Top 4 Free SD/microSD Card Data Recovery Software

data recovery software for SD card

Data recovery refers to a technology to rescue and recover the damaged data and files such as accidental deletion, formatting, hardware damage, or virus attack, etc. There are many data recovery software and service available for hard drive, CD, DVD and flash drives. But in case you need some data recovery software for SD memory card, here are some recommendations.

CardRecovery for Windows – CardRecovery is the leading professional SD card data recovery software for memory card used in mobile phone and digital camera. It can effectively recover lost / deleted / damaged memory cards. It also supports other memory card formats like microSD card, CF card and XQD card. CardRecovery software evaluation version can be downloaded from www.cardrecovery.com if you have a Windows PC (Windows 7 to Windows 10). It is free to try and you can see you recoverable picture files after a 10 – 30 minutes scan. The full version of CardRecovery is $39. The data recovery process is fully automatic and you do not need to be a computer geek to recover your data by yourself.

CardRescue for Mac – CardRescue is the mac version of CardRescue. If you use an Apple mac laptop (e.g. MacBook, MacBook Pro), it is the right choice. CardRescue is available for download from www.cardrescue.com.

Card Recovery software for iPhone – due to the encryption and access limitation of iOS (the operation system that iPhone and iPad use), there are no app to directly run on iPhone to recover the lost photos or videos from iPhone memory. It is recommended to use your iTunes backup or iCloud backup to recover your deleted photos in case you made regular backup.

Card Recovery software for Android – If your pictures and videos were saved on the microSD card of your android smart phone, you may take the microSD card out of your phone, and use a microSD card or SD card reader to connect the card to your computer, then you may download CardRecovery for Windows, or for Mac to . Or if your photos and videos were saved in the internal memory of the phone, you may try some SD card recovery app on your phone.

Is the probability of data recovery high, and whether or not your data on the SD card is recoverable? Usually, if you deleted some photos from the memory card, or formatted the SD card mistakenly, and you have not saved new photos on the same SD card, 80% – 95% of your data are recoverable. But if you’ve taken more pictures on the card, some are still retrievable but some deleted files may be already written over and they are not recoverable. For the corrupted and damaged SD card, whether they are recoverable depends on the actual condition of the card. If your memory card can still be recognized by the computer, you have a great chance to save part or most of the files from the card. In general, photo files are more likely to be rescued and got back perfectly than video files.


SD memory card is a new generation memory device based on semiconductor flash memory. It is widely used in portable devices, such as digital cameras and tablet computers, because of its small size, fast data transmission speed, and other excellent characteristics. microSD card is also named as Trans-Flash card (TF card). It is a compact size version of SD card which has a size of a fingernail. It is mainly used in smart phones.

Data recovery technology: the so-called data recovery technology refers to the technology that when the computer storage medium is damaged, resulting in some or all of the data can not be accessed and read out, the data can be retrieved through certain methods and means, so that the information can be regenerated. Data recovery technology can not only recover the lost files, but also recover the physical damaged disk data and the data of different operating systems. Data recovery is a remedial measure after the problem of computer storage media, it is neither a preventive measure nor a backup. Therefore, there are some special cases in which data will be difficult to recover, such as data overwriting, low-level formatting, and serious damage to disk.

Some users may consider data recovery service, using SD card recovery software is usually much cheaper than using the data recovery service as well as saving time. Generally, for data recovery service, you need to mail the card to the data recovery company, this process may damage or lose the memory card, and the price for recovering a SD card may cost you hundreds of dollars. Compared with using the data recovery service, using Do It Yourself software is also better for privacy protection and data security.