What Is a SD Card?

• An SD card is a storage chip used to save the data from various electronic devices. SD cards come in three different sizes, and range in storage capacity from 512 MB to 32 GB. The largest of the three (standardSD) is mainly used in camcorders, cameras, GPS devices and laptops. The two smallest SD cards (micro and mini) are used in cell phones and PDAs.
  
  

Why Do SD Cards Fail?

• SD cards have contact boards on the outside; these are the copper strips that are needed for your computer to read the stored data. If these contacts are scratched, dirty, water damaged or covered in fingerprints, it will cause your SD card to fail. In an attempt to fix this failure, you'll be asked to format your SD card. Once you reformat the card, it will delete all saved data.
  
  

What Is SD Card Recovery?

• You can recover deleted pictures from your the SD card by using an SD card recovery program. This is a program that you install on your PC in order to read your SD card. This program works by looking for hidden files that are saved whenever you save a file to your SD card. Using these hidden files, the program is able to recover your deleted pictures.
  
  

How to Recover Pictures?

• Remove SD card from your cell phone or digital camera and insert it into the SD card reader on your PC. Open the "Start" menu on your PC, then click "All Programs." Locate the SD card recovery software file and open it. Follow the system prompts to start the file recovery. Once the files have been recovered, save them to a location of your choosing.
  
  

Recovery Software Purchase Information

• SD card recovery programs can be purchased online. Many of these programs are not in CD-ROM form so they must be installed directly from the Internet. Before downloading the SD card recovery program to your PC, do a full virus scan to make sure that the program does not contain Trojans or spyware.