Accidentally, I deleted many pictures.

[Banner1976]

Do you guys know good and FREE software to recover my pictures? Please let me know!!

[Shadowman]

Do you guys know good and FREE software to recover my pictures? Please let me know!!

Nothings for free, anything you see advertised as free will either give you a few free samples or attach a water mark to your photos until you pay for the software version that will give you a clean copy.

[epmi314]

Mac or PC? If you have a PC did you also empty your recycle bin? If not you should be able to restore them from there. Seems like you would have thought of this already but sometimes the simplest things are the least obvious. Hope you get them back.

[Banner1976]

Nothings for free, anything you see advertised as free will either give you a few free samples or attach a water mark to your photos until you pay for the software version that will give you a clean copy.

So, if I have to pay tell me which one is good.

[Banner1976]

Mac or PC? If you have a PC did you also empty your recycle bin? If not you should be able to restore them from there. Seems like you would have thought of this already but sometimes the simplest things are the least obvious. Hope you get them back.

PC. I deleted them from usb drive using "shift + delete" option.

[epmi314]

Oops. Yea, shift+delete bypasses the recycle bin I believe. I don't have much experience with these programs but heard Recuva would probably do the trick. I'd check out www.download.cnet.com for it. I've found some pretty good programs (free and pay). It also has plenty of reviews.

[Colin Southern]

So, if I have to pay tell me which one is good.

Technically, you probably don't need photo recovery software - just a PC undelete utility, which you may well find for free. "Deleting" on a PC doesn't actually delete - it just marks the space used by the file as being available for use again, so so long as you don't write anything else to the card, you should be able to recover everything.

[John C]

Try visiting the website of the USB drive manufacturer. Many of them have recovery software. I assume you mean its a USB thumb drive and not an external hard drive.

[Colin Southern]

Recuva would probably do the trick.

I just did a little searching, and Recuva was top of the list ...

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filere...y-programs.htm

[Banner1976]

I just did a little searching, and Recuva was top of the list ...

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filere...y-programs.htm

Thank you very much. I will try Recuva immediately.

[Colin Southern]

Thank you very much. I will try Recuva immediately.

No worries. Good luck - let us know how you get on.

[rob marshall]

I use Winundelete http://www.winundelete.com/ but it's not particularly cheap. It does work well though. If you have permanently erased the deleted file space (I use Iolo Drivescrubber for that http://www.iolo.com/ds/3/ ), then you won't be able to undelete them.

[stuck]

Nothings for free

Emphatically, NO.

Technically, you probably don't need photo recovery software - just a PC undelete utility,

No probably about it! A good undelete utility IS all you need.

Recuva was top of the list ...

Thank you very much. I will try Recuva immediately.

Spot on!

The key to successful file recovery is to use the undelete facility as soon as you have made the awful mistake since, as Colin has already stated, ‘deleting’ a file doesn’t actually delete anything it just marks the relevant sectors on the disk as free.

It follows from this that to have the maximum chance of recovering stuff you don’t want to be installing software on the partition that holds the deleted files. If your pictures were on a card and you have written nothing to the card since your mistake then you can safely install Recuva on your HDD and be confident that you will get them back.

Ken
PS I’ve only failed to get files back once (not that I make habit of deleting stuff by mistake, it’s more that other people know I can work ‘magic’) and that was not the fault of Recva. The SD card in question had physically failed, nothing would read it.

[Banner1976]

Finally I'm done! I used Recuva and it did its job. Thank you for all advices!

[Colin Southern]

Finally I'm done! I used Recuva and it did its job. Thank you for all advices!

Well done!

Another CiC success story

[stuck]

Finally I'm done! I used Recuva and it did its job. Thank you for all advices!

Unless you had written new files to the drive holding the lost pictures I would have been surprised if it hadn't worked

You might want to check that you have the very latest version of Recuva (not that you'll make this mistake again willyou? ), Piriform released an update around 10th Oct. Find it here:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/builds

Ken
PS As an aside, you don't need to pay money for a secure file deletion program (like Iolo Drivescrubber) either. Piriform are the developers of that other indispensable FREE PC utility Ccleaner and Ccleaner includes a 'wipe free space' option with a choice of single, triple or 35 pass overwrites. Did I mention it's free? Find it here:
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/builds