Free Digital Image Recovery

Related: Read about repairing corrupt image (JPG) files. 

First download iRecover and unzip to for example the Windows desktop.

Digital Image Recovery

I stopped hosting iRecover after it’s no longer actively developed for years. Consider using JpegDigger for raw photo recovery.

Setting up the memory card for image recovery.

If your camera or smart phone receives a drive letter in Windows once connected to the computer using a USB cable then you can try recovering your digital images from the device directly. If your device has a ‘Enable USB storage mode’ or similar, enable that.

I recommend using a card reader. A memory card reader is typically connected to your computer using a USB cable. Many laptops have a memory card reader already built in.

External USB memory card reader

External USB memory card reader

Internal memory card reader

Internal memory card reader

The image recovery procedure.

Start iRecover by double clicking iRecover.exe. As iRecover needs administrative rights to access disks directly you will be prompted by UAC (User Account Control). You’re now seven clicks away from accessing your digital memories:

Click Image Recovery.

To recover deleted or otherwise lost digital photos, select Image Recovery.

To recover deleted or otherwise lost digital photos, select Image Recovery. This mode can be used free of charge!

Select the device (camera, smart phone or card reader) and click Next.

Select the device containing the lots photos

Select the device to recover digital photos from.

iRecover will scan the device.

Device containing the lost digital pictures is being scanned.

Device containing the lost digital pictures is being scanned.

Now select the photos you want to recover and click Next. A preview option is available. My recommendation is to select all files and sort them out once you have copied them.

Select digital images for recovery.

Select digital images for recovery.

Copy the files. Done!

Select a folder to copy recovered digital photos to.

Select a folder to copy recovered digital photos to.