Several days ago, I took some family pictures in my camera and then downloaded them to my PC. Soon after, they were overwritten by some other photographs by mistake. Can I recover my earlier photos back?

Searching for Lost Photos

My first question is about the overwritten photos. I assume you mean that the photos on the PC are no longer there and were replaced by a new set of photos? Or do you mean the photos in the camera were overwritten when you took newer photos? The first thing I would do is double check the photo folder on your computer to be sure that they aren't really there. For example, did you know that you can sort your images by date rather than name? Since you know the photos were taken a few days ago, it should be fairly easy to sort the photo folder by date and then scan through the list to see if they appear. Here's how:

• Right-click the Start button and choose Explore
• Navigate to the photo storage folder, typically labeled My Pictures or Pictures (if you store your photos elsewhere, navigate to that folder)
• Click the dropdown arrow next to View and select the view that you prefer. For example, if you want to see a small preview of the image, select medium icon.
• Now, click the Date Taken box, this will sort all images in the file based on date. Clicking it again toggles it from ascending to descending order. If you know the exact date, click the dropdown box next to Date Taken and select the date on the calendar. This will filter the images to only those that were taken on the selected date.

Any luck?  

Recovering Photos

Once you confirm that the photos are not there, the next step is to check your digital camera. Many photo transfer programs delete the photos from the camera once downloaded, so they may be deleted. Not to worry! It is possible to recover your earlier photos with data recovery software. Data recovery software works on hard drives as well as peripheral devices such as digital cameras so long as you can connect the camera or its memory card to your computer and view its contents as a drive letter such as the E:\ drive.

Data recovery software typically costs about $30-$40, so you'll need to weigh the value of the photos against the cost of the software. We recommend ParetoLogic Data Recovery software. In this case, you do not need the "Pro" version as the standard version does a fine job of recovering photos. What's neat about this software is that you can download a free scanner version to find out if your photos are recoverable from either your digital camera or your hard drive. If the scanner finds the photos, you will then need to purchase the full version to recover them. On the other hand, if the photos are not recoverable, you will not have spent any money on a fruitless search.

The software is easy to use. I would start with scanning the digital camera. If the photos aren't found there, then try the hard drive. Data recovery works on a basic principle: when data is deleted, it isn't deleted until new data occupies its address on the disk or media; only the entry to the file and graphical pointers to it are removed. It's like tearing out the table of contents of a book. Just because the table of contents page is gone, the chapters remain.

Celeste Stewart | November 13th, 2009
Tags: Data Recovery, photo recovery, Recover Overwritten Photos, recover photo
Categories: Data Recovery

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