Category Archives: file recovery

Unstable SD card with bad sectors data recovery – freezing, locks up, read errors, disconnects

Recovering your precious photos from a SD card can be challenging enough after accidental file deletion or formatting. Recovering data from an unstable SD Card may prove to even more difficult. Recovering data from an unstable SD Card Many file, photo and data recovery tools available focus on file recovery. Their efforts focus on discovery… Read More »

My r/datarecovery subreddit FAQ

For over 20 years I have been developing, been involved in development of and supporting data and file recovery software. Some very specific incidents sparked my interest in data recovery and then I wanted to find out how data was stored and lost on and from hard drives. The first tools I wrote were DOS tools… Read More »

Professional grade data recovery software on a budget

Who does not want it, professional grade data recovery software on a budget when you have an immediate need for it? Forget Stellar, forget the Disk Drill and RecoverIt! Although I have been and still am an enthusiastic advocate for ReclaiMe File Recovery, I try to keep an open mind and test other tools regularly.… Read More »

RAW data recovery

RAW can mean several things with regards to data recovery; ‘You can recover your RAW photos from a SD Card with a RAW file system using RAW file recovery’. With regards to file and photo recovery, RAW data recovery can refer to three different things: The recovery method; RAW vs. file system based recovery It… Read More »

You must initialize the disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it

When Windows Disk Manager does not find partitions it will display the message “You must initialize the disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it”. In other words the hard disk, SSD or removable device is “unallocated” or not partitioned. What does this mean and how do you recover your data if you need to?… Read More »

Is ReclaiMe still the recommended all-round data recovery tool?

The best all-round data recovery tool for end users. No. It’s a resource hungry and expensive tool compared to other options we have. It also requires a constant internet connection. DiskTuna no longer endorses Reclaime instead consider these options: Recommended data recovery programs (DiskTuna Approved):     UFS Explorer www.ufsexplorer.com. Very well rounded tool supporting… Read More »

Partial full format on SD Card, can I recover photos?

You can not recover if you let a full format complete. It depends if the full format was allowed to complete. A full format overwrites data. Overwritten data can not be recovered. So in case the format operation had the chance to complete, you can stop reading here, nothing and no one will be able… Read More »

Recover photos from Android Micro SD Card

Probably Android phones are the most common devices to take photos with nowadays often stored on a Micro SD Card. Consequentially many lost photos will be on Android devices. Photos can be on: Internal memory (Micro) SD Card Although many want you to believe it is easy to recover the lost or deleted photos and… Read More »

Undelete and photo recovery find no data on formatted SD Card

Case: SD Card is accidentally formatted in Windows (10). Some popular recovery tools are tried; Recuva from Piriform, Recoverit Photo Recovery from Wondershare and Stellar Photo Recovery. Recoverit and Stellar Photo recovery are basically nothing else than dumbed down versions of their generic data recovery tools. They fail to detect any data. In this video… Read More »

Disk Drill Review | A real review (2 & 4)

Please note that this about older versions of Disk Drill and may not all reflect the current version! An updated review will follow soon. Update January 2025: I had another look ..  In all fairness, little of criticism I had back then survives the 2025 version. Disk Drill in 2025 is a more matured product.… Read More »