I had been to my friend's place to copy some pictures and other videos that were taken during our school's annual day. After connecting my flash drive to his system I copied media files, which were needed. After some time I connected a flash drive to my system for copying photos and all of a sudden systems showed an error warning that stated the flash drive needs to be formatted when the flash drive was opened to view pictures.
What should I do now? I remember copying all the information into my flash drive and now they are nowhere to be found. Can you recover photos from a flash drive?
Yes! All your pictures that were lost from your flash drive can be brought back without damaging the contents.
How to Recover Deleted Photos and Files From a USB Drive?
Method 1: Recover Deleted Files from USB Drive Using CMD
Command Prompt, known as CMD, is part of every Windows installation, and it provides you with all the necessary commands, including those in the instructions below.
- Connect the USB flash drive to your computer.
- Open the Start menu, type cmd, and hit Enter on your keyboard.
- Type chkdsk X: /f in the Command Prompt window and hit Enter. [Just make sure to replace “X” with the letter assigned to your USB flash drive.}
- Finally, type "ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D X:*.*" and hit the Enter key (Again, replace “X” with the drive letter of the USB drive).
- Wait for the process to be completed.
Provided the method was successful, you should see all deleted files on a newly created folder on your USB drive.
Method 2: Recover Lost Photos from a flash drive
Yodot Photo Recovery is the best-known picture utility for recovering pictures that are lost or deleted from flash drives. It has the potential to get back generic photo files and RAW image formats from flash drives or any storage media on the Windows system. Other than pictures, it can restore video files, music files, and other text files. The best feature of this application is that you can save the recovery process at any point in time and resume it at a later stage without having to rescan the entire flash drive again. You can easily preview recovered image files from a flash drive before saving them.
Steps To Recover Photos From A Flash Drive:
- Download and install the application in your system by logging in as a local system administrator.
- Open the software and follow the main screen steps.
- With the options Deleted Photo Recovery and Lost Photo Recovery provided you can easily rescue your files that are lost from your flash drive.
- Select the required option and proceed to the next screen where you will be provided with all set of drive that is present in the system.
- Click on the flash drive and then proceed to the next window which will provide you with the types of files.
- After selecting the different signatures of files that are required, click on the Next option that will start the scanning process.
- You are provided with the option to preview the image files before they can be saved.
How Do Pictures Get Deleted Or Lost From Flash Drive?
- Accidentally deleting image files while previewing them on your system or erasing some unwanted files and folders from a USB drive.
- Unknowingly formatting the flash drive while trying to format the other partitions on the hard drive will cause the removal of all the pictures as well as other folders from your memory device.
- Some third party applications that are installed in your system may also delete your pictures due to certain faults.
- Abruptly removing your flash drive when the read or write process is being carried from system to flash drive.
- Power surge also has an effect on your drives as the files stored in it get lost when there are frequent power cuts.
Helpful Tips:
- Have a backup of images or other information in a separate drive and don’t forget to update it regularly
- Install good antivirus application so that flash drive is not infected by viruses
- Always have a look at your photos in your backup drive before deleting them
