Recently, I accidentally deleted all the photos from the camera on my Android smartphone. I had taken a photo using the camera on my Android Smartphone. At the time, the sun was out and it was very bright. I did not like the photo that I had taken so I selected the photo (or so I thought) but actually what I had done was selected all the photos on my camera. Since the latest photo was at the very top of the camera folder, I had accidentally checked the whole folder of photos instead of just that one photo and then I hit delete! As I said, the sun was very bright then and I didn’t even notice till the next day. Help! I had over 100 photos in there which I had not yet downloaded to my computer as a backup. Serves me right for being so lazy to download them.

So, I did the following in order to restore the photos that I had deleted from the camera on my Android device.

1. The first thing I did was to download the

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery Software

This is a photo recovery software for Windows OS-based computer users that recovers deleted or lost photos, images, songs, movies, and other multimedia files from digital camera, external hard drives, laptops and desktop, CD, DVD, USB Drives, and memory cards.

I thought that sounded great so I downloaded and immediately tried to scan the photos from my camera by directly attaching my camera to the computer using USB and then selecting the external removable file folder.

Unfortunately, this did not work for me. It took a very long time and kept on hanging. 🙁

2. Next I tried

Wondershare Photo Recovery for Windows & Mac

This photo recovery software specializes in recovering photos, videos and music recovery that has been formatted, deleted, erased or corrupted. It is able to recover from all sorts of devices including camera, cell phone, memory card, USB, PC, Mac, MP3 and more.

Cool! I thought. This is it. This is for me. So I downloaded the photo recovery software and started scanning. The scanning took a long time. I can’t remember how long but I think it was about 2 hours. It was very detailed. I could see my deleted pictures in various sizes. I could also see all sorts of other people’s pictures which I had just briefly glanced at on facebook. I thought to myself. How funny. If you post your photos on facebook, you could be  unknowingly have your photos in the memory of someone else’s Android device!

Anyway, it took a long time and I was pleased to see my lost photos. However, when it was time to recover the photos, I got the message that the photos could not be recovered unless I purchased the software. Dang!  Some photo recovery software allow you to view the photos that can be recovered before you make a decision to purchase but I didn’t know that. 😛

I don’t mind purchasing the software if I had thousands of photos in there which were keepsakes of my children’s photos from birth but what I had in there were mostly photos I had taken for my blog plus some photos of the children doing certain household chores at home. I wasn’t about to pay for that. Ok, I admit it, I am stingy but I can’t afford going around paying for software for mistakes I had made from just one click.

3. So, I searched for free photo recovery software and found

i) Photorec

Photorec is a file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory.

a Facebook friend also recommended this free photo recovery software but at the time I had already recovered my photos using Recuva below.

and

ii) Recuva

Recuva recovers files that you have accidentally deleted or lost when your computer crashed.

I downloaded Recuva and proceeded to scan for my deleted photos. At the time, I had already taken a new photo on my camera. You are advised not to take any new photos before recovering your photos using any software as it will be harder and not possible to recover your photos after you have written over it.

Anyway, it took only 10-15 minutes to scan my deleted photos from my phone. I didn’t have to screen through 100s of other people’s photos the way I had to using Wondershare. All the photos I wanted were right there and all I had to do was select all of them and save them on my computer. Yahoo!

There is a free lunch after all!

Tip: When recovering photos you have accidentally deleted, do it as soon as you can and do not take any new photos in the meantime. In this way, you may be able to get back all the photos you deleted like I did. 🙂

Note: I am not doing a review on photo recover software. Some of the software above may work better for you than for me. I am just sharing my experience of how I recovered the photos I accidentally deleted from my phone. I am using the Samsung Galaxy Ace. Here is a review of My Samsung Galaxy Ace.


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