How to Recover Deleted Photos from USB Drive?

Photo or image is like an index for remembering your memorable moments which you came across in your life like wedding ceremony, a family trip to US, your child’s first birthday, etc. Compare to the ancient technology of photography, digital photography is very advantageous. Digital cameras are very easy to use and give a high resolution picture. When it comes to storage and maintenance of photos, it is very simple with digital photos, because no need to keep hard copies of photos in big albums. USB drive is a storage device, which can be used for storing and transferring data from one device to another device. USB drives use non-volatile memory, which retains the saved information. USB drives are also called as Universal Serial Bus drives.

Hard drives on the other hand are also storage devices which are used to store operating system, system files and application software. But the main difference between hard drive and USB drive is that, a USB drive can store application but cannot be used to run system level applications. The updated capacity of USB drive is 256GB. Similar to other external storage devices, USB drives are also prone to data loss. Data can be lost or deleted due to various reasons like accidental deletion, formatting or corruption of files. To recover pictures deleted from USB drive you need to use good digital photo recovery software, which helps you to recover USB drive files. The software should be able to recover files from various operating systems. Click here to know the process of recovery on Mac OS.

How photos get deleted/lost from USB drive?

• Accidental formatting: Formatting the USB drive accidentally without proper data backup makes us lose the files stored in it.
• Improper Usage: Improper usage of USB drive like pulling it out forcefully while data transfer is going on can corrupt the pictures stored in it and hence make them inaccessible.
• Incomplete Transfer Process: Sudden power failure or Improper shutdown of the computer while process of data transfer is not completed can also corrupt the media files stored in USB drive. Improper ejection of USB drive may be another reason for the media file loss.
• Due to Malware: Viruses are the most common reason for corrupting pictures and videos stored in USB drive. USB drive on Windows operating system can be corrupted due to Virus attack and hence makes the videos stored in it inaccessible. Performing Anti Virus scan on USB drive can also be a reason of media file loss because some critical media files may get deleted from the USB drive when it is scanned. Know the full process of recovering digital pictures from a corrupted memory stick or a USB drive.
• Defragmentation failure: Defragmentation is the process of re-arranging the files and disk space into contiguous locations in order to reduce the disk space. If this process is not completed successfully or fails due to some errors then there may be chances of files getting lost or erased.

To overcome the above mentioned scenarios you need to protect your computer’s power with UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply). Make sure that your computer is shut down properly. Avoid forcing the computer to turn off by pressing and holding the power button. Don’t save any new files on your affected hard drives or USB drives because it may overwrite the data on your drive. Once if it is overwritten then it’s not possible to recover data from the drive. But still you can recover deleted pictures from USB drive by using professional photo undeleting utility.

Digital Photo Recovery - Free Software to Recover Deleted Pictures from USB Drive

Digital Photo Recovery software helps you to recover hard drive files by scanning the entire drive in very few minutes. This software has an ability to recognize and recover files based on their unique signatures. It can easily restore pictures after format error is encountered. The software recovers more than 280 file types and also supports recovery of files from FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, ExtFAT drive. It restores the media files even after the re-installation of Windows. This software supports recovery of video file types like AVI, MOV, MPEG, 3GP etc and even recovers RAW digital pictures. This software is compatible with all the latest versions of Windows and Mac operating system & easily recover pictures from USB drive. Before buying this software you can download the demo version to evaluate how the software recovers  your lost or deleted files. You can also preview deleted or lost files prior to saving it using the preview option. If satisfied with the demo results you can buy the full version of the software. Later, you can activate the software and then load previously saved recovery session to restore your lost files. You can compress your recovered files to save your disk space or you can also save recovered data to CD/DVD or any accessible storage drives. 

NOTE: Once photos are deleted/lost from your USB drive, and if you want to recover those photos, then immediately stop further usage of the USB drive. Actually, when the files are deleted from USB drive, only the memory space occupied by the files just deleted/lost, are freedup and made available for new files to be saved. Unless and untill the new files are not saved in that memory location of the USB drive, you can easily restore deleted pictures from USB drive. If the deleted photo files are replaced with new files on USB drive, then it's impossible to regain deleted photos back.

Follow the steps given below to restore pictures from USB Drive:

Step 1: Download, and install the free version of Digital Photo Recovery Software on your computer. Now, connect the USB drive to your computer, and then launch the software. Upon launching the software, select Recover Photos option. Then select the USB drive from the list of logical drives in the system, and click Scan button.

Figure 1. Main Window

Step 2: The software now scans the USB drive to locate deleted & lost photos.

Figure 2. Software Scanning to Find Deleted & Lost Photos

Step 3: A new window appears after finishing the scan operation. All the files recovered from the USB drive will be listed in Data View and File Type View.

Figure 3. File Type View & Data View of Recovered Photos

Step 4: Preview and verify the restored files by right-clicking on the respective photo file, and clicking on Preview option.

Figure 4. Preview Recovered Photos

Step 5: At last, choose a location to save the recovered photo files and hit on the Save button.

Figure 5. Save Recovered Photos