Photographs are one of our most treasured possessions. Whilst there may be no intrinsic value, your photos are priceless memories that cannot be replaced. One of the most common enquiries we receive are requests to recover lost photos. Often these are the only files that users want to recover, so why don’t we store them better?
Most photos are taken and stored on memory cards. SD cards often comprise of cheap components and poor manufacturing quality, so it’s no wonder there is such a high failure rate. Use a good quality memory card and do not be tempted by huge capacities. Smaller capacity cards are more reliable and keep your SD card healthy by periodically formatting. WiFi SD cards are available now that will back up your photos to a computer automatically. These are really useful, ensuring that you always have a full back up of everything.
During the session, keep your camera safe from water and humidity, which can play havoc with electronics. It goes without saying that you should avoid impacts of any sort. Similarly avoid removing and handling the SD card until you need to transfer the photos.
When downloading photos, do not interrupt the process or disconnect cables whilst the photos are being transferred. DropBox or OneDrive are great backup utilities for photos, but it is always worth keeping a physical backup to a portable hard drive or your computer. When you check your data, do a random test of files and don’t just rely on thumbnails. Just because you can see a thumbnail, don’t assume that the photos have all been downloaded successfully.
Once all your photos have been successfully downloaded and you are absolutely sure they are all safe, you can reuse the SD Card. If you do encounter problems and need help recovering data, there are lots of data recovery tools out there specifically designed for photos. Choose a utility that specialises in JPG formats from SD cards such as SanDisk Photo Recovery. If that really doesn’t work, give our data recovery technicians a call and we should be able to help.
