Read time 5 minutes
Accidental deletion or drive formatting are the two leading causes of data loss. Let it be an internal drive or an external storage device such as an SD or a compact flash (CF) card, accidents do happen and might leave you teary-eyed. These days most of the professional cameras come with an SD or CF card slots for storing the captured photographs; this allows the user to store large amounts of data (especially in the case of CF cards). When you delete a file or a folder, in the file index, the space occupied by that folder/file will be marked as empty, so that new information can be written on it. Formatting is similar to deletion in a sense that formatting erases all of the data on the drive, all at once.
The system usually does not overwrite on the space which was previously taken by a now-deleted file; it merely marks that space as ‘available.’ The system will never overwrite on this ‘available’ space unless it runs into low disk space; in that case, only it will overwrite on this ‘available’ space. Till that, there is always a scope for the recovery of deleted data.
Common reasons for data loss from CF cards
- Accidental deletion: It is one of the reasons for data loss. Sometimes the deletion can be intentional too. And formatting of the drive is another reason for the data loss.
- Improper handling of the device: A physical damage to the device in which the memory card is inserted can in-turn harm the memory card. Additionally, memory card running out of space and operating the device even when the battery is low can be blamed for data loss in some situations.
- Firmware damages: You may have received a faulty memory card from the vendor itself. Some firmware damages can be the result of virus or a malicious attacks also.
Some precautions against CF card data loss
- For severely damaged or file system corrupted CF cards, Windows might prompt you to format the CF card in a failed attempt to read and access the data on the card. Please ignore the message and do not format it before you recover your photos.
- Once you discover about the damage, avoid overwriting the card (means, do not take pictures with the same memory card before the recovery).
Kernel Photo Recovery
This is a very sophisticated and efficient tool to recover permanently deleted photos. It can recover photos in JPG, BMP, TIF, PNG, GIF, RIFF & many more formats. To recover those image files, it runs a deep scan of the drive. It also gives you the freedom to preview image files before saving them. Moreover, it lets you set the picture size for recovery. It can recover photos not only from internal HDDs but also from external flash drives, SSDs, CF and SD cards. Most of the popular camera makers such as Canon, Nikon, Fuji Film, Minolta, and Kodak, have their own formats such as CRW, NEF, RAF, MRW, & DCR, etc. Kernel Photo Recovery tool supports these formats too. Step-by-step working of the photo recovery software is outlined below:
- Once you are done with installation, open the tool. From the UI you can choose the drives which you want to repair. Whenever you click on a drive (from the list box located in the left pane), the selected drive properties are displayed in the right pane.
- Next, you can select the file formats that you want to recover from the UI.
- Next, the recovery tool will run a deep scan to recover your photos. At any time, you can stop the scan process.
- Next, you can preview the retrieved images.
- At this point, you can either save the suitable photos or all of the retrieved images, all at once.
- Next, you will be prompted to save the images to the location of your choice.
Read Also : Photos and images fail to open after recovery
Conclusion
To summarize, in this blog, we have discussed the common issues related to the memory cards. Also, we have given a few precautions against CF card data loss. In our opinion, Kernel Photo Recovery tool is an efficient and sophisticated photo recovery tool, and we believe that the user should give it a try.