether it is the hard drive on my laptop or simply the card from my cam-corder. I actually discovered some music mp3 files on my pc hard drive that I didn't realize I had lost! Remember, bare in mind that you should stop using your storage device immediately if you have accidentally deleted files of any type. If you re-use the space the lost files occupied, they will be gone forever, and no free memory card recovery software in the world will be able to undelete them!

Trevor Taylor reflects on his experiences with free memory card recovery software here.