Free Data Recovery Software - recommendations?

Draeger · 10 Sep 2023 at 10:48

Our 11 year old had his camera on holiday with us last week and when we got home he discovered the SD card cannot be read by a PC. Strangely enough, you can view all the photos he took when the card is in the camera by browsing them via the screen on the back of the camera itself, but if you remove the card and put it into a laptop or desktop its like the card doesn't exist and it doesn't get detected.

He downloaded a trial version of Easeus Ontrack but it is limited due to it being the trial version. Is there a free data recovery software program which is decent I can try before we bite the bullet and purchase a licence for Ontrack?

I recall using Recuva a number of years ago and it had reasonable results - is that something which is still completely free or are there any good alternatives?

Ta

joey1211 · 10 Sep 2023 at 10:52

photorec

Doesn't have a GUI so you have to use the cmd line to use it.

Draeger · 10 Sep 2023 at 10:55

joey1211 said:
photorec

Doesn't have a GUI so you have to use the cmd line to use it.

Hi thanks, will give that a try. I had a look online for it and apparently there is a 'QPhotoRec' version which uses a GUI available also.

joey1211 · 10 Sep 2023 at 11:00

So there is... it's included in the download!

Semple · 10 Sep 2023 at 11:00

Could you try plugging the camera directly into the PC to see if it's readable? May need to download any drivers from the manufacturer.

Draeger · 10 Sep 2023 at 11:57

Semple said:
Could you try plugging the camera directly into the PC to see if it's readable? May need to download any drivers from the manufacturer.

Tried that, although it picks up the camera it only reads the cameras internal memory, still can't see the SD card. Yet the Ontrack software picked it up and read about 4Gb of data.

Semple · 10 Sep 2023 at 16:59

Draeger said:
Tried that, although it picks up the camera it only reads the cameras internal memory, still can't see the SD card. Yet the Ontrack software picked it up and read about 4Gb of data.

Bit poor that. Does the manufacturer have some specific software used for pulling the photos off? If they don't I'd argue it's not fit for purpose - what good is a camera if you can't retrieve the photos.