Photos are often the most irreplaceable content on our computers. Documents can be re-sent, spreadsheets re-compiled, but once a photo is gone, there is no way to recreate it. Luckily though, if you’ve accidentally deleted a photo, that usually isn’t the end of the road. If your delete is fairly recent, digital photo recovery programs, such as Auslogics File Recovery, have an excellent chance of recovering your photos – just follow these simple steps.

DOs and DON’Ts for Best Photo Recovery

In many cases, you’ll be able to recover photos for quite some time after the deletion. To give yourself the best chance of getting your wedding snaps or baby photos back without your computer taking big chunks out of the images, make sure you:

  • Keep the computer running
  • Use it as little as possible before you start the digital photo recovery process – any new files that are saved (including temporary files from browsing the Web) may overwrite your photos
  • Don’t defragment your computer
  • If possible, don’t install the digital photo recovery software on the drive where your lost files are located

Also make sure you save your recovered photos to a completely different drive than the one they were deleted from. A USB stick or a backup hard drive is recommended because recovering the first photo may potentially overwrite the space containing the second. This drastically reduces your chances of perfect recovery.

 

Digital Photo Recovery Software

Undelete utilities are not built into operating systems – third party software is a must for recovering deleted photos. When choosing photo recovery software, look for features like:

  • Flexible search options to reduce recovery time
  • Ability to preview photos while browsing through the list of detected lost files. This option will help you recover exactly what you need
  • Ability to restore files from a lost partition
  • Support for all types of drives and devices (all types of hard drives, floppy disks, digital camera memory sticks, flash memory cards and other USB devices)

Using digital photo recovery software is simple – select a drive to scan for deleted files, configure search settings, and use the Preview mode to recover the file that looks most like the one you want.

If you act quickly, perfect photo recovery is almost guaranteed. Many digital photo recovery programs offer a free download option, so you can check whether it is possible to get your photos back before purchasing the software – definitely worth a shot!