Clicking pictures not only of loved ones, but also of beautiful things in nature and sometimes almost anything you see is a common practice. This is even more common, if the person clicking the photos is enthusiastic about photography. This would have been impossible when analog cameras were in use as the cameras used photo sensitive films for capture of images and photos once taken could not be erased and the erased space reused again. However, with the coming of storage cards that make use of flash memory, capturing and deleting photos can be done at the click of a button. However, there are various instances when this deleting of pictures on the cards goes wrong resulting in loss of pictures from the storage card.

The most common scenario of loss of photos from the memory card is when the user ends up deleting the photos while the memory card is still in the digital camera. This happens due to accidental pressing of the Delete All button or deletion of a single image which was not supposed to be deleted. In such cases, the user has to immediately stop using the digital camera and make use of a good Undelete tool to undelete pictures from SD card.

Though the above stated method of photo loss, it is not the root cause of loss of pictures in most cases. There are very few storage card users who would not have faced issues while transferring photos from the memory card onto the PC. The most frequently faced issue would be that of accidental formatting. This happens when the memory card is connected to the PC using a card reader and an error message pops up that reads “Do you want to format the drive now”. Most users click the Yes option and end up formatting the entire memory card. However, even after formatting the memory card photo recovery is possible, as the data is still present on the memory card.

The last and the least expected method in which photos could deleted is after the photos have been transferred onto the hard drive. This might happen either due to accidental deletion of photos, accidental formatting, virus attacks, power surges, accidental shutdown of the PC and various other reasons, irrespective of the operating system in use. However, the lost or deleted photos can be recovered by using a good Windows or Mac Recovery Software, capable of recovering pictures from various storage devices.