Specialist · photo recovery
Deleted, formatted or 'card error' — the photos are usually still there, right up until something writes over them. This page is the honest map: what free software genuinely rescues, where it quietly hands you 5MB previews instead of 50MB RAWs, and how lab recovery gets the full frames back. Cards, drives and computers only — we don't work on phones.
Talk it through with an engineer
01273 964902
| The situation | What it means | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Photos deleted from the card | The index entries are gone; the images sit intact until overwritten | Stop shooting on it now |
| Card formatted in the camera | In-camera formats typically clear only the file system — images survive underneath | Recoverable if unused since |
| Card says 'memory card error' or wants formatting | Damaged file table over intact photos | Never reformat to 'fix' it |
| Free software recovered files that won't open | It carved the embedded previews or first fragments, not the full RAWs | The full frames may still be there |
| RAW files open with banding or grey halves | Fragmented or partially overwritten frames | Lab reassembly territory |
| The videos came back unplayable | 4K video fragments heavily — the hardest carve there is | Frame-aware rebuilding needed |
Your device is logged with its own case reference the moment it arrives. An engineer assesses the fault, confirms what's actually recoverable, and you get a fixed price in writing — no diagnosis fee, no obligation, and no paid work until you say go.
The card or drive is imaged bit-for-bit first — every recovery attempt, ours included, runs on the copy while your only original stays untouched.
Where the file table survives, photos return with names, folders and dates. Where it doesn't, frames are carved by their own format grammar — full RAWs reassembled from fragments, not previews dressed up as results.
Recovered shoots are opened and checked image by image at full resolution — a count of files means nothing; frames that open mean everything.
Before you pay the recovery fee you approve a full listing of what came back. Your data returns on new media with free return postage, and the case only closes once you've confirmed everything opens on your side.
The honest success factor, in one line: photo recovery outcomes track what happened to the card after the loss — a card ejected immediately recovers near-completely; a card shot on 'just briefly' loses exactly the frames the new ones landed on. The physics does the deciding; the discipline is free.
Free software had returned 600 files — all previews, none printable. The original card, thankfully unused since, imaged cleanly; the CR3s reassembled from their fragments, and the couple's gallery delivered at full resolution — including the forty frames the free tool never found at all.
Sometimes — for small, unfragmented JPEGs on a card you stopped using immediately, free tools genuinely work. Where they quietly fail is RAW files and video: fragmentation and embedded previews mean you often get partial files or thumbnails labelled as successes. If the shoot matters, clone first and know what a real result looks like.
Two usual reasons: the tool recovered only the JPEG preview embedded inside the RAW container, or it grabbed the first fragment of a scattered file. Either way the full sensor data may still be on the card — recoverable with format-aware reassembly, provided nothing has overwritten it.
Usually not. In-camera formatting typically rebuilds the file system and leaves the image data in place. If nothing has been shot since, recovery odds are excellent; every new photo taken afterwards lands somewhere on your old ones.
No — we don't work on mobile phones or tablets at all. Photos that have been copied off a phone onto a card, drive or computer are fully in scope; the phone itself isn't, and we'd rather say so here than after you've posted it.
Every restart of a damaged device costs data. Open a case first — the diagnosis is free either way.