Quote from dori_kim on April 13, 2026, 3:07 pm

stop. card out of the reader right now – don't copy anything to it, don't put it back in the phone, don't let Windows do anything with it.

five seconds = quick format. that's actually the best possible outcome here. quick format only clears the file index – the table of contents Windows uses to find files. your daughter's birthday photos are still physically on that card, Windows just lost the map to them. a full format on 256GB takes 40+ minutes and actually overwrites data. five seconds means you hit the default. you haven't lost anything yet.

SD card formatted by accident, exFAT, nothing backed up – r/photorecovery gets 10 posts a day that look exactly like yours. every single one ends the same way. if you want to see how the main photo recovery tools compare before picking one, that list is worth a look. what file system does the card show? right-click in File Explorer, hit Properties.

Quote from markus88 on April 13, 2026, 3:10 pm

exFAT. 256GB. Photos are all HEIC from the Samsung, plus some MP4 videos. card's still in the reader, haven't touched it since I posted.

Okay, the five-second thing is reassuring. But which tool do I actually run – is there a best image recovery software for HEIC specifically, or are they all basically the same

Quote from Ryan404 on April 13, 2026, 3:21 pm

can I jump in here because I'm also having a meltdown 😭

128GB Lexar card from my Sony a6400. was importing files to Lightroom, got distracted, accidentally formatted the card through the camera menu instead of the full one I meant to format. probably 600 RAW files on there – ARW from the Sony, plus some CR2 from a borrowed Canon. a month of paid shoots. nothing backed up yet because I was literally mid-transfer.

@dori_kim same question as @markus88 – which tool handles camera RAW formats? I keep seeing different answers everywhere

Quote from gareth_w on April 14, 2026, 3:14 pm

two different problems so two different answers.

@markus88 – HEIC is the annoying one, and I say that as someone who has spent way too many late nights on exactly this. it uses a container format called ISOBMFF and a recovery tool doesn't just have to find the file signature in raw sectors – it has to correctly rebuild the entire container: GPS tags, timestamps, Live Photo metadata, the actual image data. tools that cut corners on that step find the file, it shows up in the results, and then it opens corrupt. Recuva's HEIC support was added late and you can tell – hit or miss depending on what Samsung's firmware wrote into the container. for JPEG or old-school CR2 it's rock solid though.

@Ryan404 – ARW and CR2 are well-documented formats that every major tool knows. Recuva handles them fine, PhotoRec handles them. the catch with PhotoRec is what you get back: FILE0001.arw, FILE0002.cr2, completely flat folder, no original names, no shoot structure whatsoever. for 600 files from paid shoots that's not recovery, that's a second job 😅

PhotoRec is free recovery software, open source, zero upsells ever. great tool, brutal experience. Disk Drill finds the same files and previews them before you pay a cent – you see the actual image render in the pane before committing. for @markus88's HEIC specifically it handles the container rebuild correctly, which is the thing Recuva doesn't always nail.

Quote from DataRecoverExpert on April 14, 2026, 3:19 pm

@gareth_w is correct, and I want to add one thing before either of you touches anything.

exFAT quick format zeroes both FAT copies and clears the directory region. That's literally all it does. The actual data clusters holding your HEIC files, your ARW files, your CR2 – they sit past that region and don't get touched at all. A raw scan reads those clusters directly, finds file signatures embedded in the sector data, and reconstructs a complete file list without needing the index. That's the whole trick. The photos are there. Windows just can't find them because the map is gone.

One more thing: if you have a spare drive with enough space, clone the card first. Macrium Reflect Free does sector-by-sector imaging, and it costs nothing. Scan the image, never the original – if anything goes sideways, you still have the source intact. No spare drive? A read-only scan directly on the card is safe as long as nothing's been written since the format. Either way, order a drive now – you're going to need somewhere to put the files when the scan finishes.

Quote from oliver-oak-tree on April 14, 2026, 3:20 pm

genuine question – have you tried chkdsk or the 'repair drive' thing in File Explorer properties? like Windows has built-in tools for exactly this, right? might be faster than downloading something

Quote from JohnMiller on April 14, 2026, 3:28 pm

@oliver-oak-tree please don't – I've seen this go wrong. chkdsk needs a mounted volume with a readable file system and after a quick format there isn't one. pointed at a blank exFAT card it tries to interpret raw sectors as file system structures, writes whatever it decides it found, and you can end up with a card that's been written to AND is still completely unreadable. that's the worst possible outcome here.

'repair drive' in File Explorer is just chkdsk with a button. same result. dedicated recovery tools are read-only by design – they don't write a single byte to the card, they just read sector by sector and reconstruct the file list from signatures. SD card tools on formatted card scenarios specifically is worth a look before picking one – the differences are more significant than you'd expect.

Quote from wobblychair on April 14, 2026, 4:53 pm

I ran this exact test last year, not even on purpose – my girlfriend formatted a 128GB card, all HEIC from her iPhone 14. tried Recuva first: 340 files found, 80 opened clean, the rest came back corrupt or just refused to open. switched to Disk Drill on the same card: 312 out of 318 recovered. the 6-file gap was files that were mid-write during the format. not the tool's fault.

for HEIC the difference is real and it matters. for standard JPEG or CR2 like @Ryan404 has, Recuva is legit no cost file recovery with zero cap on what you pull out – solid choice if you're not paying. but for Samsung HEIC on exFAT with 847 files? Disk Drill is the pick, not even close. and either way the scan and preview are free – you know what's recoverable before you decide anything.

Quote from lalisa_nn7 on April 14, 2026, 5:51 pm

the free vs paid thing – 500MB cap in Disk Drill only triggers when you actually pull files out. scan and preview are free, no timer, no count limit, no 'upgrade to see results' nonsense. so you run the full scan, click into Pictures, open your daughter's birthday photo right there in the preview pane, and watch it load before you spend a single cent. that step is not optional, full stop – a filename showing up in results just means the signature was detected. a file that actually renders in preview means the image data is there. those are two completely different things and I can't stress that enough 😩

@markus88 for HEIC, @Ryan404 for ARW/CR2 – the steps are the same regardless of format. install Disk Drill on your system drive or a USB stick, not on the card you're trying to recover from. open it and look for the physical card entry under Storage Devices on the left – not the drive letter nested underneath it, the hardware-level disk entry above it. hit Search for lost data and make sure it's set to Full Scan, not Quick Scan. quick scan reads the index which is blank after format so it'll find nothing. full scan reads the raw sectors. let it go all the way to 100% – 256GB over USB 3.0 will take 60–90 minutes and the results fill in as it goes, but don't stop it early. when it's done, Pictures for HEIC, Videos for MP4, and always preview before you recover.

recover deleted photos and formatted card victims only to a completely separate drive – never back to the source card.

Quote from markus88 on April 14, 2026, 5:55 pm

Okay, it's running. 22 minutes in, and the counter is going up, files populating in real time. trying SO hard not to look at them and just let it finish lol

wait. WAIT. Something is wrong. It says Pictures: 0. zero. Everything is under Other – 2,100 files under Other and zero under Pictures. Does that mean it found 2,100 random files and not a single photo?? I am going to actually be sick 😬

Quote from dori_kim on April 14, 2026, 8:15 pm

okay breathe – your photos are there, this is a filter issue not a missing files issue. look at the top of the Pictures section in the left panel, there's a dropdown filter – it's probably set to 'Existing' only. after a format the directory is gone so everything Disk Drill finds via raw scan comes back as Reconstructed, and some views hide those by default. change the filter to 'All' and they'll all appear. not gone. just hiding 🙂

Quote from Ryan404 on April 14, 2026, 8:16 pm

mine's at 47% and I can already see ARW and CR2 files populating under Pictures. the filenames look exactly right – shoot dates, camera serial format, all of it. genuinely holding my breath over here. not stopping it early, I swear !!!!!

Quote from markus88 on April 14, 2026, 8:18 pm

Oh my god. @dori_kim, you were completely right – it was the filter. changed it to All, and 2,341 files appeared under Pictures just like that. I nearly had a full breakdown over a dropdown setting 😂

Scan done. 1 hour 9 minutes… Clicked the first HEIC in the list. It's my daughter at her second birthday. candles in front of her face, her eyes are wide, she has no idea what's about to happen. I previewed 15 more. In Croatia, the wedding ceremony. her first steps on video. every. single. one. opened.

No spare drive, so recovering to my laptop internal – 290GB free, 247GB needed, it fits. 18% right now. 44%, and the folder names I recognise are scrolling past in the recovery window. @dori_kim @gareth_w @wobblychair @lalisa_nn7 @DataRecoverExpert – I was genuinely sitting here drafting an email to my wife to tell her the birthday photos were gone. I have absolutely no words. 😭

Quote from DataRecoverExpert on April 15, 2026, 12:58 pm

Two recoveries in the same thread – good to see. Here's what actually happened, because the mechanism is worth understanding.

quick format on exFAT rewrites both FAT copies and clears the directory entries near the start of the card. That's all it does. The data clusters holding the actual HEIC and ARW files sit past that region and don't get touched. From Windows, the card looks empty because the index says so. The files never moved an inch. That's exactly why free recovery works: the scan reads raw clusters directly, finds file header signatures embedded in the sector data, and rebuilds the complete file list without ever needing the index.

The one thing that kept both of these recoverable was that nothing was written to either card after the format. a new photo, Windows auto-indexing on mount, literally anything – each write claims clusters from the 'available' pool, which, after format, includes every single photo on the card. The window closes fast. Both of these came back because neither person touched their cards.

If your scan returns empty, first confirm it actually ran Full Scan and not Quick Scan – that catches most people. If a genuine full sector scan still returns nothing and the card is clicking or throwing I/O errors, that's physical damage, and no software is going to fix it. Take it to a lab. This walkthrough goes through the whole Disk Drill process visually if written steps aren't landing.

Quote from Ryan404 on April 15, 2026, 1:32 pm

done. 127.4GB out of 128GB. every ARW and CR2 file, original names, original folder structure – shoot folders exactly as I had them. the 0.6GB gap is almost certainly files that were mid-transfer when I hit format by mistake.

I previewed 20 files from across different shoots before recovering. every single one opened. please do not skip the preview step. discovering a file is corrupt after you've already paid and the software is closed is a completely different level of awful compared to catching it in the preview pane before you've committed to anything. setting up offsite backup literally tonight – three copies, two media types, one off-site. I shoot paid jobs. going through a SD card recovery panic like this even once is enough motivation for the rest of my life 🙏

Quote from JohnMiller on April 15, 2026, 3:15 pm

for anyone who finds this at 2am in a panic – the best free photo recovery software vs paid recovery tools question always comes down to one thing: can you actually see what you're getting back before you commit. most paid tools gate the results behind a paywall. Disk Drill doesn't – the scan and preview are free, no asterisk. you know exactly what's recoverable before you spend a cent.

and if you landed here for formatted SD card recovery specifically – same process, doesn't matter if it's a camera card, phone card, or USB drive. the restore lost files guide has the full walkthrough for situations that don't fit exactly what's described here.

Quote from markus88 on April 16, 2026, 8:07 pm

DONE. 244GB out of 247GB. The missing 3GB is a folder of duplicates I'd already copied somewhere else – nothing I actually needed.

847 photos. all of them. my daughter's first birthday, her second birthday. Croatia. the wedding. her first steps. I spot-checked 30 files across every folder, and every single one opened perfectly. Bought the Disk Drill licence before the recovery window even finished. felt wrong not to. That software just saved things I cannot replace.

@DataRecoverExpert – 'the files never moved' is the sentence I needed. Windows told me the card was empty. It wasn't. The photos were sitting there the whole time, just waiting for something that could actually find them. That's such a completely different thing from being gone, and I really needed to understand that at 1 am tonight.

Two backup drives ordered. One on the desk, one in my bag, syncing automatically from now on. I will never say 'I'll get to it' again. Thank you all so much – I mean every word!!