Recovery of deleted picture files

tuggy12

I have accidently erased some picture files from a USB stick and have tried to find any free recovery software to recover them.
All the recovery software I have found (on Google) claims to be free but of course when the files are found, you then have to pay an unlocking fee, typically around $60
I have searched this thread for help but most of the threads are over 10 years old and contain mainly dead links, or links which are incompatible with my PC running Windows 11.
Can anyone help me recover my picture files with suggestions for current free recovery software?
Thank you, any help would be much appreciated

km1500

try recuva it is free (from the makers of crap cleaner)

when your files are found recover them to a different drive

ps did yoh just delete the pictures or did you also delete the folder they were in ?

Newcad

I agree Recuva will do the job for free, you can download it here: https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
In fact - Don't pay for the Pro version of Recuva, it offers no more recovery functionallity than the Free version does.
(You are paying for support, which you can get for free on the CCleaner forum anyway*).

I myself used it a couple of months ago to recover a couple of thousand images from a crashed USB stick.

If you find that Recuva says that it cannot access the stick to recover files then it will be because of how it is formated.
If you find that's the case then I can probably help with that, either here or probably better on the CCleaner forum where other helpers can chime in: https://community.ccleaner.com/forum/16-recuva/

Obviously don't save anything to that stick in the meantime, or it could overwrite what you want to recover.

*Declaration of interest: I am a moderator/adviser on the CCleaner forum, so know their standard products and how to use them. I am not an employee of Piriform/CCleaner.

tuggy12

Many thanks to you both for the advice/links about Recuva.

It has worked perfectly with all my deleted files recovered.

A few of the files were in sub folders but they have also recovered perfectly (without the folders)

Once again thank you very much for your help.

Newcad

Good to hear that your recovery was successful.

There is an option in Recuva's advanced mode to recover the sub-folder structure.
(I've never had the need to use it myself).

Just a general note about recovering deleted files.
Whilst you can recover deleted files from HDDs, USB sticks, SD cards, and so on, the one type of drive that you (almost certainly) won't be able to recover deleted files from is a SSD (Solid State Drive).
That's simply because of the different technology of how SSDs work, in particular the automatic/background TRIM command.
For more about that see:https://community.ccleaner.com/topic/65185-deleted-files-not-appearing/#comment-343652

You can recover non-deleted files from a 'crashed' SSD, that's because they won't have been TRIMed

km1500

https://www.makeuseof.com/why-how-disable-trim-command/?newsletter_popup=1

Newcad

As that article tells you disabling TRIM degrades the performance of an SSD.
Why have a speedy SSD and then deliberately cripple it and slow it down?

The smarter solution is to do as knowledgable computer users have always done - make regular backups of your files.

When you have a backup (more than one is better) then if your files go missing, for whatever reason, there is no need to try and recover them, because you already have a copy backed up.

If you don't have your own external drives to backup to (and a USB stick can usually hold all your important files) then you can backup in 'the cloud'.

km1500

yes it slows down your SSD but enables recovery of deleted files

Up to you which is more important

PHK

km1500 said:

yes it slows down your SSD but enables recovery of deleted files

Up to you which is more important

It's not an either or. I personally have backups. So I have a speedy SSD and easy recovery.