How to Recover Photos from your Hard Drive on Windows

Updated on: April 18, 2022

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We capture more photos today than ever thanks to the power of having some of the best cameras at our disposal. From pictures of our family and friends to the wonderful trips that we take throughout life. Photos tell our story and allow us to relieve some of the best moments in our lives which makes them super important.

Losing data such as our photos is never something that we think is going to happen to us. It can happen though and knowing how to recover deleted pictures from our computer’s hard drive gives us one less thing to worry about.

Table of Contents

How to Recover Photos or Images with Recovery Software

Now let’s take a look at how to recover a deleted photo from your hard drive on Windows. I am trying to recover an aviation photo that I used in the past as I am a flight instructor and would like to have access to the photo even though I deleted it.

Download the app from here.
Launch it.
Select the internal or external hard drive that you want to scan. For me, this was my Parallel’s partition. After selecting it, click on “Search for lost data” and the scan will begin. This will take some time to complete as it is checking your entire hard drive for data.
Once the scan has completed you will see a list of all of your found files. (1) I selected the aviation photo that I wanted to recover. (2) Once I selected it I was then able to see a picture of it using Disk Drill’s “Preview” function on the right-hand side. (3) Lastly, I clicked “Recover” as I didn’t need any other pictures except this one. If you want to recover more than this, you can by checking more of the boxes.
Once you click “Recover” you will have to pick a place for the photo to go on your Windows partition and that’s it! Super easy!

Benefits of Photo Recovery with Disk Drill

Disk Drill offers an enormous amount of features for the price. One of my favorite things about it is just how easy it is to use. When you think of data recovery, you don’t think of a beautiful and easy-to-use interface but that is what Disk Drill offers. Here are some of my personal favorite features.

Deep scan – this scans your computer bit-by-bit and looks for lost files on your computer. Think of it as a deep spring cleaning. It will search your Windows computer for every possible lost file that it can find and present them to you.
Preview option – this allows you to look at the files that have been recovered before you even recover them so if you only need one file, you can easily tell what it is and select it. No more trying to understand long randomly generated file names.
Image format support – Disk Drill covers such a wide range of image formats which means that any image you’re trying to recover it most likely be able to find. You can read more about the support images types by clicking here.

How to Increase the Chances of Successful Data Recovery

What are some good practices that you should put into place when it comes to recovering deleted pictures from your computer hard drive? Good question! These would be things that involve making sure we take the best care of our computer as we can.

Keep your hard drive free of files that you don’t need. This will make it easier for data recovery software to find your data as it will have less to go through which will put less strain on the damaged drive.
Don’t defragment the hard drive as this could cause further data loss.
Install data recovery software onto a healthy working hard drive and not the damaged one.
Don’t physically try to do anything with your hard drive unless you’re a skilled computer technician.
When you recover lost files, save them to a different drive as the one that they were lost on most likely isn’t reliable anymore! This can be a thumb drive or external hard drive.

Knowing how to protect your data and recover it in case of a mishap is something that we all should all be aware of. With such a large portion of the population using computers these days, it is a good idea to be aware of what your options are when it comes to data recovery.

FAQ

How to recover deleted photos from an external hard drive without software?

Recovering deleted photos without software can be difficult, but not impossible. Before you attempt recovery, be sure to check your Recycle Bin to ensure the files aren’t sitting there first. For Windows, you can also restore deleted photos using Previous Versions. Bear in mind that this can only be done if File History has already been configured to automatically back up your files. Outside of this, the only way of recovering your deleted photos from a hard drive is by restoring them from a Windows Backup.

How to recover pictures from a formatted hard drive?

If you’ve formatted your external hard drive that contained your pictures, they may still reside on a physical portion of the drive. Through the use of data recovery tools, you can attempt to recover the file before the space is overwritten with new data. We’re going to demonstrate the recovery using Disk Drill, a data recovery software tool. Before starting, make sure your hard drive is connected to your computer:

Download and install Disk Drill. Open it.
Click on your external hard drive, then click Search for lost data
Once Disk Drill has finished scanning the drive, click Review found items
Review the discovered recoverable files and tick the files you want to recover. When ready, click Recover
Specify a recovery location, then click OK

How to recover permanently deleted photos from an external hard disk?

Photos that have been deemed permanently deleted can still be recovered through the use of data recovery tools. However, If all attempts are unsuccessful, your next best option is to use a data recovery service. Data recovery specialists work in a sealed environment to prevent damage by foreign objects and use commercial-grade tools and equipment to recover any data remaining on the drive.