Recover Pictures from a Hard Disk

Recover Photos from a Hard Disk Drive

The hard disk drive is a secondary storage device used for storing and retrieving digital information, mainly computer data. Based on the Pin configuration, they are divided into different types such as SATA, SCSI, IDE etc. The hard drives use a magnetic recording to store the digital information on it. When compared to other data storage devices, accessing of data is much faster with hard drives and are cost-effective as well. The storage capacity of hard drives varies from several GB to TB. There are instances when your hard drive gets crashed due to MBR corruption and you are unable to access the image files stored in it.

Image files, which you might have deleted accidentally are not permanently erased from the physical media and enables you to retrieve the files. Recycle Bin in Windows OS gives you a second chance to restore photos files that are deleted. But sometimes the image files may be accidentally emptied out of the recycle bin too and you can’t find them anymore on your system hard drive. In this situation, the best way to recover lost photos from an HDD can be done by using a reliable picture recovery software.  

Hard drives organize the data in different file formats such as FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, etc., on its storage device i.e., hard drive.  There are instances of file loss from HDD.

Some of the image file loss scenarios are mentioned below:

• Formatting the Hard Drive: Formatting the partition erases entire data stored on it that reduces the chances of data recovery. Do not connect the hard drive to check whether the data is accessible in other systems since it may result in overwriting resulting in a permanent loss of image files.
• File System Conversion: While conversion of the file system from FAT to NTFS you need to re-partition the hard drive. If the process of conversion is interrupted in between due to a power surge or other reasons, can result in a huge data loss.
• Shift + Delete Command: If you have by mistake deleted image files, by pressing the Shift + delete option, then the files are being bypassed from the recycle bin and the data is assumed to be permanently deleted. Well, it is not true, as the deleted data is still present on the hard drive as only the index pointer entry is being erased that leaves the data to be inaccessible.
• Human Carelessness: The data loss can be primarily a problem due to human negligence. This is the common problem amongst all. There can be a situation when you are trying to remove a logical drive or partition from the HDD and you accidentally select the wrong one then also there is a huge data loss
  

The image files can also be lost or deleted due to virus attack on the hard drive, which leaves the drive inaccessible. While transferring files from the computer to the drive if you eject the interface cable then also the data gets corrupt and leaves it inaccessible.

Therefore, take a backup of essential data to avoid data loss. Once you find that, you have lost the data then stop copying or saving new data to avoid permanent data loss. Make use of relevant image recovery tools in order to recover lost photos from the hard drive. The recovery software should not be installed in the HDD from, which the data has to be recovered because it might overwrite the data.

Picture recovery software is the best tool available to effectively recover the deleted and lost image files from your system hard drive. Using this tool, you can restore pictures from laptop or desktop hard drive with ease. This software has some advanced features in recovering the data from the hard drive. It recovers data from crashed, corrupted, formatted and re-formatted partitions or drives. Not only can this utility perform recovery of images on various storage devices but also can get back video files from HDD of the system. It Supports file recovery from the NTFS formatted drives. It also bypasses bad sectors by creating disk image files and recover files from different types of memory cards, iPods, USB drives, FireWire drives etc. In addition, you can also retrieve pictures from a SD card, xD card, CF card, MMC's, Memory sticks, SDHC card and SDXC cards. You can download the trial version, which is free of cost and check its capability of recovering files. Once you are satisfied with the previewed result then you can save it by purchasing the software. This tool can also be used as software to retrieve deleted image files on Mac OS.

Steps to recover image files from an HDD:

Step 1: Launch the file recovery program on your computer. The main window will appear on screen with three different options such as "Recover Files", "Recover Photos", "Recover Partitions/Drives". Click on "Recover Photos" option in order to retrieve your RAW pictures as shown in Figure 1

Figure 1: Welcome Screen

Step 2: You will get two options on the next display screen. You can either click on "Recover Deleted Photos" to recover only deleted photos or click on "Recover Lost Photos" to retrieve deleted as well as lost images as shown in Figure 2

Figure 2: Select Recover Lost Photos

Step 3: As soon as you click on any photo recovery option, a new window appears on your computer screen displaying each and every storage device connected to it. Select the USB drive from which you have lost RAW images by clicking on it and then click on the "Next" button as shown in Figure 3

Figure 3: Select USB Drive

Step 4: Once you are done with the drive selection, the software will ask you to select the file type that you want to retrieve. You can always skip this step if you don't want to select any specific file type. But if you are selecting any specific file type then click on the "Next" button as shown in Figure 4

Figure 4: Select RAW Image Types That You Want to Retrieve

Step 5: Lastly, a window will appear where you can see the recovered file in a systematic file previewing format as shown in Figure 5. Right click on any RAW image file and preview it.

Figure 5: Recovered RAW Image Files