Digital photos play a very important role in one’s life. We prefer capturing our precious moments and memories in the form of pictures or videos, so we can access them in the future. Unfortunately, incidents may occur when you lose important pictures without warning. Losing important pictures can be painful. If you ever encountered the loss of photos on your device, don’t panic.
Luckily, there are several tools and techniques available that you can try to recover your deleted pictures. Whether you have formatted your device storage or accidentally pressed the delete all button on your digital camera, there are several reasons why pictures get deleted on your device.
Here, in this article, we will discuss some simple tips and tricks to retrieve deleted photos along with the causes for the deletion of pictures on your device.
What Causes Deletion of Photos on Your Device?
Before we answer your query on how to recover deleted photos, it is important to know the exact causes of such data loss.
There are several possible reasons why pictures get deleted on your device. Some of these include:
- Accidental deletion: You may have accidentally deleted your important pictures. Mainly such a situation arises when you try to free up space on your device or while navigating through the photo library.
- Formatting of storage device: Pictures can be deleted due to the formatting of the memory card or storage drive where your image is stored. Even reasons like improper ejection of memory card or resetting your device also cause deletion of your photos.
- Software-related issues: Software-related problems can also cause the deletion of data, including pictures on your device. This occurs when there is a glitch in your device’s operating system or software installed in your device.
- Hardware issues: Issues like damaged external storage drives can also cause photos to be lost. In such cases, you should avoid using your damaged storage device to save pictures on it.
- Viruses or malware: Viruses or Malwares are one of the main reasons that corrupt your device’s files, including your pictures, videos, etc. These viruses make your files inaccessible or even delete them.
How to Recover Deleted Photos on Windows?
Recovering deleted pictures is a very easy and quick process if you have opted for the correct recovery methods. In this section of the article, we will explain the most practical ways to answer how to retrieve deleted photos on Windows devices. Just go with these methods one by one to get your deleted pictures back.
Method 01: Restore Deleted Photos from Recycle Bin
When you normally delete any picture using the Del key or the Delete option, the deleted file goes to the Recycle Bin. The Recycle Bin folder temporarily stores your deleted images for some specific days, after which they will get permanently deleted. If the deleted image that you want to recover is in the Recycle Bin, you can easily restore it from there. All you have to do is:
- Double-click on the Recycle Bin folder to open it.
- Locate and select the images that you need to recover.
- Right-click on the selected images and select “Restore”.
Once you are done with the above steps, wait for the process to complete and then check if your files have been restored to their original locations.
Method 02: Recover Deleted Pictures Using Windows Backup
If you have enabled the Windows backup feature on your device, then you can use these backups to retrieve your deleted photos. The most likely backup methodology that Windows users can opt for is the built-in Backup and Restore option. You can go through the following steps to know how to retrieve deleted photos using the Windows backup option:
- Type cp in the search box (located in the bottom-left corner) and open the Control Panel.
- Go to System and Maintenance, and then select Backup and Restore.
- Now, you need to select either the “Restore my files” or “Restore all users’ files” option.
- Select all the photos you need to recover using the Browse for Files or Browse for Folders option.
- After selecting all the photos, click the Recover button and select where you need to save your recovered photos.
Method 03: Restore Deleted Pictures from Previous Versions
Windows Previous Version feature also allows you to restore deleted files if you know their original location on your device. This option tracks any changes that you make to a file. If you have enabled the File History option, then the history related to the picture will be stored every time when you make any changes to it.
Now, check the steps on how to recover deleted pictures using the Previous Versions option:
- First, right-click on the folder where your deleted photos were earlier stored and then select the “Restore Previous Versions” option.
- Next, locate and tap the “Recover folder” option. However, if this option does not appear, go to the Control Panel and enable the “System Protection” option.
- After that, click on “System & Security“, then select “System” followed by the “System Protection” option. Next, you need to select any particular drive and then click on “Configure“.
- At last, tap the “Restore system settings and Previous Versions of files” option. Then, click the “OK” button.
Once you are able to see the “Recover file” option, click on it to save the files to a new location.
Method 04: Retrieve Deleted Pictures with Photo Recovery Software
If the above methods anyhow fail to recover your deleted pictures, you can use a professional photo recovery tool to get deleted photos back. To effectively restore your deleted photos on Windows devices, we recommend you try the Stellar Photo Recovery tool – a well-known image recovery software. It scans your whole computer and then restores data more precisely.
Some amazing features that make Stellar Photo Recovery the best option for your deleted image recovery are as follows:
- It supports the recovery of files, including photos, RAW images, and videos of multiple formats, including JPEG, RAW, TIFF, PNG, MP4, MOV, MP3, and other file types.
- Easily restore photos deleted due to any reasons, including accidental deletion, corruption, formatting, virus attack, etc.
- You can use this recovery software to restore files deleted from Recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, digital camera, and other devices.
- Allow users to preview the recoverable lost or deleted photos, videos, and audio before saving them on their devices.
This professional image recovery tool supports the recovery of your deleted photo files in 3 simple steps. Download and install the Stellar Photo Recovery software on your device and then start the recovery process with the below-given step-by-step guide.
- Launch the software and select the location from where you need to restore your deleted pictures. Then, click the “Scan” button.
- Once the scanning completes, preview the recoverable files and select everything you need to recover.
- After that, click the “Recover” button to save the selected pictures at a new location.
Tips to Avoid Photo Loss or Sudden Deletion
While it’s easy to retrieve deleted pictures on your device, there are certain tips that you can keep in your mind to avoid the stress of lost images. Here are some tips to help you avoid loss of images on your device:
- Make a habit to create a backup of your important photos on a regular basis. Try taking multiple backups of your images using your device’s in-built tools or cloud backup.
- Keep your photos separate from other files in order to protect them from unauthorized access. Creating multiple partitions on your storage devices allows you to protect your files from inadvertent file deletion.
- As human error is also the main cause of the deletion of pictures on your devices, so think twice before you delete any picture from your device. Spending a few seconds before deleting files saves a lot of time after the deletion of files.
Conclusion
You can check and follow the aforementioned simple tips and tricks to retrieve deleted pictures quickly. Getting deleted photos, using Recycle bin, backups, the previous version, etc. is a simple process.
However, if these methods fail to retrieve deleted pictures on your device, you can use professional photo recovery software, such as the Stellar Photo Recovery tool. With this photo recovery tool, you can recover your deleted pictures, easily and quickly.
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