Member Avatar for PieMommy

I accidentally deleted several photos from my camera card while uploading. I have scanned the card using "recover my files." The files are there and in good condition. Unfortunately, I don't have $70 bucks to blow on the program right now. I would like to use DOS commands to recover the files but as far as I can tell, "undelete" is not supported by DOS in WinXP.

My question: Is there a way to do this without spending money or must I buy a program? Does anyone have any good advice or links to share with me?

Thanks

  • 3 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 260 Views
  • 4 Weeks Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by SimpleJohn

Dani AI

Generated

Good news: deleted pictures on camera cards are often recoverable as long as the card hasn’t been written to afterward. First rule: stop using the card right away (do not save more pictures or copy recovered files back to the same card). Work from a copy of the media, not the original, to avoid accidental overwrites. (cgsecurity.org)

Make a bit-for-bit image of the card and run recovery on that image. On Windows you can read the card with a USB card reader and create an image with tools such as Win32 Disk Imager; on Linux/macOS use dd. Example (adjust sdX to your device and run as admin/root):

sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=~/sdcard.img bs=4M status=progress && sync

Imaging lets you retry different recovery tools safely without touching the original card. (win32diskimager.net)

For recovery, PhotoRec (open-source) is a dependable free option that carves files (JPEGs, RAWs, video, etc.) from an image and deliberately uses read‑only access so it won’t write to the source. If you want a Windows GUI, Recuva is a popular free alternative for simple undeletes. Always point the recovery output to a different drive. If a quick scan shows files but they’re corrupted, try a deeper/carving scan rather than writing more to the card. (cgsecurity.org)

A quick note on the thread replies: ’s suggestion to try freeware is the right idea in spirit, and ’s pointer to built‑in commands can sometimes work on very old/simple cases — but for camera cards the imaging + dedicated recovery workflow above is more reliable and safer. If the card is physically damaged or many files were overwritten, consider professional recovery. (cgsecurity.org)

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for SimpleJohn

Try to use this command on CMD windows

RECOVER [drive:][path]filename

I think this should work...

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.