How to Recover Photos and Videos from Corrupted SD Cards Without Formatting?

Updated on February 18th, 2024

Are you wondering how to recover photos and videos from corrupted SD cards without formatting? The SD card in your digital camera, GoPro, mobile phone, etc. may get corrupted, leading to the loss of photos and videos. No worries. Following steps in this page, you can easily handle corrupted SD card recovery with the help of free recovery software CuteRecovery Free (formerly known as EassosRecovery Free).

Symptoms of a corrupted SD card

In this paperless era, everyone of us is filled with all sorts of digital storage media, such as computers, digital cameras, HDDs, USB flash drives, SSDs, memory cards, mobile phones, etc. Materials have turn to digital data on these devices, which includes photos and videos. An SD card is one of the popular storage devices in our lives, and it plays an important role in storing photos, videos, music files, etc.

However, SD cards may get corrupted, and many causes can lead to the corruption, for example, abrupt removal of the SD card from PC, sudden power failure, bad sectors, viruses, poor quality, incompatible file systems, etc. Once an SD card gets corrupted, you can neither open it nor access files from it. Here are some symptoms of a corrupted SD card:

Example:

I am a user of Canon digital camera, and I recently captured a lot of photos and videos for my trips. There was one power failure on the camera, which might be very cause of the corrupted SD card. I connected the SD card to laptop, but it cannot be opened as before, reporting it needs to be formatted before I can use it! I’ve never thought SD card should be so venerable. Anyway, I need your help to retrieve those photos and videos from the corrupted SD card. What’s your suggestion?”

Is it possible to recover data from corrupted SD card?

The good new is that you stand a good chance to recover lost data from a corrupted SD card as long as the SD card is not physically damaged and lost files are not destroyed. When your SD card gets corrupted or damaged, files on the SD card become inaccessible, but that does not mean these files are wiped from SD card completely. Moreover, the corrupted SD card recovery is quite simple. Apart from recovering photos and videos from corrupted SD cards is possible, you can also fix the corrupted error on your own. To maximize the recovery result, you should pay attention to following tips:

  • Stop using the SD card at once: When you are aware of data loss issue on SD card, you should stop using it to avoid any improper operations.
  • Do not format the corrupted SD card: Do not follow the advice given by Windows which prompts to format it, for formatting will remove all data off the SD card.
  • Do not carry out repair actions: you might find many guides to fix corrupted SD cards, and yet do not try any of them before all photos and videos are recovered from the SD card.

How to recover photos and videos from corrupted SD cards without formatting?

Free SD card recovery software

CuteRecovery Free (formerly known as EassosRecovery Free) is the best SD card data recovery freeware. It is designed with a graphical user interface and effective functions. Even though you are a novice user, you can easily use the software to recover lost photos, videos, music, documents and other files from all types of memory cards, including MicroSD card, Mini SD card, SDHC card, SDXC card, CF card, XD card, MMC and so on. It provides four recovery options which enables you to recover data when the SD card gets corrupted or formatted within a couple of simple steps.

The step-by-step guide to recover photos and videos from corrupted SD cards without formatting

Step 1: Connect the corrupted SD card to computer.

Remove the corrupted SD card from digital product and connect it computer via a card reader. Make sure the SD can be detected by computer.

Step 2: Free download and install CuteRecovery Free (formerly known as EassosRecovery Free) on your computer hard drive.

Free download this SD card data recovery freeware from Eassos site and install it to your computer hard drive instead of the SD card.

Step 3: Launch CuteRecovery Free (formerly known as EassosRecovery Free) and choose a proper option form the home interface.

“Recover Files From Partition” or “Recover Files From Disk” can be chosen here to recover photos and videos from corrupted SD cards, and you can click either to enter next step.

Recover Photos and Videos from Corrupted SD Cards Without Formatting

Step 4: Select the SD card and start scanning process.

Now you can see the corrupted is listed with other partitions. Select it and click Next button to scan data from it.

Recover Photos and Videos from Corrupted SD Cards Without Formatting

Step 5: Preview scanning result.

Once scanning finishes, you can view all listed files in the software. How to locate wanted files and check if files are recoverable? CuteRecovery Free (formerly known as EassosRecovery Free) allows you to filter files and preview files, which makes it easy to verify recovery quality.

Recover Photos and Videos from Corrupted SD Cards Without Formatting

Step 6: Copy files to a secure location.

After finding photos and videos you want to recover, you can select them and click Recover button. Then set a path to save them and complete the SD card recovery task.

Recover Photos and Videos from Corrupted SD Cards Without Formatting

Final words

CuteRecovery Free (formerly known as EassosRecovery Free) makes it easy to recover data from corrupted SDs card without formatting, and yet nobody can guarantee a 100% recovery rate for all data loss issues, for the recovery can be affected by many factors. Thus, it is important to keep regular backups for important data.

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