Contents

Recover Deleted Photos from SD Cards Without Backup
How to Recover Photos from SD Cards with a Backup
FAQs about Pics Recovery from SD Cards

Master the Skill on How to Get Deleted Photos Back from the SD Card

December 15, 2025Iris Walker

Recover Android Data & Recover Windows Data

I’m a new Samsung Galaxy Note 8 user and want to recover deleted photos from the SanDisk SD card. Yesterday, I got a message saying my SD is damaged. Until today, I noticed that all the photos stored on the SD card are gone. I can’t find them anywhere. Cause it’s a new phone and I don’t back up new photos on it. Is there any simple way to recover deleted photos from the SD card?

With limited internal storage on the phone, many of us prefer to save lots of photos and pictures to an extended SD card. However, an accidental deletion of photos on your SD card, or the formatted SD card will make you lose the photos and pictures on your SD card. Now, to get to the point, how to retrieve deleted or lost photos and pictures from an SD card? Read this article and follow the ways to recover your deleted pictures on an SD card with simple clicks.

How to Recover Deleted Pictures From Sd Card

Part 1. Recover Deleted Photos from SD Cards Without Backup

How to Retrieve Deleted Photos from SD Cards for Android

As long as your SD card is not corrupted and can be read on your computer, you can recover deleted photos from it. Even if you do not make any backup for your SD card photos, you can retrieve them with the reliable SD card photo recovery, FoneLab for Android.

The program is designed with an advanced deep-scanning function to ensure a high recovery rate. It gives you the most significant chance to find your lost photos. Even for downloaded pictures or snapshot images, it can restore them directly from the SD card or your Android phone.

Note that: The only thing you need to pay attention to is that once you delete photos from the SD card or format the SD card, do not add other data to your SD card. Because the deleted photos are not immediately removed from your SD card, they remain on it until overwritten. If you add new data to the SD card, it will overwrite the previous data (the deleted photos). To ensure the successful recovery of deleted photos from the SD card, keep this point in mind.

Before recovering lost or deleted photos from an SD card, you need to download, install, and launch FoneLab for Android first. The other steps are as follows.

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Step 1.

Connect Android phone to PC.

Launch the software on your computer to recover deleted pictures from your SD card. Connect your Android phone to it with a USB cable. This recovery tool will detect your Android phone automatically.

If not, follow the onscreen prompts to help it make the connection successfully. Ensure the SD card is correctly inserted into your phone. Then, follow the guide to open the USB debugging mode on your phone.

Step 2.

Install FoneGo on your phone.

Then, you will be prompted to install FoneGo on your phone by enabling "Install via USB" option in "Developer options". (If you miss the install pop-up or fail to install, click Show Again to install.)

Step 3.

Choose file type.

You can see some main file types listed in the interface. Select Photos and other types you want to scan. If you prefer a faster scanning speed, you can only tick the Photos option. Click the Start Scan button to move on.

Step 4.

Scan and view deleted photos.

It will take minutes to scan and collect deleted photos on your Android phone and the SD card. After scanning, you can view all the existing and deleted pictures by clicking Photos on the left panel. Select all the image files you want to restore and then click the Recover button.

Part 2. How to Recover Photos from SD Cards with a Backup

How to Rescue Photos from SD Cards through Google Backup

With the first method, you can handily recover deleted pictures from the SD card. Actually, Google Plus also provides a way to restore lost photos from Android and SD cards. Google Plus offers users a way to sync photos and pictures from their Android phone and SD card to their Google account. Also, it allows you to recover your deleted photos on an Android phone. If you have backed up photos to a Google account, then you could recover your accidentally deleted or formatted photos or pictures on an SD card. You can check the details of recovering deleted pictures from the SD card below:

Step 1.

Sigh into your Google account on your Android device.

Step 2.

Open Google "Photos" app,

Step 3.

Click the "Menu" icon

in the left top corner, Select "Trash",

Step 4.

Find and choose the deleted photos you want to recover, and touch the “Restore” icon on the top-right side. Then, you will get back the deleted photos from their original place in the “Photos” app on your computer. In this way, you have to be fortunate enough to make a backup for photos or pictures to a Google account for your Android phone. The recovery time is limited to 60 days. You can easily get the lost images back, so it’s very important to back up your Android data.

How to Recover Photos from SD Cards via File History

Also, you can use the Windows inner tool to help you recover your photos if you don’t want to download any third-party apps. We will use Windows 11 as an example.

Step 1.

Click the Windows start button and search for File History. Then, open it.

Step 2.

Choose Restore personal file on the left.

Step 3.

Choose the photos you want to recover and Right-click Restore.

How to Find Photos Missing from SD Card Using Time Machine

Time Machine is a superb data recovery tool preinstalled on Mac, automatically backup your files daily, monthly or yearly. Thus, make sure you check it out first if you are a Mac user.

Step 1.

Open Migration Assistant on your Mac.

Step 2.

Once you launch it, you should be able to see this interface. Choose the first option.

Step 3.

Choose a backup disk and click Continue.

Step 4.

Select the files you want to recover.

Part 3. FAQs about Photos Recovery from SD Card

Can I restore my photos from a damaged SD card?

It depends. In most cases, it is significantly more challenging to recover deleted pictures from a damaged SD card than from a healthy card. If your SD card is logically damaged due to software or file system issues, not the physical hardware, try using the FoneLab for Android to rescue your valuable files.

How long will SD card photo recovery take?

The time might vary on the the resolution, size, file types, etc., of your photos. For those low-resolution and quality photos, it costs less time. For high quality, it will be the contrary.

Can you recover deleted pictures from a damaged SD card?

Nearly 10 years. Your photos and other data will probably stay on your SD card for 10 years. Therefore, you don’t have to worry too much.

Conclusion

Today, we have shown you 5 of the simplest ways to recover deleted photos from the SD card, including Google Backup, Time Machine, File History, and so on. Hope you can easily find the deleted data after reading this page. If you have any further questions, please leave us a message, or you can also check out more of our articles below.