When you format a memory card used in digital cameras, you are essentially wiping the card clean and making it ready to be used again. If you have accidentally formatted the card before you downloaded the images to your computer, you can usually recover them. There are a number of free and for-purchase programs available on the Internet that will help you in recovering those pictures from your formatted memory card.
Instructions
1. Turn on your home desktop or laptop computer and connect to the Internet.
2. Download the photo recovery program of your choice. There are a number from which to choose, including "PC Smart Recovery" and "Pix Fix." These are both programs for PCs. If you are a Mac user, you can use Apple's "Camera Salvage." Once downloaded to your computer, open the program.
3. Connect the formatted memory card to your computer, either using a memory card reader, the build-in card reader or leaving the card in the camera and connecting the camera to the computer using a USB cable or its docking port. Wait for a moment for your computer to acknowledge the card is connected to your computer.
4. Click in the navigation bar of the recovery program you chose to use and click on the command to start the scanning process. The wording will vary from program to program, but the steps are the same. Once the scan has started, allow the program to complete the entire scan. A new window will appear on your screen showing all the formatted and deleted pictures that were contained on the card.
5. Scroll through the recovered images and use your mouse to select the images you want to save to your computer's hard drive.
6. Click "File" and select "Save as" to save the selected pictures to your computer's hard drive.
Tags: your computer, memory card, card reader, computer hard, computer hard drive
