Recovering deleted photos from an external hard drive

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hugh on December 4, 2017 at 10:43

There are photo recovery programmes out there which you can usually trial for free. They do work, but I imagine your chances of success with such a programme might be very small if the disc has been fully reformatted. You should be able to find these through regular internet search.

Still then not all may be lost. There are specialists who can run a more forensic recovery process. I'm afraid I can't point to any in particular and have o idea about the cost. 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by pamish on December 4, 2017 at 16:07

Depends on the type of refomatting. A quick format just does something to the 'index' but leaves the files intact but invisible (which is why that doesn't make an old computer secure to give away, you have to write new data over the old drive).  Can Marek help here?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Crabb on December 8, 2017 at 12:52

Hi Karen, there is plenty of software online that recovers data from cards so its highly likely they will do the same for an external drive, I have managed to get pictures back after I have reformatted an SD card by mistake, if there small files you can usually use free software, but if your like me shooting raw you will have to pay for the software normally around 30-40 pounds, regards

Jonathan

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by AndrewAW1 on December 8, 2017 at 13:12

This is one I've used in the past, the free version should be sufficient

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

• ▶ Reply