How to Recover Deleted Photos from SanDisk SD Card

Have trouble in recovering photos from SanDisk SD card? Don't worry, here we'll show you 3 easy-to-use reliable recovery tools including MyRecover, SanDisk RescuePRO, and Windows File Recovery.

By @Ellie Last Updated November 28, 2024

Can I recover pictures from my SanDisk SD card?

"I have saved lots of my old pictures on my SanDisk SD card. Recently, when I tried to review my pictures, I found some of them are missing. I don’t know if I have accidentally deleted them or if they are just lost because of anything else. I just want to know how to recover photos from SanDisk SD card. Please help.”– from Reddit

Usually, if there is no physical damage, you still have a chance to recover photos from SanDisk SD cards, whether they are deleted or lost.  Please check the possible reasons in the following:  

  • Delete photos accidentally: It is one of the most common causes of data loss.
  • Format the SD card: The formatting process deletes all data on your SD card.
  • SD card corruption: File system corruption, malware, and physical damage can corrupt your SD card, causing data loss. 
  • Virus infection: Viruses or malicious programs may modify the attributes (deletion/hidden) of your photos.

How to recover deleted photos from SanDisk SD card 

⚠️No matter what causes photos deleted or lost, you should stop using the SanDisk SD card immediately to avoid data overwriting.  Also, continuing to write data or formatting may still overwrite data, making data recovery more difficult. If you try to fix a corrupted SD card before recovery, it may cause further damage and render the disk inaccessible. 

You can recover photos from SanDisk SD cards using a data recovery tool. While many software claims to retrieve data, not all of them can do it well. This largely depends on whether the software's algorithm is powerful enough. We'll introduce you to 3 popular choices. 

Option 1. MyRecover

MyRecover is one of the best Windows data recovery software. It's compatible with Windows 11/10/8/7 and server computers including the latest Windows Server 2025. You can use it to recover deleted or lost photos from SanDisk SD cards due to human error, formatting, lost partition, virus attacks, corruption, etc., with fast scanning and a high success rate.

Easy-to-operate. Within 3 simple steps, you can recover lost or deleted photos from SD cards, USB drives, external drives, etc. 
Powerful. It offers users Quick Scan & Deep Scan to thoroughly search all recoverable data on a disk.
Multiple data types. You can recover any lost data, including more than 42 pictures, such as JPG, PNG, TIF, HEIC, GIF, PSD, SVG, ARW, X3F, NEF, etc., as well as other data types. 
Convenient. It provides users with search & filter, file preview, selective restore, crashed PC recovery, etc., features, making data recovery more smooth.  
 Widely-compatible. It works with all brands of SD cards, not only SanDisk SD cards, and is compatible with NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, and ReFS file systems.

Let's see how to recover deleted files from SanDisk memory card via MyRecover in 3 steps.

Download, install and launch MyRecover on your computer and connect your SanDisk SD card to the computer with a card reader.  

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Step 1. Hover the mouse over your card reader. Then click Scan to let it be scanned.

Step 2. It will analysize your data on the disk and store them in the Deleted Files, Recycle Bin, or Other Missing Files folder respectively. You can expand them to find files in the original location. If not, try to search or filter files in the following items:

  • Name/Extension: Type part or the entire filename of the desired files or its extension in the search box.
  • Data type: To recover deleted photos, select the "Images" data type in the filter feature.
  • Date: Specify the date (today, yesterday, last 7/30 days, etc.)
  • Size: Set file size (<128KB, 128KB~1MB, 1MB~512MB, etc.)

Step 3. You don’t need to wait for the process to complete if you find the photos you want to recover. Double-click them to preview and select them by ticking the checkbox or leaving them blank. Then, click Recover xx files and choose a new location to save the recovered photos. 

⚠️Notes: You will be asked to upgrade to MyRecover Pro to enjoy unlimited data recovery. It has 3 editions: $39.95 for Monthly, $59.95 for Yearly, and $69.95 for Lifetime Upgrades (35% off). The last option is recommended, i.e. one-time payment for all features with no time limit. So you can always recover data at the first time.

It is not limited to recovering data from SanDisk SD cards, but also WD, Crucial, Samsung, etc., in the following scenarios:

Option 2. SanDisk RescuePRO

If the SD card is SanDisk Extreme Pro, you still can try SanDisk RescuePRO to recover images, videos, documents, music, and other media. Note the free version has limited support for raw image types and does not support file preview.

Step 1. Download SanDisk RescuePRO and install it on a Windows PC. Meanwhile, connect your SanDisk Extreme Pro card and be sure it’s recognized. 

Step 2. Launch SanDisk RescuePRO and click Recover Photos.

Step 3. Select the SanDisk card and click on the Start button. It will start to scan this drive and recover deleted or lost files automatically. To view the recovered files, click the Output Folder option.

Option 3. Windows File Recovery

You also have the option to recover deleted photos from SD card using CMD with the help of Windows File Recovery. It's only available on Windows 10 versions 2004 and later. This is a command-line utility, thus it will be a little more technical & difficult. Note the recovery rate has yet to be established. 

Prepare before using Windows File Recovery:

  • Learn the syntax and necessary parameters. Please check how to use Windows File Recovery to get details. 

  • The target drive cannot be the same as the source drive. 

  • Check your file system first. Go to This PC > right-click on the SD card> click Properties to view the file system. 

  • Select a recovery mode based on the file system and your scenario and one or more switches. You can type winfr /? to get the meaning of corresponding switches. 

Steps to recover deleted photos from SanDisk SD card:

Step 1. Download and install Windows File Recovery from Microsoft Store. Then, open it after installing.

Step 2. Open Powershell or Command Prompt with the administrator. Then, type the command based on winfr source-drive: destination-drive: [/mode] [/switches]

For example, to recover deleted jpg and png files from F: to D:, then the command will be like this: winfr F: D: /extensive /n *.jpg /n *.png

Sometimes, a photo missing doesn’t mean it has been deleted, it might also be hidden because of many reasons like system errors, virus attacks, or human causes. You can use the attrib command to recover hidden photos.

  • Plug the SanDisk SD card into your computer. Type cmd in the search box, select the top result, and Run as administrator.
  • Type in “attrib -h -r -s /s /d drive letter:\*.*”, for example, “attrib -h -r -s /s /d G:\*.*” to show hidden files. Replace G with the drive letter of your card.

What do these attrib command parameters mean?
  • -h: It applies the Hidden attribute to the files specified.
  • -r: It indicates a read-only attribute (files can be read but cannot be changed).
  • -s: It assigns the System attribute to the specified files.
  • /s: It tells the system to look for the specified path (including subfolders).
  • /d: It is made up of process folders.

This process will finish after the command prompt returns back the original location. Then, you can go to the destination place to check these files.

Conclusion

This post primarily introduces three options on how to recover photos from SanDisk SD cards no matter how they are lost. We strongly recommend you use MyRecover. It has a user-friendly interface and applies to all series of SanDisk SD cards as well as other brands in any disaster.

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Even if you can get back your photos, we highly recommend you to back up your important files using smart backup solutions such as AOMEI BackuppeR Standard to avoid data loss in the future.