Member Avatar for helpmeout10

A few weeks ago, I sat with my digital camera and cut the pictures from it to my folder on my desktop, I pasted them inside the Pictures folder that was in that folder and then I made 2 copies of that Picture folder and put in on my desktop, trying to have a backup and be safe.

As I begin to organize the pictures by making folders, I started to drag some pictures to folders and I also started to cut and paste some. This was taking too long so I decided to use the feature Shift click more than 1 picture, cut and paste and then I was also using the Ctrl and click to select pictures and paste them in certain folders.

While I am doing this, I notice that somehow I have copied quite a few pictures and I started to select them with Shift click and delete, I noticed that as I was doing that, somehow several pictures were selected and I assumed that they were the ones that I copied and I hit delete.

As I begin to look for certain pictures, I noticed that they had disappeared, so I went to my recycle bin and did a restore deleted items and still they did not reappear.

Ok, after asking around someone told me to do a restore to the time and date that I was cutting and pasting and I did that, but I made a mistake and didn't change the date when I did the restore, so it restored to a previous date, I noticed that and I went in and did another restore and made sure to change the date and time this time, but still NO PICTURES!!!!!

I have had others to scan the entire computer to look for the lost pictures, I have recently downloaded a Recuva program to help me as well, is there anyone out there that knows Vista enough to be able to help me find those pictures?

Please, if you can, please help me and thank you.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by finito

Dani AI

Generated

Important — stop using the PC and the camera card. Any further writes to the disk lower the chance of recovering deleted pictures. System Restore is for system files, not personal pictures, so restoring a restore point will not bring back deleted photos. ’s sequence of cut/delete and then a restore fits the common pattern where data becomes harder to recover once the drive is used after deletion.

Practical next steps (in order):

  1. Suspend all activity on the affected machine and card. Do not install or run recovery software on the same drive that held the pictures.
  2. If the originals might still be on the camera card, remove the card and work from a copy or an image of that card rather than the card itself. Imaging (a bit-for-bit copy) preserves the current state and prevents further damage.
  3. If the pictures were on the PC (Desktop), attach the drive to a second computer as a non-boot secondary disk or use a USB-SATA adapter. Create a full disk image before attempting recovery. Always recover to a different physical drive.
  4. Use signature-based recovery (file carving) on the image to find JPEG/RAW headers; recovered files may have generic names and lost timestamps. Save results to an external disk.

Quick checks that can sometimes help: search the entire system for common photo extensions (for example, search for .jpg and .cr2), right-click the Pictures folder → Properties → Previous Versions (if Shadow Copy was enabled), and check any external backups or photo-sync services that might have automatic copies.

Notes tied to earlier replies: ’s idea to scan the camera/card is sound. As cautioned, running recovery tools or System Restore after deletion can reduce success if the disk was written to. If these steps fail, professional data recovery remains an option but can be costly and is never guaranteed.

Recommended Answers

All 8 Replies

Member Avatar for finito

If you have already run recovery Programs you have slimmed your chance of finding those pictures yourself, your only chance left is to get it down professionally.

Member Avatar for caperjack

try recovering them from your cameras storage device .
also cut is not really meant for moving files ,copy and past or move here are the suggested metods i do believe

Member Avatar for Biker920

Drag & Drop is preferred and safest way to move files. right click and select move to is also fairly safe. If you have already tried a recovery program with no luck it's caperjack's suggestion or go for pro help=$$$$. Later---

Member Avatar for helpmeout10

Thanks everyone, since it is going to cost so much money to get it done, I may as well count this one as a lesson learned, thanks for your suggestions and advice.

Member Avatar for finito

no problem, please mark as solved.

Member Avatar for caperjack

ah there only pictures!
did you at least try hooking the camera to the computer and telling recurva to scan the cameras chip/storage to see if it finds the pictures ,it is a possibility

Edited by caperjack because: n/a
commented: Clever! +2
Member Avatar for stevenm84

the best option I would think would be to use a recover software... i would recommend using "EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional". its worked for me with files that I've permanently deleted. system restore might actually have made recovery impossible, but its worth a try.

Member Avatar for finito

ah there only pictures!
did you at least try hooking the camera to the computer and telling recurva to scan the cameras chip/storage to see if it finds the pictures ,it is a possibility

Oooh, that is clever it might work. Try that.

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