The original post: /r/photography by /u/Dragoniel on 2025-01-22 13:16:22.

When I bought my (second hand) camera, it came with a couple of SD cards. They were empty, of course, except that it took me about 5 minutes to recover hundreds if not thousands of photos on both.

This is really obvious to anyone with any background in tech, but also something most regular folks are not aware of - when you format the card (or delete its contents in-camera or computer), the system simply marks those photos as condemned, allowing memory space to be reused when needed, and makes the files invisible. But the photos are still there (until overwritten). This action can be reversed with appropriate software.

If you want to permanently delete something, you need to use special software that also overwrites the memory during the formatting process, so that the recovery is rendered practically impossible. Such software is freely available everywhere.

I feel like I am stating something so obvious it’s not even worth mentioning, but this isn’t the first time I was able to recover files after buying something second hand that comes with memory. I always check. Whether it is a moral thing to do or not is a separate discussion, but I like to know how the equipment was used and it’s just interesting. Lots of drone shots and private photos and videos over the years. I never keep any of that stuff, but I do check.

EDIT: wow, this is going to be my most controversial thread in forever, haha

Good. Maybe it will help prevent someone making a mistake like this somewhere along the road.