Windows Video/data recovery

Other half accidently deleted a video mp4 file from SD card, looking for a free windows based solution to recover the data.

It's a minefield of bloatware and paywalled garbage out there.

Thank you

 

Photorec has done the job for me in the past. Despite the name, it picks up literally anything. Be mindful (unless it's changed) the filename and file extension may not be restored and it might look like a load of gibberish files, but as long as the sdcard hasn't been used since accidental deletion of the file, it should pick up the file in need, it'll just need renaming after. Oh, and it will take some time for it to run through, so I guess set it going after making sure the computer you're running it on won't go to sleep.

 

Will get it a go, thank you.

 

Failing the above, Recuva from Piriform has been useful in the past (plus I had some others saved down somewhere as I had to do a bit of the same once, I'll see what names I can dig out once I have the machine reinstalled and running again).

 

+1 for Photorec. Never failed me. It might only have a basic DOS-style interface but it's pretty quick and it just works™

 

I did download that Recuva but wanted something like £80 for a years license.

 

Really?! Blimey. Was free last time I used it.

Apologies for landing you a red herring in that case.

EDIT: No, there's definitely a free version. Even the Pro version is only £25, difference being it supports virtual drives or some bits. I'm on my phone at the moment and signal is poor for uploading screenshots, but I'll try and grab one later. I just searched for "piriform recuva" and went to the top link, which is now on the renamed ccleaner site. Had free version on first page.

 

I’ve dealt with video/data recovery a few times, mostly after accidentally deleting files from an SD card and once from a corrupted external HDD. What helped me was stopping any further use of the drive right away and trying recovery software before doing anything else — writing new data really lowers the chances. For videos, I noticed success rates are better if the file wasn’t partially overwritten. Also, always recover to a different drive, not the original one.

I’ve tested a few tools over the years, and https://www.movavi.com/ is one I tried for basic video recovery tasks. It worked fine for recently deleted files but, like most tools, struggled with heavily damaged data.