Recover RAW photos (CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG) from a formatted camera card

Stop first

Every new photo you shoot, or file you copy onto the card, can land on top of what you want back. Take the card out of the camera, don’t format again, and don’t “test” it by shooting. If your card has a lock switch (SD cards), slide it to Lock before putting it in a reader. A locked card can’t be written to, which is a hardware safety net on top of Retrova’s read-only mode. (Some readers ignore the switch, so don’t rely on it alone.)

What happened to the photos

Most cameras and operating systems do a quick format: they write a fresh, empty file system (FAT32 on cards up to 32 GB, usually exFAT on larger SDXC cards) and leave the old data areas alone. The photos remain until shooting overwrites them. Some cameras offer a low-level or full format option that overwrites the card; after one of those, recovery is unlikely. A card that was erased by Disk Utility or diskutil with a secure erase level is the same.

If the card was formatted on a computer by mistake, the same reasoning applies. See also Recover deleted photos from an SD card.

Which RAW files Retrova’s Deep scan can find

I checked the list against Retrova 1.1.1’s carving code. Deep scan recognises 72 file types. The camera RAW and related photo formats are:

• Canon: CR2 and CR3
• Nikon: NEF, and NRW from Coolpix
• Sony: ARW
• Fujifilm: RAF
• Olympus: ORF
• Pentax: PEF
• Any brand: DNG, plus JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG, PSD, WebP, AVIF, GIF and BMP
• Video: MP4, MOV, M4V, 3GP, 3G2, AVI, MKV, WebM and WMV

Not covered: Panasonic RW2, Canon’s old CRW, Samsung SRW, Sigma X3F and other makers’ RAW formats. If you shot RAW+JPEG, you can still recover the JPEGs. If your camera’s RAW isn’t in the list, a tool with wider format support, such as PhotoRec (free, command-line), may find more. See PhotoRec with a GUI on Mac and Windows and TestDisk vs PhotoRec vs Retrova.

Step by step

1. Use a card reader. Plug the card into a USB card reader (or the computer’s built-in slot) rather than connecting the camera, which might write to it.
2. Open Retrova and choose I deleted something.
3. Pick the card. Pick it by size and name; the card may now be called something generic like “Untitled” or the camera’s default. On a Mac, Retrova asks for your administrator password to read the disk; on Windows it asks for administrator permission.
4. Choose the file types. Fewer types mean a faster scan. For photos, choose the Photos group. Add Videos if you shot video.
5. Choose a destination on your computer’s internal drive, never the card itself, with plenty of free space. RAW files are large.
6. Run the scan. Finds are saved as they are discovered, sorted by type. You can stop and resume.
7. Check what came back. Open a sample of photos and play a couple of videos before you reformat the card or trust the results.

What to expect

• Names and folders are lost with Deep scan. You won’t get IMG_1234.CR3 or DSC_0042.NEF back. Deep scan finds content, not the file list, so files come back with new names, grouped by type. Camera metadata (date, settings) is still inside each file, so Lightroom, Photos or Preview can sort them by capture date.
• Only contiguous files. Deep scan finds files stored in one piece. A card that was nearly full and heavily used can have fragmented files, particularly long videos, which may come back incomplete or not at all.
• Recent shoots recover best, especially if the card was lightly used since.
• If only some files come back, that is normal. Retrova rejects fragments that don’t parse as a complete file, rather than saving corrupt ones.

If you only deleted photos and the card wasn’t formatted, open it with A drive won’t open and turn on Show deleted files. On FAT32 and exFAT cards (the usual camera formats) Retrova lists deleted files with their original names and folders, each marked Good, Possibly overwritten or May be incomplete. FAT can’t tell whether a file was split into pieces, so Retrova reads each as one stretch, and a deleted file’s first letter may show as “_” when no long name survives. If the card was formatted, that list is usually empty and Deep scan is the way. A card that is simply “not readable” might also still be browsable with its original names. Try A drive won’t open first; see SD card not reading on a Mac. When you’re done, run Verify against your recovered copies.

What Retrova can’t do: it can’t undelete files with their names on APFS, ext or other file systems (only NTFS, FAT and exFAT), can’t open an encrypted drive without its password or recovery key, can’t open the startup disk of a T2 or Apple silicon Mac away from that Mac, doesn’t handle RAID sets or phones, and can’t fix a drive with physical damage. Retrova’s builds aren’t signed or notarised yet, so macOS and Windows will show a warning the first time you open it.

What not to do

Questions

Related guides

• Recover deleted photos from an SD cardDeep scan finds photos and videos by their content, free.
• SD card not reading on a MacReader, lock switch, format or failure: how to tell.
• PhotoRec with a GUI on Mac and WindowsFile carving without the text menus.
• How to check a copy is perfect: verify files byte for byteCopies fail silently. Check recovered files against the original.
• TestDisk vs PhotoRec vs RetrovaWhich free tool fits which problem.